On January 15, 2005, the Ministry of Rural Affairs and the Environment organised a public meeting to discuss government’s intention to upgrade the Sant’Antnin Waste treatment facility. A motley crowd of politically motivated persons shouted continuously and made it impossible for George Pullicino to speak and say what he wanted to say. This was no run of the mill “intelligent” heckling. It led to the disruption of the meeting with police officers having to escort Minister George Pullicino to his car.
The meeting was described as a “stormy” one by The Sunday Times of January 15 that reported that “mayhem reigned at a public meeting on the extension of the Sant’Antnin waste recycling plant yesterday as residents hurled abuse at Environment Minister George Pullicino who tried to allay their fears and clarify the situation.”
The Sunday Times also reported that during the meeting “there was a heated exchange between former environment minister George Vella and Mr Pullicino”, and also carried a photo of Dr Vella approaching Mr. Pullicino who showed him a press cutting from a newspaper issued when Dr Vella was minister.
George Vella, erstwhile MLP deputy leader, was present when the minister was not allowed to say his piece and when he had to leave under heavy police escort. Through this entire riot, George Vella did not bat an eyelid at the abuse that was hurled at the Minister. He simply called for George Pullicino to resign.
On the same Sunday the MLP paper KullĦadd reported the meeting under a headline saying: ‘Referendum dwar l-impjant tar-riċiklaġġ’ giving a lot of importance to a petition signed by those present asking for a referendum on the issue.
Hearing what the same George Vella had to say about some heckling during a recent party leaders debate at the University, when a large section of those present made it clear that they disagreed with Alfred Sant – as they had every right to do - I was somewhat perplexed.
George Vella has gone on record saying that what happened at the university was a fascist act, and asserted that the university should investigate and see what kind of students it is producing. Accusing them of making the most obscene gestures under the sun, Vella said that these students are brought up from birth to believe they are superior to the rest of us, but they are the most abject human beings and the lowest of the low! He even said the MLP should not commit itself about students because when something like that happens, he does not care about what the party electoral programme says.
Quite a difference from the way he acted at Marsascala in January 2005! What has happened to George in the space of three years?
It is obvious that George Vella had then not embarked on the quest for “a new beginning”. Today he must be a born-again socialist and, just as all socialists who are on the right track for a new beginning, he does not agree with heckling, let alone hurling abuse. Born-again socialists do not even agree with referenda! They cannot even recall what used to happen when the Mintoff regime was the scourge of Malta. Then George Vella was a Labour MP supporting the regime’s antics by his vote in Parliament.
The hypocrisy sucks and reminds me of the Biblical admonition: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.” (Matthew 23:27)

George Pullicino’s predicament in January 2005 was even worse than the one suffered by UK Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt in April 2006 when catcalls and slow handclaps forced her to abandon a speech to a nurses’ union. Alfred Sant’s wasn’t.
Commenting on that incident in The Guardian of April 28, 2006, Michael White wrote: “Heckling is good. A shaken Patricia Hewitt may not see things that way as she dusts herself down after the drubbing she got at the Royal College of Nursing’s conference in genteel Bournemouth earlier this week. The health minister endured 50 minutes of catcalls, slow handclaps and derisive laughter before being forced to abandon her speech to the union, when delegates resisted all pleas to hear her out. But that was not proper heckling; it could be argued that what the health secretary suffered this week was more of an organised verbal assault: anger, not wit; abuse, not tempered outrage; a blunt instrument, not a rapier.”
What Alfred Sant “went through” at the University on February 18 was certainly nothing of the sort. He was allowed to say whatever he wanted to say – to which people in a democracy have a right to boo as much as they have a right to clap and cheer.
According to what Alfred Sant himself wrote in his PR column in The Times last Wednesday, this is what happened when the debate was over: “At the end of the now infamous University ‘debate’ for party leaders, I was not whisked away from a side entrance. I just went there to pick up my coat. The fracas at the University was an organised partisan show of intolerance and immaturity, true, but it did not amount to a riot. I left from the main entrance, walked to the University bookstore and bought myself a book which I had intermittently shopped for over a number of years and finally found. Ironically, given what had just happened during the ‘debate’, its title is Truth And Method.”
This cannot but mean that the reactions in the Labour media to what really happened were grossly exaggerated. Purposely, I would add. Writing in l-orizzont on Tuesday, veteran Labour journalist Anton Cassar insisted that the university ‘debate’ incident was the worst incident in the electoral campaign so far. For him, the vandalism of PN billboards doesn’t count! Repeating the “ħamalli u psataż” jibe, in his column Cassar even recalled that way back in the thirties some university students had travelled to Rome to meet Italian dictator Benito Mussolini! Ranting about the perceived sins of great-grandfathers seems to be Cassar’s way of preparing for “a new beginning”!
The MLP’s over-reaction to some boos and heckles directed at Alfred Sant is so absurd and outrageous that one is tempted to dismiss it as utter hogwash.
Yet underlying this incredibly preposterous stance, lies the very spirit of the monster of intolerance that dwells in the deep dungeons of the MLP psyche: a monster that has been dormant for quite some time, but one that is actually hibernating rather than being dead and buried. Obviously, it can rise and return to its former gory glory.
On this one, I dearly wish I am completely wrong.