I went to watch Dear Dom for several reasons. For the film itself. To try to understand how fairly it treated its subject-matter, Dom Mintoff, former La­bour Party leader and Prime Minister. And also to see how could my interview get such different reactions. I came away with a bad taste.

The film was not weak in concept but much so in artistic execution. The concept was clear – to seem to show Mr Mintoff in the round, as in a good documentary, only to lead to a mishmash and a scurrilous rant of several closing minutes which, aside from the biased content, has no place in such an effort.

Dear Dom is presented as an unsigned letter. And it followed the style of anonymous letters which always try to burn their object. The ex-Labour leader is shown in the worst possible light in the commentary and material that interspersed the interviews intended to string background together.

Most of the faults brought out in Mr Mintoff’s rule are valid. He was domineering, and under his watch bad things happened which he should have stamped out but did not. Yet, there was much more to the man. His monument is the way he lifted the poor out of misery through a network of social services, subsequently enhanced by Nationalist governments.

Pierre Ellul, the film producer and scriptwriter, gave that barely a mention.

Similarly to the way house-ownership boomed under Labour and the extension of education, which opened the way for working class children to have a chance to exploit their intelligence.

That the Nationalists continued with the effort does not detract from Mr Mintoff’s merit. Nor the way he put steel in the back of the Maltese people to make them believe they could get by through the fruits of peace, rather than letting Malta continue to prostitute itself to the means of war.

Even where it tries to be factual, the film has gaps that underscore the negative picture painted of Mr Mintoff. The vicissitudes of the politico-religious dispute are skimmed through. There is little mention of what Labour leaders and their followers suffered at the hands of the overzealous, those who threw stones, spat at, tried to shut up with ringing of church bells those of us who stuck to our political beliefs despite Archbishop Michael Gonzi’s wrath and threats of hellfire and brimstone.

Moving to the 1980s, aside from me saying that the grave shortcomings of the time were the work of a few dozen thugs who ought to have been stopped by Mr Mintoff, the not so subliminal false projection is that Mr Mintoff himself had ordered the violence.

No mention of police officers who led the police rump – again, a relative handful – that so dishonoured the Labour government. No reference to the queer fact that, once the Nationalists were elected in 1987, they promoted these officers, rather than kicking them out of the force. (That was left to Prime Minister Alfred Sant to accomplish). Plus errors of history, attributing to Mr Mintoff events that happened when Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici was Prime Minister.

Then came the concluding monologue. Mr Ellul is entitled to his views as much as I am. But there is no attempt at balance. Their lengthy expression at the close of the film does paint Mr Mintoff, as his daughters claim, as a violent, vengeance-seeking man. That, in my direct experience of years not quite his bosom friend, was not the case.

Mr Ellul’s conclusion answers the question why the film was made in the first instance. It was to show Mr Mintoff not warts and all, but all warts, with no saving grace.

In my own regard I was surprised that Mr Ellul dedicated disproportionate time to the main owners’ version of the National Group affair in 1973, whereby it became the Bank of Valletta, but he did not ask for my technical view as a main interviewee.

I was intimately involved at the Central Bank when it happened and certainly Mr Mintoff never told the Bank to bankrupt borrowers, as alleged. I have publicly given my technical version several times, emphasising that those of us who lived the affair are dying out. At least, the present Attorney General took my sworn testimony to be able to present it if I too am gone by the time the courts get round to act after the inordinate delay of 38 years.

As for the interview with me as it appeared in the film, a staunch Nationalist columnist and blogger of The Times said I was Mr Mintoff’s chief whitewasher. A hardened Labourite opined on Josanne Cassar’s website that I was interviewed because everyone knows I was in conflict with Mr Mintoff for years. Fr Mark Montebello suggested I was used. An Alternattiva Demokratika activist messaged me that I was excellent, clear and composed.

Watching what Mr Ellul used of my interview (obviously, he could only carry parts of it) I felt that my effort to be objective about a highly subjective character had come through.

The controversy is turning on whether one should watch the film or not. I think one should. Freedom of thought and expression are to be exercised, not quoted only when it suits us. At the end of the day, it is up to each viewer to make up his mind about the quality and merits or otherwise of the film.

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