Dom Mintoff writes to The Prime Minister of Malta 21st September 2007

The Hon. Dr. Dom Mintoff
Emeritus Prime Minister
And Founder of the Republic of Malta


21st September, 2007

The Hon Dr. L. Gonzi
Prime Minister of the Republic of Malta

Dear Prime Minister,

This message is being hurriedly jotted down in the evening of the day which your “Nationalist” party is celebrating with the customary pomp and fanfare. This time there is a break in your Party’s tradition: it is being done at the expense of a bankrupt Maltese Nation with no claim on Party coffers.

Ominously it is also interrupting a very astute Parliamentary ruse by which your party hopes to spoil the Nation’s resources, no longer by the false statement “Money is no problem” but, by tempting the “LABOUR” Opposition to carry out the plundering in tandem.

Political slimy slyness in our midst began about thirty years ago when the Hon Dr Borg Olivier was stealthily deprived of his leadership of the Nationalist Party by the “No Problem” magician, the Hon Dr Eddie Fenech Adami, who had scrounged a seat in Parliament in a bye-election.

This anti-Giorgio bold move earned the Hon Fenech Adami the leadership of the Nationalist Party and eventually the premiership. The Hon Fenech Adami’s stunning cunning reached its climax four years ago when he managed to appoint himself President of the Republic of Malta before vacating his post as Prime Minister.

Fenech Adami’s fake Presidency reared its ugly head at the commencement of your watch on our young Nation’s destiny. But Fenech Adami started his systematic attempt to slay our Nation’s young body politic in 1987. It was only after a very few years after taking his oath of allegiance to our nation and assuming responsibility to steer our young republic along a highway boldly determined in a Republican Constitution with peace for our people and the rest of humanity as its primary goal.

It was not a constitution obscured by riddles or deceitful images. Our Republican Constitution was grafted on our country’s collective soul by more than a two thirds majority of the freely elected representatives of our people. Indeed for the first time in our recorded history, we, the people of the Maltese Islands, wrote down a Constitution that gave us total human control of our destiny.

What was even more uplifting, it was a non-partisan democratic instrument which the Hon Dr Fenech Adami had helped solemnly to fashion and to which he affixed his personal seal and that of more than 80% of the “Nationalist” Members of Parliament.

By abolishing racial and religious discrimination and giving equal status to women and men alike, our Republican Constitution burnt the rot of our old civilisation and invigorated the live roots of our Christian faith. Christ was not king anymore: he was the Son of God and his crucifixion helped us to be the sons and daughters of the same Father who awaits us all in Heaven.

In ousting his old leader in such a horrible way, Fenech Adami and his group of petty conspirators said good-bye to Borg Olivier caucus and feudal roots as well as to what was intrinsically sound in a right wing national (never nationalist) political party. Because whenever he could have his say, in no circumstance, did Borg Olivier give his consent to British and Vatican City dominance without getting for his political party what he considered to be a minimum of power sharing.

Indeed in moments of truth and in the national interest, Borg Olivier defied his erstwhile ally Herbert Ganado and his Church followers by making common cause with rebellious LABOUR against the combined forces of the British Raj led by Winston Churchill in Great Britain and Strickland House on our Islands.

Deceit was never in Borg Olivier’s tactics or style. He always stated his political credo openly and, when the time was for him ripe (long enough to wear out his powerful opponents), he openly gave it flesh and blood. He did it in a genteel aristocratic manner and in a spirit of tolerance which rebellious LABOUR generously reciprocated when they had the upper hand. Never was he influenced by personal aggrandisement or filthy lucre. He is, I believe, the only Colonial Prime Minister who ended his life in bankruptcy and without a British Knighthood.

Contrast all this with Fenech Adami’s political instinct. The first big historical opportunity came his way when by the demise of the Soviet Union, a terrible incubus of a world dominated by two great superpowers wielding nuclear weapons of mass destruction came to an end.

Instead of spurring the Non-Aligned Countries (as LABOUR had already done by leading the Mediterranean countries at Helsinki) to forsake all efforts for a temporary cock-eyed appeasement and concentrate instead on a long-term active role for an honourable peace, Fenech Adami, with the aura of a sudden world publicity, invited the victor, George Bush’s father and Gorbachov, the self defeated communist, to holy talks on St. Paul’s Islands.

Simultaneously with this move, our clever hero gave the Maltese electorate and the world-at-large the deceitful impression that in brokering this international venue he had convinced the President of the United States of America to give up his ambition for a PAX AMERICANA driven entirely by U.S. imperialists and the C.I.A. Father Bush, we were led to believe, was willing to learn from his errors in Iran and Iraq and was ready to let a reformed United Nations be our collective social instrument for peace in this millennium.

The Hon Prime Minister of the Republic of Malta told Malta’s Parliament and the Maltese electorate that the BUSH-GORBACHOV talks were evidence of a new era in which Malta’s neutrality and non-alignment were irrelevant and Malta’s leaders need not perform more crazy acts of political brinkmanship which gave risks to deadly consequences to our peace loving population.

Dear Prime Minister,
Dr. Borg Olivier predicament was worse than mine. As one unexpectedly steps in a snake in the dark so did Borg Olivier, the unlucky Leader of the Nationalist Party towards the end of 1979. Only a handful of his most faithful followers were aware that the old bright light had burnt out and a dim light carried by an almost unknown new comer called Fenech Adami was casting queer shadows on Malta’s Shadow Cabinet.

Rumours cunningly spread around by the bureaucratic apparatus of the senior members of the new Shadow Cabinet were in part quite true and made Fenech Adami’s spin even more credible: he had heroically filled the gap to give time to his more politically experienced colleagues to work together and decide whether he or anyone else was worthy to wear the spotless mantle of the politically extinct and physically much alive Giorgio Borg Olivier.

At the time of this Nationalist tragedy I was at the helm of Malta’s Real Cabinet devoting most of my energies to the heavy task of consolidating LABOUR’s triumph over the British and NATO combined forces. Our enemies were still determined to stop at nothing to save us from the suffocating embrace of a Soviet hegemony. But the price they wanted Malta to pay for coming to our rescue – remaining for ever and ever British or American colonial slaves – was to revolting for Malta’s LABOUR to contemplate.

It was therefore my duty to detect that a mastermind at political deception has stealthily crawled in our midst. I did not. My remorse for making that mistake is not assuaged by the fact that no one of my colleagues or political advisors drew my attention to this mortal danger. And I have paid for this grave error by having to give constant combat to one who has sublime ascendancy over everyone on this island in the Holy Inquisition’s art of cloak and dagger deception.

Partly due to my mistake, Fenech Adami succeeded in beating the able leaders of the various new currents contending for the soul of the Nationalist party. How he manoeuvred to do it is for them to reveal when they meet face to face the Nationalist rebels who are now publicly set to give an open battle to Fenech Adami and his foul Establishment at the earliest general election, be it even November of this year.

It took so long for the Nationalist dissidents to make a move probably because they were taken in by Fenech Adami’s deception to join Europe in a very great hurry. He ended up joining G.W.Bush. And the “Nationalist” Prime Minister preened with deceptive pride at being the American’s political unpaid batsman. They were also taken in when “Nationalist” Gonzi took over as Prime Minister almost four years ago and promised Malta a new deal.

Dear Prime Minister,
The promise you made to our nation was not the unholy mess in which our Islands find themselves today.

On my watch Malta had a surfeit of qualified skilled workers competing with success with the very best in the highly industrialised United Kingdom of Great Britain. Initially they were taught and trained by the British Admiralty and War Department and by Professor Nixon (a saintly atheist who had won even the respect of the hardliner Archbishop Gonzi) at Malta’s National Public Works and Water Works. UnforTUNAtely the most experienced of this initial bunch were compelled by Britain’s defence cuts (with Duncan Sandys, Churchill son-in-law, shouldering the greatest responsibility) to migrate to Canada, Australia, the United States of America and even the British Isles.

Through the joint efforts of LABOUR and the General Workers’ Union the economic recovery which took place almost at once after the signing of the Freedom agreement with NATO and Britain in 1972, increased the demand for skilled LABOUR in our dockyard and the hundred other industrial enterprises which LABOUR (opposed systematically in Parliament and outside it by Fenech Adami assisted by Archbishop Gonzi’s successor) set up at top speed.

In this recovery the teaching and training skills took place in our ship building and ship repair yards, our Air Malta, and in the reformed and nationalised Maltese army. In rebuilding the new infrastructure for peace we were ably supported by Red China and North Korea, the Italian army, Algeria, Libya and Yugoslavia.

My friend Bettino Craxi was also instrumental in convincing the Italian Cabinet and Parliament to compensate their imbalance of trade with Malta by a sum of LM16 million which by today’s reckoning would be the equivalent to some 320 million Euros. All we are getting today for compensation is the rehabilitation of Church property and the resurfacing of roads which the Italian Army and pioneers in the Maltese Army had constructed. The Italian Government is now making use of materials and equipment from the Italian mainland. It is therefore making bigger Malta’s trade imbalance with Italy and the European Union.

The reformist Italian Government is steering bravely to wipe out Italy’s large financial deficit with the European Union. This necessity has probably led to malpractices in road resurfacing. It helped the construction of skyscrapers and ruined the environment. By disposing of skyscraper sewage it causes a great damage to our natural impermeable layer. The damage is apparently so heavy that an open dissension in your Administration at ministerial level could not be avoided.

Our clever but illiterate peasants knew the best way to build their numerous stone-paved country roads (known in England and the U.S.A. as dirt roads, I believe). They gave these roads a longitudinal inclination towards the seashores and a transverse inclination towards the openings of each family irrigation tank. When the storm filled the irrigation tanks the openings were shut and the excess was helped by God-sent gravity to reach the sea shore.

Nothing could be more economical or neater. Our poor peasants made all their building tools (Mghazqa, pala, baqqun, etc.) themselves and, for energy, relied entirely on elbow power.

This building tradition was mechanically improved but in essence faithfully followed during all the time I was at the helm as Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and Prime Minister. The British Colonial Administration were even more strict in sticking to this tradition and the Hon Dr. Giorgio Borg Olivier cherished the preservation of what was sound and effective.

Had not our “Nationalist” and “LABOUR” self proclaimed modern innovators departed from the paths of common sense Malta would today be earning double premiums from the Hon A. Gore, the Emeritus Vice President of the U.S.A. and his able group of world-renowned scientists. Premium No.1 for storing rainwater and Premium No.2 for so doing without the help of electricity or the consumption of oil and coal.

The large scale afforestation, started and implemented in the 1970’s and mid 1980’s by LABOUR on my watch as Prime Minister, would have been another feather in our Nation’s cap had not “Nationalist” and “LABOUR” innovators discontinued the operation. The “Nationalist” vandals even cut down without replacing them many trees over twenty years of age.

No wonder then that the present Maltese Minister for the Environment, a civil engineer by profession (which he still practices alongside the time he devotes to the Ministry) clang to a word of praise from Senator Al Gore as a drowning sailor to a lifeboat.

Al Gore cleverly and diplomatically praised the Maltese Government, of which Dr. Gonzi is Prime Minister and Dr. Fenech Adami is “President”, for deciding, towards the end of this year’s September, to scrap the offending Delimara power plant and replace it by a more modern plant with no emissions of carbon dioxide or other gases obnoxious to the world’s climate.

So far as we have been told Al Gore did not mention Delimara or any other locality. Gore visited Malta for about 36 hours in the early 1990’s and he spent more time with me at l-Gharix in Delimara than in meetings with all Maltese Government authorities.

The site vacant and available at Kalafrana during Gore’s visit has since then been developed as more facilities for the Freeport. And I am sure that Gore would not want these to be ruined when better locations are now technically available.

On the contrary Al Gore, who has quietly altered the cock-eyed views on climate change of President George W Bush to a vision of real service to the U.S.A., would do likewise in the case of Malta. He would help us to harness all our energy so that Malta may survive in the service of Global peace for the prosperity of humanity.

To cut short the fratricidal ministerial dispute puzzling our clear-minded Law Courts, the Prime Minister of Malta has very recently publicly re-designated the Hon Michael Falzon Chairman of the Water Services Corporation as the person responsible for power generation and the drainage of sewage and storm waters.

My friends and I therefore suggested to Mr Falzon the Medina bank as an ideal location for both purposes. It would also give Malta an immediate justification for extending the exploitation of the Maltese territory all the way from Delimara to the region past our shallow waters. Whether this extension of our usable territory would also be the site for our storage of natural gas, to serve both Malta and Sicily, depends on the feasibility study by an international consortium.

Mr. Falzon fell in readily with this suggestion and hoped that no immovable obstacle will stand in our way. So do we.

Mr. Falzon’s recent activities in the public sector were not helpful to stop the crazy erection of skyscrapers in the erstwhile lovable localities of Sliema, St. Julians, St. Andrews, Msida and the inner creeks of our magnificent Grand Harbour.

Although Mr. Falzon has never been accused of having made personal profits out of these blunders he cannot avoid hostile criticism for having failed as a civil engineer to detect the tremendous harm that was done and is still being done to the impervious layer protecting our tiny islands from salinity. Other civil engineers who also share his failure to detect must also share the hostile charges of incompetence.

The commercial enterprises alias corporations were blamed by public opinion for pocketing great profits by acquiring planning permits and selling these tall buildings during the initial stages of construction and at times even as sketches on drawing boards of the consortium.

These companies have now given birth to various consortia and openly justify today’s corrupt practices by claiming theirs to be the only way in which their companies could manage to survive and keep their employees alive above starvation level.

They blame the big muddle in Malta’s Public Administration. They blame Malta’s Parliament for evading its duty to govern by transferring its powers to a host of incompetent and irresponsible authorities in Valletta and Brussels.

This corporate corruption of which the leaders of the “Nationalist” and “LABOUR” parties and that of Alternattiva Demokratika have been fully aware and failed to check, let alone eradicate, is now one major cause of a split in Malta’s previously compact Catholic Establishment.

While the Dominican Archbishop and the new Bishop of Gozo harp on doctrine and ceremonial niceties of fundamental Catholicism their predecessors preach publicly that there is no future for Maltese Catholicism unless it is quickly injected by large doses of social justice in the interest of Malta and global peace.

That is a National problem, Mr Prime Minister, to which you should pay immediate attention if you still wish to save the “Nationalist” soul. Indeed this corruption problem is one which my friends and I and Dr Josie Muscat’s Centre Right political party are trying very hard to tackle.

You and your new team, Mr Prime Minister, after three and a half years in office have failed to make any visible contribution in this national anti-corruption campaign. On the contrary on your watch the corruption has spread to the agricultural and fishing sectors. In agriculture the only agricultural cooperative society which our farmers have set up to protect their livelihood recently shut its doors in disgust. The meagre reality resulting from your PACKAGE DEAL with the European Commission has obliterated the millions of Euros which you and Brussels have misspent in dishonest propaganda in its favour.

In the fishing industries you seem to be doing much worse. The Cooperative Society which was nurtured by the LABOUR Governments in Marsaxlokk by bringing electricity to that village, donating trawlers, constructing ramps for these trawlers and promoting a fish market to which Maltese housewives thronged to buy fish – a luxury denied in the entire European Union is overpowered by a fishing consortium. Under the patronage of “President” Fenech Adami and the direct connivance of Malta’s Commissioner of Police, the consortium continued to change the initial purpose of fish farming into a first class TUNA OPERATION.

The Police Commissioner presumably justifies his forcible way of taking over Xrobb l-Ghagin foreshore by quoting some reason of national security. The reason why he helped this new TUNA venture to turn the foreshore into landing facilities equipped with the most modern machinery and even a little farmhouse is known only to himself and the Minister responsible for national security. In this small farmhouse, chickens are reared in miserable cubicles to feed the Asian fishermen who provide the know how for catching TUNA. These brave fishermen are condemned to lead a life under foul conditions as miserable as that of the chickens.

What is even more deplorable, the TUNA is not caught in the precincts allocated internationally for Malta’s fishermen. With the excuse of saving drowning Africans it seems that the Libyan allocation has been stealthily trespassed. But there is no plausible justification why the TUNA was not sold to the Maltese housewives at the Marsaxlokk or Gozo fish markets.

What was also against E.U. fishing ethics was taking the TUNA on board the marauding trawler alive and keep the TUNA floating in confined cubicles all the way to unspecified Asian shores.

This fishing scandal seems to be too much for Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian competitors to acquiesce in silence. It seems therefore that the Commissioner responsible for fishing may now be floating in hot water. His special assignment has been purposely created with the common agreement of the Maltese Prime Minister and the E.U.’s President to clean up the erring European fishing industry. He was meant to give Europe a new era in which Mediterranean fish will survive to feed us and our future generations. Whatever the future holds in store, you, Mr Prime Minister, cannot claim that it will tally with the oath you took on the day you became Prime Minister.

Neither are you like our Saintly Dominican Archbishop, an innocent newcomer to Maltese politics. You must therefore have some solid realistic ground to encourage you to have a last fling to fool the Maltese electorate in a snap general election this very autumn.

How can you possibly believe that you shall be allowed to hold supposedly democratic elections when your “Nationalist” Party have such a big advantage in the media? You enjoy this advantage through your indebtedness to the Bank of Valletta that has supported your “Nationalist” and “LABOUR” political parties with state of the art Radio and Vision Broadcasting stations very much superior in quality and equipment to the impoverished National Public Broadcasting Services.

Under these new conditions it is not possible for any new political party to contest general elections democratically.

These new realities are inviting a chaos out of which only George W. Bush’s America may be tempted to make a profit. George W. Bush and his local lackeys will only be able to do so if Maltese General Elections and Local Council elections take place before the NEW U.S. America clamouring for global missionary peace have time to intervene and put this Bush corporate madness to rest.

Unless we hear urgently from you and President Barroso the reasons why we are mistaken, we will assume that you are George W. Bush’s accomplices and shall act accordingly.

Yours truly,



Dom Mintoff
October 3, 2007


P.S.
I am sure you understand fully the reasons why it has taken my so long to finish this message. Your Commissioner of Police has held me prisoner in my own house by claiming that I am a danger to national security although it is taking him more than 3 years to prove it. Also the speed with which you have lately bolstered your tottering Nationalist Establishment has taken my breath away.