All it took was just 12 hours: The time from when Dr Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici urged Maltese workers to return to Libya, and the NATO attack on Tripoli that targeted the Gaddafi compound at Bab Aziziya.

Having been on a Libyan government-sponsored conference for Libyan tribes and come back without mishap (although he had to go via Djerba), KMB decided western Libya was ‘safe’ and Maltese workers should return to their jobs because a Libyan government official told him so.

In addition, according to a newspaper report (in another newspaper) he even encouraged them to steal while they were there – he reportedly told them to take up any business ventures that had been left when their owners left Libya.

Either KMB was fooling himself or he was out to fool these workers – given the slightest chance that the situation is that improved, they do not need him to tell them to go back. They would have already been back.

To a man, they have invested much in their ventures, and they stood to gain a lot from their initiative. They left far before the NATO planes started to bomb Tripoli and they left because their situation had become unsustainable. KMB makes them sound rather like cry-babies who run away at the first clap of thunder.

As to the rest of what KMB had to say on Monday – that there was no danger in Tripoli but NATO was bombing schools and hospitals, that there is no proof the Libyan people want Gaddafi to step down, that Malta should have helped negotiate a ceasefire between the two sides without stopping to see who was guilty, that the UN was abusing of its mandate – all this and more can be argued and rejected point after point.

KMB flies in the face not just of what the world’s media has been reporting but also what the UN and the Security Council have agreed about: That Colonel Gaddafi is bombing his own people and causing mass deaths of those not supporting him. Remember as well that the International Court of Justice has found, prima facie, that acts against humanity have been committed by the Libyan regime. Instead, he relies on the word of an unnamed Libyan official.

We are not surprised at all.

This was the man – appointed prime minister of this country by a man who later said he regretted doing so – under whose watch these facts happened:

• Malta warned Gaddafi that US planes were about to bomb Tripoli;

• So many people lost their lives in the EgyptAir hijack because KMB would not allow elite US troops in to deal with the situation and left it to the blundering Egyptian troops;

• At Tal-Barrani, known criminals aided by police tried to impede a PN mass meeting that had been approved and permitted by the Courts of the land;

• Workers later lauded by KMB himself as ‘the aristocracy of the workers’ attacked the Archbishop’s Curia which is just in front of the Police HQ and desecrated the chapel;

• He preferred schools remaining closed to back down on his demands that Church schools must be free for all;

• He thought nothing of engaging some 8,000 to work at the Marsa Shipyard on the eve of the 1987 election;

• And, dulcis in fundo, he agreed to collect a Human Rights award by the Libyan government destined for Dom Mintoff.

It is not just a shame that from 1981 to 1987 this country was governed by a party that had lost the election; the biggest shame and blot in our recent history is that this man was our prime minister.