Labour’s past imperfect

It has become fashionable, in much the same as it had become just before Labour’s defeat by the skin of the Nationalists’ teeth at the last election, to denigrate people who dare to recall Labour’s immediate past.

This is the present in Malta, a present made possible by what we had to go through 25 short years ago...- I.M. Beck

It seems that having a knowledge of history is a bad thing, especially if this knowledge points towards Labour having credentials that are less than exemplary when it comes to upholding democratic principles such as the rule of law and respect for the individual.

I am accused of this on a regular basis by assorted Lil’Elves, many of whom then go on to give themselves the lie by citing episodes from the Nationalist Party’s past that – at least according to them – put the PN on the same footing as the MLP. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth but a respect for this particular value has never been one for which Labour and its mouthpieces have been noted.

Take, for instance, a clip that is going the rounds, taken from that masterpiece of televisual production, Inkontri, a brainchild of the Brother Grim(a). In this piece of reportage nonpareil, the presenter adopts tones of portentous gloom and grave announcement for all the world as if she is the harbinger of an eternal truth. According to the piece, Labourites in Malta today are scared to show their faces or declare their beliefs as they will be persecuted and generally turned into non-people.

Not without some unconscious irony, the piece harks back to 1987 and without a smidgeon of embarrassment dares to point fingers at the Nationalists, calling them undemocratic and all sorts of other names.

The producer of this piece is nothing more than a purveyor of misinformation, revisionist history and – not to put too fine a point on it – lies and a party that has to resort to this simply does not deserve anyone’s confidence.

Let’s just take stock of where we were just before 1987, shall we?

Just before 1987, Raymond Caruana was shot in cold blood in a drive-by shooting on a Nationalist Party club.

Just before 1987, a perfectly legitimate political demonstration that was to be held in Żejtun was disrupted by thugs, some not in uniform, with tear-gas and shooting.

Just before 1987, Peter Paul Busuttil was framed by the regime’s police for the shooting of Raymond Caruana and he can probably thank his stars that that is all that happened to him.

Just before 1987, Malta had been brought to the brink by the regime.

So, if anyone accuses me of raking over old coals and bringing up ancient history, by saying this, I would respectfully remind them that it is precisely this past that has given them and their children a future because, had we not lived through that time and come out of it on the right side of history, Malta would be a very different place.

Today, the things that exercise us are – more precisely, used to be – the buses, a warhorse that has transmogrified into a workhorse under Labour’s cynical flogging.

We are worried about ministers’ salaries being computed in the same way as Labour MPs’ are, without even noticing the irony of it and the cynicism.

We are told that a project suggested by entrepreneurs fronted by an aspirant for prime ministerial office, currently incarcerated in Brussels (yes, that’s you I’m talking about, Citizen John) is the be-all and end-all of the country’s power generation needs, although anyone who has even a shred of credibility has turned his nose up at Sargas. Even Labour, incidentally, are back-tracking on them now, spinning us the yarn that they are but one of the arrows in Labour’s quiver.

While students the world over are on the streets protesting, ours are out making nuisances of themselves celebrating their graduation, to the annoyance of the proponents of the Nanny State, who want them to be quiet, so there. This is the present in Malta, a present made possible by what we had to go through 25 short years ago, when you showed your political colours and genuinely ran the risk of a good thumping. It didn’t stop us, not because there was any form of tolerance of or protection by the state for the fundamental right to have an opinion but in spite of its absence.

I have no doubt that the smug and the Elfin will react in their usual way to these thoughts. After all, in some cases, it is their own family that was at the heart of the regime, so perhaps they can’t be blamed. They will turn the failure to apprehend Raymond Caruana’s killer into a more important issue than the killing itself because that is the way the chorus line functions.

But I and a few like me will keep on singing out of tune because we’re made that way.

Sometimes, I like to report on a repeat visit, especially if consistency is displayed. Angelica’s, in Archbishop Street, by the Palace, is one I can mention, where a work-day lunchtime is rendered more than tolerable by a good pie or a fine desert.

imbocca@gmail.com

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