Like you, I have driven past countless plastic-draped pillars that order us to choose Labour for a new plan and a new beginning. The family that float above the words seem to be high on drugs, having raided the Prozac cupboard at the very least. They are smiling at the prospect of a country governed once more by Alfred Sant. No wonder they’re so excited.
I went back to my desk to construct the cabinet of government that will be announced on 10 March, when Alfred Sant sails back into the Auberge de Castille on a sea of torca flags and red banners.
I pulled out the list of official shadow ministers, the people who will become ministers when Labour is elected to government.
Joe Debono Grech,
Minister for Public Order
and the Army
He’s 70 years old, joined the Labour Party in 1958 and set up the Brigata Laburista; he first contested the elections in 1962, has been an MP for 32 years, was a minister in Dom Mintoff’s cabinet and in Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici’s, and when Dr Zero was party leader, he was his deputy.
Anglu Farrugia,
Minister for Justice
He was a policeman for almost 20 years and a police inspector when Lorry Pullicino was Police Commissioner. When he contested the party leadership and I wrote that no former police inspector who was ‘just following orders’ during the dark days of the Floriana depot should ever become minister for justice, let alone party leader and potential prime minister, he sued me for libel, claiming that I had damaged his leadership chances. I described my own personal experience at his hands after he went to our home to inform my mother that I was wanted for a ‘serious crime’ (without telling her what it was): 27 hours in a pitch-black filthy cell with no food or water, followed by a forced confession (which he composed and typed) to assaulting and injuring a police officer several times my size, when I was the one who had been punched in the chest and half-strangled during a mass rally of protest against Karmenu’s government. But those were the days when, if you got beaten up by the police, their colleagues would be along within hours to arrest you.
During the libel hearing, the court heard the testimony of Edgar Gatt, who described how his 16-year-old son was picked up by the police from their home after 10 at night, and how, when he protested that the boy was a minor, and that he would take him to the depot himself and stay with him during interrogation, he was prevented from doing so. His son was hauled off in a police car and wasn’t seen again for more than 20 hours. To understand the absolute fear that his parents experienced, you would have to know what happened in the police depot in those days or, like me and many thousands of others, you just remember. Mr Gatt said in court that he called Maggie Moran, a government minister’s wife, whom he knew through work, and asked for her help. She promised to make a few telephone calls, and called back within minutes. “I’ve been told,” she said to the frantic father, “that if it were a case of drugs or theft, then there would be no problem with releasing him, but your son has committed a political crime, and so he is going to be held in the lock-up.” He was interrogated by Anglu Farrugia for the heinous political crime of sticking a ‘boycott’ sticker on a shop-front. Those were the Xandir Malta boycott days. So that’s the new Minister for Justice.
Joe Brincat,
Minister for the Environment
He’s 64 years old, has been in the Labour Party since 1969 and an MP for 37 years. Like Joe Debono Grech, his fellow minister in this brand-new Labour cabinet, he was a minister in the governments of both Dom Mintoff and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici. He was deputy leader of the Labour Party not only under Alfred Sant, but also under Mintoff and Mifsud Bonnici.
George Vella, Minister for European Affairs
He’s 66 years old, has been an MP for 30 years, was proposed by Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici as party leader in 1992, and became deputy leader instead. He was Alfred Sant’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and the very one who ‘froze’ Malta’s application to join the EU, repeating his boss’s mantra that we could be the Switzerland of the Mediterranean instead. In a few short weeks, he will be Minister for Europe.
Joe Mizzi,
Minister for Infrastructure
He has held posts, including that of propaganda secretary with the Labour Party since 1975, when I was in my final year of primary school, wearing knee-high socks, Clarks sandals and plaits. He’s been an MP for 20 years, and in 1996, Sant installed him in Castille with the insulting title of Minister Without Portfolio.
Charles Buhagiar,
Minister for Projects
He has been an MP for 21 years and was Minister of Works in Sant’s former cabinet. His private business is land development.
Charles Mangion,
Minister for Finance
Twenty-six years ago, he was deputy international secretary. He’s been an MP for 20 years, and has already been a minister in Sant’s cabinet.
Leo Brincat,
Minister for Foreign Affairs
He joined the Labour Party in Dom Mintoff’s day, became party president 30 years ago, and an MP 27 years ago. Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici installed him as parliamentary secretary at Castille, in charge of government information and housing. He has already been a minister in Sant’s cabinet.
Evarist Bartolo,
Minister for Tourism
He supported the Labour government right through its darkest days in the 1970s and 1980s, and continued to give both the party and the government his loyalty when it had brought Malta to the brink of disaster in 1986, with mass rallies of tens of thousands protesting against the government in the streets and squares, the aristocracy of the workers breaking into private and public buildings and ransacking them, and – well, I needn’t go on. He is one of Alfred Sant’s closest friends and has been for more than 30 years. Sant and Bartolo both approved of the Labour government’s decision to keep as many young people out of university as possible (Sant was even appointed to an ‘interview’ board), and when Sant became prime minister, he made Bartolo minister of Education. Together, they stopped paying stipends to young people at sixth form, other colleges and university. It was a waste of money, apparently. Degrees should be rationed, so that the two of them stand out.
Michael Farrugia,
Minister for Health
Like Joe Mizzi, he has been active in the Labour Party since I was in primary school, and has already been a minister in Sant’s cabinet. I am assuming that he will win the battle for this cabinet post against Sant’s surgeon, Anthony Zammit, who is gunning for it himself, having already sunk to the required level by behaving like a charlatan at the party conference.
Marie Louise Coleiro,
Minister for Social Solidarity
She seems to be a nice lady, and was kind enough to call, genuinely upset, when our house was set on fire. But it’s hard to reconcile this niceness with the fact that she became secretary-general of the Labour Party in 1981, a perilous period for the country, when the elected-but-unelected government was sliding to the bottom of a vast pit of corruption, violence and human rights abuses.
Helena Dalli,
Minister for Women’s Rights and the Drydocks
Her portfolio is an unusual combination, but Helena is an unusual woman. She was personal assistant to Dom Mintoff, and when he used to write long and boring articles for this newspaper in 1992, she was the one who used to deliver them on his behalf. I know, because I was the one who received them. She approved of Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici even when he was making an ass of himself talking about Europe and AIDS, and stood for the 1992 election beneath his party’s banner.
Anton Refalo,
Minister for Gozo
He’s already been Sant’s parliamentary secretary for Gozo. Been there, done that, voted out.
Noel Farrugia,
Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries
He’s already held that post in Sant’s former government. Been there, done that, voted out.
Try as I might, I can’t see how, in any possible way, this represents a new beginning for Malta. You can say that I’m picky, but when people say they want a change, I don’t think they mean that they want to wake up on March 10 to see a row of government ministers which includes at least two of Dom Mintoff’s ministers, several of Karmenu’s, and the rest from Sant’s failed cabinet of 1996-1998. When they say that the Nationalists have been there too long, that they want to see some new faces, they don’t mean Joe Debono Grech, Joe Brincat, and Charles Buhagiar. They might be new faces to first-time voters, but they sure as hell aren’t new faces to those who were around 25 years ago.
Oh, there I was, forgetting the leader, he who lets his mother kiss his hand instead of kissing hers. He was chairman of the Labour Party’s information department from 1982 to 1984, president of the Labour Party from 1984 to 1988, when he was co-opted into parliament (don’t forget that he first got his seat without any votes), then made party leader in 1992, a post he has held for 16 long, pointless years. And now he tells us to vote for change by voting for him and his band of merry men from the 1970s and 1980s, and in Joe Debono Grech’s case, from the 1960s. He’s got some brass neck.