There is not much to be said about Pamela Hansen’s comment about me in her article entitled “Labour adds a bit of Blue”, (TMIS, 4 October), to my mind a transparent attempt at rubbishing Marisa Micallef. A journalist who gets his or her facts repeatedly wrong is in for the kind of self-indictment to which added comment becomes superfluous.

Well-worn journalist Pamela Hansen looks as if she has lost her touch when attempting to separate personal invective from factual comment. In her article she said:

“Prominent ex-Labour minister Joe Grima who, while it was obvious that the PL was not going to make it and that he had lost influence within the party, ran a chat show on the PN’s channel Net TV and has now moved to the PL’s One TV, also sparked little media interest.”

These are the facts. I left Labour just before the 1992 election, which I did not contest, because of serious disagreement with Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici involving the issue of drug distribution. My uneasiness with Karmenu’s policy on drugs was known to several, including Dom Mintoff, who believed I should fight the issue from within the Party. I did not accept his advice and left, not because I believed that Labour would not make it, as Ms Hansen states, but because I seriously believed Alfred Sant’s brother, who had told us Ministers that Labour would win the election by 52 per cent. I did not want to belong to a post-election Cabinet that would have implemented Karmenu’s policy of distributing drugs freely from pharmacies in his misguided attempt to defeat the pushers. I then set up my own national talk radio station, Live FM. For years, my talk shows were followed by thousands. That was influence, real influence.

So when Pamela Hansen says that I moved to Net TV because I had lost influence, her facts are wrong. I left active politics in 1992, of my own accord, because of disagreement with the then Leader and my influence on Labour voters, if anything, increased and multiplied when, for several years, I commented on political issues on my own radio station. As soon as Labour lost the election in 1998, my radio station was burned down, together with my house and car.

That was, to me, a clear sign of influence denied. I accepted Net’s invitation in 1999, seven years after I left the Party.

Ms Hansen should know that I never asked to go anywhere in my career. I was always invited: starting in 1961 with my Rediffusion days, when I was invited to join the company by General Manager Graham Binns, to radio when I was invited to apply for a licence by none other than Prime Minister Fenech Adami and by Richard Cachia Caruana, to Net TV, where I was invited to produce programmes by Roger Degiorgio, then head of Broadcasting, to the present day when I was invited to produce for One TV by Joseph Muscat, the new leader. I have also had very recent invitations from Paul Borg Olivier to return to Net TV and from Favourite Channel to produce for them. While I remain grateful to all those who requested my services, I chose to debut on One TV. Ms Hansen says that my move to One TV has not produced any media sparks. Again, a grasp of facts continues to escape her. As yet, my move to One is a non-event. I have accepted the invitation, and preparations are going on for my new show. The news will be when it happens and that will be the time for the press.

Now let me tell your readers what I think. From the tone of her comments, I can feel a sense of disappointment at the turn of some events within the Party. For several years this journalist seemed to be close to the previous Leadership, appointed to at least one Government Board that I know of and a regular participant in Super One programmes. She probably feels that Joseph’s arrival has upset her apple cart. I encourage her to take up where she may have left off.

The way I see it, this is no longer a Party in the strict sense of the word. This is a coalition of moderates and progressives, a movement of all those who feel a need to uproot this island from the stagnant quagmire in which it finds itself, into the position of dignity, respect and progress that our people deserve. Within that coalition there is room for all those who want to try out their ideas and their beliefs, in healthy debate, from whichever side of the divide they come. Some may occasionally feel that it is not the whole Party that is embracing them. One has to give, from time to time, hoping, as I do, that the objectors will also realise that it is time to let go and that, with time, the few missing parts will fall into place on their own.

Joe Grima

SLIEMA