My thoughts when writing this contribution are not concentrated on the question of whether Dom Mintoff’s recent award for human rights by the Gaddafi Foundation has an intrinsic worth or a useless value.
My focus is on the finely tuned technique which the PN geared themselves up to in order to revamp the Mintoffian ill feelings amongst a big number of Maltese, as well as British expatriates.
At his venerable age Dom Mintoff can’t pose any danger to anybody, least of all to the PN. So why did the PN and its media league go up in arms against the award, more so after our President’s meeting with Colonel Gaddafi? Surely giving no prominence to the event would have sufficed under normal circumstances.
The purpose of the whole exercise was merely to elevate Dom Mintoff to the status of role model of the present Labour supporters, and in so doing, tarnish the present leader’s modern image.
The fact that late politicians like Lord Gerald Strickland, Sir Paul Boffa, Enrico Mizzi, George Borg-Olivier, Anton Buttigieg, Agatha Barbara, Guze Cassar, Notary Abela, and many others who truly embellished our political history, is endorsed by all. Until recently even Dom Mintoff was being spoken of as a great statesman by the PN propaganda machine. This was the period when the Labour supporters became sceptical about him due to his problems with Alfred Sant.
The PN was and still is the most conservative party we ever had; it is also the strongest survivor and the oldest. Other political parties will come and go yet the PN will be here for a long time because they are the best survivors. The result of the last election speaks for itself. But is being strong and a superb survivor the by-product of righteousness? Look around you and you’ll get the answer.
The PN propaganda machine works well for them, they can sell fridges to Eskimos. But does that make them good and honest sales people? They sold us JPO as the greatest Environmentalist we ever had and some people still believe it. That’s how good they are at this game.
Whether we like it or not we strive on pique, we like division and sub divisions. Our towns and small villages are all divided among different patron saints and different band clubs; it can’t be different in politics. It has always been ‘us and them’ and ironically those on the right wing were always the perceived righteous and us Reds the bad folks. Because behind the divides there are always the church and the politicians. And divide perpetuates their subsistence.
My late father, a staunch Boffist till the end, used to tell me that during the Boffa administration the PN made up Boffa to look like the devil incarnate and immediately after the split and his trouble with Mintoff he was proclaimed a living saint.
The Fascists and the Nazis shared a common mode in their propaganda strategy, they would not use all their arsenal on their opposite camp at large, but they would focus on prominent individuals, demonise them and then portray them as symbols of their ilk. And to propagate their party they would use the same mode in a roundabout fashion. Maybe the strategy to demonise Strickland, Boffa, Mintoff, KMB and Sant wasn’t a PN brainchild after all. Moreover the GonziPN lark to detour the voters focus from the PN’s shortfalls wasn’t their originate idea either. It’s still working for them and Labour has to revisit its methods and strategies soon. Joseph Muscat’s efforts need support and unity from within, divide and tribal piques hinders and contaminates.

Charles J. Buttigieg.
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