I knew him only by name. I only got to know him in person, one Mon­day morning, on the morrow of the first Panama protest in Valletta. I must give him credit, that though I went unannounced and accom­panied by my partner in crime Kekettoni, he agreed to recieve me in his inner sanctum at Castille.

My mission was to correct certain false information that he had just published about me in his infamous blog. Typical of Labour cronies, Glenn Bedingfield put the blame squarely on the Nationalists – who else? – claiming that he had recieved information from Dar Centrali, which to me sounded very strange, if not sordid.

With a shake of hands I departed, naively believing that he would retract the erro­neous and unfounded information. But days passed and nothing happened, so I sent him an e-mail demanding he issue the correction. His reply was that I could write a statement on his blog and he would publish it. Thanks very much! From that moment on, I knew who I was dealing with.

Like some bruised and battered wife who wanted to salvage her teetering marriage at all costs and naively wanted to believe the empty promises of a brutal husband that he is a changed man, three years earlier I had voted Labour. I was stupid enough to ignore that old Maltese wisdom that says ‘Min jitwieled tond ma jmutx kwadru’ and ‘Il-ħanżir taqtalu denbu, ħanżir jibqa’ (a leopard cannot change its spots).

Setting aside the ugly and slightly faded 25-year-old memories of the dark 1980s, when Malta was saved from civil war by the wisdom and prudence of Eddie Fenech Adami, I believed Joseph Muscat! Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!

Muscat publicly proclaimed that he was renouncing Labour’s ugly heritage of despotism and violence and turning over a new leaf. A person would no longer have to be a party crony to give his contribution to the country. Once in power, Muscat would be ushering in a shiny new era and a glorious future, the likes of which our little republic had never experienced before; one of cleanliness, transparency and true justice, based on meritocracy.

Little did I know that at the same time, together with his old buddies and newcomers to the party, he was conspiring behind our backs, the backs of his own supporters, and behind the locked doors of the infamous fourth storey at Mile End that he was preparing something quite different from the glossy propaganda that his deceptive expert advisers were feeding to the unknowing masses.

At least this former journalist has done something good for this country: he has bared, for all intelligent people to see, the true colours of this scandal-riddled government

One of the shining examples of Muscat’s promise of meritocracy must surely be Bedingfield, one of the Prime Minister’s closest advisers... on what I don’t know and just cannot imagine.

Since installing himself comfortably at Castille at taxpayers’ expense, one of Bedingfield’s major contributions to our country’s welfare has been the spewing of venom in his blog at those who do not blindly submit to his puppet master. Just like a bully does, he replaces arguments with arrogance and violence – in this case, psychological – and with carefully orchestrated distortions of the truth. Just witness the tone of his recent attacks on the likes of Giovanni Bonello and Archbishop Charles Scicluna.

At least this former journalist has done something good for this country: he has bared, for all intelligent people to see, the true colours of this scandal-riddled government and the duplicity of the salesman Joseph Muscat, who in a moment of sheer bad judgement, elected Bedingfield as the mouthpiece of his unholy trinity.

That unfortunate choice set me thinking. It has led me to the realisation that bullying has always been at the core of the Labour Party’s psychology – saddled as it is by chips on the shoulder and real or imaginary grieviences – no matter how many leaders the party might change.

I suppose it was the one thing that had subconsciously always kept me from voting Labour, until I was dismally fooled by their latest false prophet. Recent history teaches us that Labour never changes and that bullying is tenaciously ingrained in its system. Anybody who is not a natural born bully is either thrown out, hardly able to make it to the top, or at most, barely survives beyond a few years before being betrayed by some ambitious Brutus. It started dramatically with Boffa at the gates of the Drydocks in Bormla, and I feel safe to include in the list of victims people like Alfred Sant and George Abela.

Bullying is the weapon of choice for those who aspire to the absolute power they don’t deserve, gladly stooping to mud slinging to prop up a discredited regime. Their favourite tactic is ridicule in its lowest forms. Incapable of wit and sarcasm and at the mercy of their paranoia of seeing enemies at every corner, and unable to rebut argument with argument, they resort to trying to bully their opponents into submission.

What they don’t realise is that they are wasting time, and taxpayers’ money, preaching to the converted, while alienating those whom they should be courting. This tactic will only lead to defeat at the next election.

Thank God for stupid!

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