From Mr G. Grima

Your readers should not take Lou Bondi or his childish analysis of the Malta Labour Party commission report more seriously than they normally do here and on TV.

I’m of course bound by confidentiality not to publicly discuss that analysis and its conclusions, even though Natalino Fenech revealed most of it, in substance, in The Times days after the report was drafted. Anything I say now can only reveal more of Mr Bondi’s many other gifts – in addition to those he displays, setting himself up as the one compass of wisdom, intellect and rectitude by which the island should set its sails.

What should concern your readers however is the extent to which Mr Bondi errs on the side of the ridiculously untrue; particularly his claim that the report nowhere deals with the EU.

Is there anyone among your readers who believes a three-man commission – which included the Rev Dr Rene Camilleri and Dr J. Mangani – would spend months analysing the Malta Labour Party’s election and referendum results of 2003 without examining deeply, at length and with a fine-tooth the EU issue?

Possibly Mr Bondi was annoyed by the commission for ignoring the arrogant nonsense submitted by his Where’s Everybody partner. He certainly sounds miffed by the advice given to the Labour Party to avoid falling into traps laid by those sucking up to ruling politicians in their quest for lucre, particularly at PBS where journalism has been turned into a State-sanctioned regressive practice – finer, but not much different in scope from the days of Dom Mintoff.

Surely it is not for writers of schoolboy essays to judge complex and detailed reports like this. That’s the job of the Malta Labour Party. What Mr Bondi was obviously not told during his fancy cloak and dagger meeting was that several recommendations were almost immediately taken up. The rest were, in the main, overtaken by events that include Labour’s results at the polls in the two years since the report was drawn up.

If I were Mr Bondi I would go back to whoever gave him the envelope in the dead of night and wallop him with its rolled up pages. I recognise so little of what we actually wrote in what he says. Two things could explain that. Either Mr Bondi was never given a copy, just morsels and sight, or else this is pure psychobabble driven by megalomania slipping into overdrive.

Godfrey Grima