How does 1981 come into it?

I would have described the odious comparison between the present political situation and that of 1981, which Labour is playing around with, as a farce had 1981 not been so tragic.

Today, you have a government of the people. In 1981 you had a government against the people- Austin Sammut

The repeated audacity of the Labour leadership is amazing. In 1981, the Labour Party did not have the backing of the majority of the people but in accordance with the then Constitution was perfectly entitled to form a government.

One does not even need to argue or establish that the situation was then both morally and politically incorrect. That this was so has been stated publicly and unequivocally by no less than the Labour leader and his parliamentary deputy. Wow!

Thirty years later. Today, we have a government which acquired a clear, albeit slim, majority in 2008. Any comparison is clear. Today, you have a government of the people. In 1981 you had a government against the people. Is a mandate not the hallmark and leading principle of democracy?

Need we go further? It is only an election or a vote of no confidence in Parliament in terms of the Constitution that can remove a government’s mandate. None of this has happened since 2008.

To say, further, that the government lost its parliamentary majority in the recent vote is true but no vote of no confidence was passed. Accordingly, there is absolutely no termination of the prevailing mandate.

I will go further, in full agreement with my learned colleague and namesake, Austin Bencini, writing in this newspaper last Saturday, that the Speaker’s vote was unnecessary.

Many have compared the vote of no confidence moved by deputy Labour leader Anġlu Farrugia (why him?) to a football match. The vote, or the score, was a draw. The opposition challenged the government to the match, convinced they would win, but all they got was a draw. Can any genius on this planet explain how one can win with a draw; an equal no of goals scored? Another farce.

The Prime Minister and his party, though the vote of no confidence failed, may have been weakened (they lost a player) but they did not lose. They had to go back to the dressing room to remedy this weakness but by no means did they lose in Parliament. And this is exactly what the Prime Minister did.

He did not only ask his players for a vote of confidence but opened up his position to any other aspiring coaches who wished to contest him in his position. It is a purely internal party affair.

Now the question of instability, uncertainty, calling an early election and the like is another matter, on which I have already had the occasion to comment.

Back to 1981. The odious comparison is an insult to the people who voted in that election – Nationalist or Labour. And, coming to think of it, I do not believe that the Labour Party is genuinely sincere in its admission that the 1981 election was morally and politically incorrect. Would its leadership have admitted this had the present political situation not arisen? They have only taken this line to use as a weapon against the government.

But I’m afraid their “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” game has failed. There are a number of old hands from 1981 still around in high positions in the party. Can they tell us what their position was regarding Dom Mintoff’s wish to call another election shortly after the 1981 perverse result?

And what do they have to say about broadcasting and “Dardir Malta” in 1981? Again, they have had the audacity to compare public broadcasting then with public broadcasting now. I have also expressed my views on broadcasting in this small, highly partisan country of ours.

I will not go into the merits of how PBS is being run today, lest I be accused of having some hidden agenda due to my past association with the station. But I am on record as having expressed my belief that PBS, the Broadcasting Authority and the party stations (which should not exist at all) should undergo a total overhaul. However, all this has nothing to do with 1981.

I clearly remember waiting on counting night with some good friends, all set up to try and come out with some predictions as we expected the results to start leaking out. We had some rudimentary equipment, namely electric calculators to do this. None of the sophisticated electronics we have today. But there were no results.

The famous tal-ġakketta blu (blue jackets) were fighting their battle of fear against the machine gun-toting SMU at the Ħal Far counting hall. My colleagues and myself were sitting on the floor of Eddie Fenech Adami’s office at the Nationalist Party’s HQ. Waiting and waiting.

Sitting there with Dr Fenech Adami were Ċensu Tabone and Italian Senator Angelo Bernassola, who regularly assiduously followed Malta’s elections.

We watched what was, at least, my first episode of Fawlty Towers; in black and white, of course, since colour TV was considered a luxury beyond the people. Suddenly, at about dawn I suppose (and no results communicated), we had a screen full of Rebħa Soċjalista (Socialist victory) and the tune of Run Rabbit Run.

How’s that for comparing public broadcasting now with that of the 1980s? I could go on and on about those days. I just hope that all those who were around at the time and were old enough will associate themselves with these reminiscences and relate them to their children and grandchildren.