We have all been there. At some point in our lives, whether in childhood or adulthood, we will find an occasion where we have been put on the spot. We have done something which was wrong and we are put into a position of having to apologise.

We might not feel that we were responsible for the deed, or there might be peers around us who we do not want to ‘drop in it’ and we mumble, sorry and look at the ground. And then we are taught that lesson which we all have to learn. You cannot say sorry just for the sake of it. You cannot make a generic apology either. You are told that a half-apology, or just saying the word without meaning it means absolutely nothing at all.

You must point out the misdeed, express your remorse and regret and more often than not, assure the other person(s) that you would never do such a thing again.

Yes, it is lesson all (most) of us have learned at some point in our lives. Which, of course, brings us to the subject of this editorial.

Last week Opposition leader Joseph Muscat said “Black Monday should never have happened,” in reference to the burning down of a publishing house and the attack on the residence of the then Opposition leader Eddie Fenech Adami on 15 October 1979.

This newspaper is of the opinion that while Dr Muscat has at least acknowledged the terrible actions of that day, he has not apologised.

Make no mistake, it was still a big thing in Dr Muscat’s eyes given the support which the Prime Minister of the time, Dom Mintoff, still has in the modern day Labour Party. There will have been a fair few people within the PL who will have interpreted Dr Muscat’s acknowledgment as blasphemy. There are others who might be satisfied that it was an apology and there will be others, who like this newspaper, believe that he should have gone further than he did for it to be a formal apology.

For this to have been a proper apology, Dr Muscat would have had to have said that the PL, as a political organisation, apologises for the events on 16 October 1979 where Labour Party supporters torched a private enterprise and broke into the home of Dr Eddie Fenech Adami.

But of course, he cannot. In one’s gut, one can sense that Dr Muscat, four years old at the time, did want to go the extra mile and put the ugly incident behind the ‘new’ party he is building. But he could not. The reasons are obvious, Dr Muscat has not long been at the helm and is already struggling with trying to remould the party into something different. Dissent is there, but it is being managed. Dissent (in the view of PL members) would have been so loud, had he made the formal apology, that the current dissent in the PN backbenches would have been drowned out into a background murmur.

Yes, he has tried to please both sides. Has he succeeded? No. The PN, Dr Fenech Adami and others have said they were not satisfied with the ‘apology’. Joe Public is not satisfied with the ‘apology’, and his party is not either, one way or another.

Many people do not even remember Black Monday. Many may not even care. But what people do care about is sincerity. If one is to apologise for something, they should do it properly; or not do it at all.