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Rumour has it, and there is not much to prove it, that il-Perit, as he was affectionately known, is not a poor man. From my personal experience apart from being the complete opposite, thrifty would be another fine word to describe the man who ruled Malta and many of its minds for ages.
This week, his compensation of some Lm360,000 was trumpeted in all the media.
Is it not ironic that the former premier who captained a nation where many of its citizens keeled over after being ill-compensated for savage land expropriations was handsomely rewarded by the courts?
Those who were here when it all happened and happen to be over forty will remember Dom. Those who were around in the seventies will reminisce on how great and awful this man can be.
Mintoff’s summer residence overlooking Marsaxlokk harbour is of special significance to me. On the way to St Peter’s pool as a boy, I would stare out of the blue Hillman and pray that I would catch a glimpse of il-Perit. If it was not there it was at Peter’s pool surrounded by his usual entourage. He still takes a dip at this quaint creek assisted by a bodyguard of some sorts.
In 1987, when Eddie Fenech Adami decided to choose Delimara as the site for a power station ignoring all pleas to choose another less damaging site, I remember the phone ringing at my damp office at Din l-Art Helwa, and on the other side of the line the gruff voice of Dom Mintoff. He wanted me to organise the protest campaign against the power station according to his whims. That evening, I met him at il-Macina, accompanied by Karmenu of course, then still a Labour leader. He was as charming as ever, pontificating, and in sergeant major mode. It was not to be the last time I met the MLP father figure.
Now, the time must come when a fine biography of this brilliant but arrogant, egocentric man will have to be written and the finer details will make for some exciting reading. But I have long given up describing my thoughts of him as a love hate relationship. The love bit has long flown away.
The truth is this government and the institutions that hover around it have been unusually kind to il-Perit.
When it came to smaller fry, the compensation bill for their expropriated land was unkind if not ridiculously low. In some cases there was none at all. And most of the time in those years of Mintoffian rule, Mintoff knew exactly which land was being expropriated.
In the summer of 1998, Mintoff had several people willing to listen to him. Many of them were in the Nationalist fold. A name that comes to mind is Guido De Marco. In that unforgettable summer, when Mintoff returned to centre stage, I found it very hard to believe that the two men on opposing sides of the political spectrum, but with similar goals, were only having their usual chit chat on the phone. We will never know will we?
There was a common goal and it was the removal of Alfred Sant as Prime Minister.
If compensating Mintoff with over Lm360K is surprising news, then the flagrant way we allowed the man to use us and to be used to scold the fledgling Alfred Sant government in the summer of 1998 was dishonourable.
Somehow, many newspaper and media editors were willing to forgive Mintoff for his sins and praise his scathing attack on his own party.
This led to Dr Sant calling him a traitor. A gift title that Mintoff has constantly called on Sant to withdraw. Only a foolhardy Sant would concede to such a request. With hindsight, Sant’s stand against Mintoff did more good to his own party in the long run than one can possibly think. The only flaw is that the New Labour image has been stalled.
I have this funny feeling that those at Castille are not too unhappy with MaltaToday after all. I think one has to distinguish between the party dominated by Joe Saliba who runs the party HQ with an iron fist and the premier. The former hears the word MaltaToday and turns all green and red with anger. The latter is more shrewd, acts more like a Prime Minister and whether you like him or not has done more to redress many of the mishaps of the Eddie Fenech Adami/Cachia Caruana government.
Castille, and by Castille I mean Gonzi, is not too unhappy with the way some parts of the media have analysed how Richard Cachia Caruana has managed the Brussels Malta House saga.
The former eminence grise to Eddie, is Europe’s only un-elected Cabinet minister. A privilege that is untenable in a democracy. RCC as we all know him has been a great embarrassment to the Gonzi government. The Brussels property deal could not have come at a worse time and the price tag and history linked to its purchase are confirmation that it is not only meritocracy that makes the world go round in government’s circles.
Gonzi’s reform programme has been plagued first by the Dalli resignation, then the ECO-tax conundrum and now the concrete bunker in Brussels.
RCC’s tastes for extravagant properties abroad started off with Malta House in London and now we have part two in Brussels.
Prime Ministerial focus has been taken away from the top priority: the economy. Yet, this is not the first time that we have seen this happen. In January of this year, the outcome of a trial by jury should have led to the resignation of a Prime Minister. Instead he stood by his personal assistant and then resigned for other reasons.
Today this newspaper carries the story of yet another Mdina fairy tale. Aerial footage confirms that excavations at a site in Mdina have been carried out at a grade A archaeological site. The permit for this work is in order, but that cannot mean we are in accordance.
In normal circumstances, the permit and excavation of a grade A archaeological site doe not have an easy ride, more so if the case officer has presented a negative report. But then life is full of surprises with little or no explanation.
Which takes us straight back to the Brussels property and the personalities chosen to work for or on behalf of this Government purchase.
Needless to say it is not the money they have earned that is of my concern. Though debating monetary figures should not always be interpreted as an indication of envy. It is more a question of how and with which criteria these individuals were selected. And it leave us with no doubt in hell, that their acquaintance with Mr Cachia Caruana had as much to do with their selection as their aptitude and abilities.
Now, resigning matters are usually subjective matters. But how about asking a simple question, Is RCC’s position still tenable?
I belong to the hundreds of Sunday readers who have stopped buying Olive on Sunday, that is unless my next of kin rings me up early on Sunday flustered and angry about some comment passed.
Yet, I did notice a piece in a Saturday newspaper that Olive has been getting all worked up about building construction at Bahrija. You see, we agree on some things at least. It is true, I am afraid Bahrija has been ruined irrevocably.
Someone else wrote in the newspaper that dedicates more pages to parking tickets than to news castigating her that the buildings that had sprouted all over Bahriha were not give-aways by the pre-1987 Labour government.
Indeed Olive has never been good for the finer details. She is right to lament about Bahrija, but she is confusing the culprits. I visited the place recently for the first time since the I attended the Bongu Malta protest in 1985 when Joe Azzopardi was still an idealist. Bahrija, dear Olive was raped and destroyed under a Nationalist administration. The absolute majority of the building permits issued were done so after 1987. Let us give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but when we are putting pen to paper we would do good to attribute blame where blame is due.
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