Labour’s deterioration: from Francis of Assisi’s peace prayer to Old Testament vengeance

Alfred Grixti, the man Muscat’s government put in charge of the Foundation for Social Welfare Services, has made the news – and not just in Malta – for screaming on Facebook that it’s time for harsh retaliatory action against the Nationalist Party.

The reason? Three members of the European Parliament, who were elected on Malta’s Nationalist Party ticket, did not vote in favour of (substandard) Leo Brincat.

Apart from the squalid thought processes by which Grixti arrived at the conclusion that Maltese people should support other Maltese people in non-Maltese contexts, and that twisted patriotism is a proper substitute for intelligent decisions and integrity, his arithmetic is a non-starter. Three votes will not have made a difference, because the vote against Brincat was overwhelming. I suppose Grixti will say that it’s the principle that counts – because you know how it is with people who are almost entirely devoid of principled morality. They always tell you that it’s the principle that counts. And in sticking to their generally odd and perverted principles, they do a great deal of harm. In this case, the harm caused is through blatant and incendiary aggression.

After a few highly suspicious years in which the Labour Party and its big cheeses put on a false front of amenability (mainly to people with money and votes to switch), with Muscat even scraping the behav- ioural barrel by shamelessly quoting Francis of Assisi’s famous prayer, they are back in form, with daggers drawn and fire-torches at the ready. Metaphorically speaking, of course, as the Minister for the Economy would have us believe. But now we’re three-anda-half years into Muscat’s term in government – doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun? – and his party-cum-government is demonstrating all the signs of feeling itself under siege. It’s pulled up the drawbridge, put crocodiles in the moat, cranked up its media machine, put Gland Bustingfield on the battlements to pour boiling oil on Enemies of the State (in quiet periods, he uses it for chips), and put John Bundy in charge of TVM and Radio Malta. And the Prime Minister has gone in a brief four years from reciting “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace” to paying his party apparatchiks with money from the state treasury – that’s what putting them on the state payroll means – to insult, slander and expose to the opprobrium of the Labour mob anybody who says anything that can be construed as criticism of Muscat and his band of thieves. Right now, there’s a war being waged against The Sunday Times, The Times of Malta and the Archbishop. Would that have happened four years ago or even three? Not on your life. Back then they were smarming up to everyone they could, currying favour and brown-nosing for brownie points. But now shifty Keith Schembri’s slippery pal, Adrian Hillman, is no longer in charge at those two newspapers, so whatever underhanded arrangement they had going has been blown to smithereens and the Labour daggers have been drawn against that newspaper house in good old timehonoured Mintoffian tradition. So much for voting for change.

Former Prime Minister Alfred Sant has said exactly the same thing as Alfred Grixti did about an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It appears to be one of his favourite pronouncements – I distinctly remember him using it back when he was exploding with rage in the last few weeks of his 22-month premiership in the late 1990s. But we’ve forgotten already that the first Labour tool to rant and rave on the internet in the same fashion since Joseph Muscat became prime minister was actually Ronnie Pellegrini, one of the worst of the lot, who in a black comic script that writes itself is now chief aide to the Minister for Civil Liberties. The execrable Pellegrini was the longtime henchman of one of the most corrupt government ministers Malta has ever known, Lorry Sant, which is clearly why he is so comfortable with the current state of affairs. He had a lot of yelling to do about ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’. And then, of course, there was Economy Minister Chris Cardona, who said the same thing in more savage terms still: ‘If people threaten us with a dagger, we’ll go after them with an axe’.

These people are really quite unbearable. You would think that, having wilted in Opposition for a quarter of a century, they would have been gagging to show how great they are at governing. Instead they’ve been filling their pockets and those of their cronies, while expending time, energy and resources on hatching plots to threaten and decimate their critics.

Alfred Grixti