It was to be expected, given their outlook on life, that Labour's faithful little followers (Lil'Elves, just to annoy them) Laiviera and Grech Mintoff, would latch onto the anniversary of the murder of Karin Grech to make their usual cheap political points. You can check out their fumbling efforts on the blog before this.

Let me be clear: the murder of this young girl was a despicable act and I simply cannot imagine what her parents, family and friends went through and are still going through. If the perpetrator is ever caught, I hope he rots, first in jail and then in hell.

That said, there is a world of difference between the circumstances of the murder of Karin Grech and the circumstances following the murder of Raymond Caruana. The two killings were, to a degree, similar: no-one intended the death of either of them in particular and to this extent, comments about both deserving the same level of remembrance have an element of integrity about them.

But it is to that extent, and that extent alone, that there is integrity, because the circumstances following Caruana's murder are in no way comparable to the aftermath of Grech's, because when Caruana was murdered, the apparatus of the the socialist state of Malta, at the time under the premiership of Dr K Mifsud Bonnici, was brought into play in order to effect a frame-up of vile and monumental proportions.

For people like Laiviera and Grech Mintoff to put the two events, in their totality, on the same plane, is cheap and nasty. For Grech Mintoff to blame Caruana's killing on "stray bullets" is to echo, subconsciously or not, the smirk on the faces of K Mifsud Bonnici and his Labour MP colleagues in the House when Fenech Adami rose to condemn the killing instead of commenting on Labour's Tonn taz-Zejt Budget (or which ever ludicrous budget it was).

Labour's smug apologists can squeak and bleat and misdirect all they like: the stark fact remains that the death and its aftermath of Raymond Caruana are hideous stains on our country's history and the more supercilious oafs such as Grech Mintoff and Laiviera try to make us forget this, the more people l will refuse to allow them to.