In defence of the MLP

Dom Mintoff voted against the Labour Party (then led by Pawlu Boffa) in the first post-war legislature, causing the Labour government to resign and lose three subsequent elections to the Nationalist Party. His reason for so doing was because he disagreed with the Labour leader in his dealings with the British government.

Mr Mintoff repeated the same manoeuvre in his last parliamentary session when he voted against the MLP (this time led by Alfred Sant) to topple the government owing to disagreement with Dr Sant, thus causing two electoral and one referendum defeats.

When resigning his premiership in 1984, Mr Mintoff proposed Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici (who had been co-opted to parliament without even contesting the previous election) to become the MLP leader - as indeed happened.

That was the start of what many believe was the worst era in the history of the MLP and, obviously, causing the latter to be heavily defeated by the Nationalists in the 1987 general election. Mr Mintoff himself did in fact admit his mistake in proposing Dr Mifsud Bonnici as party leader.

Strange but true however, Mr Mintoff and Dr Mifsud Bonnici joined forces in the hope of keeping Malta out of the European Union as they argued that this would cause us to lose our independence (conveniently forgetting how Mr Mintoff was adamant to get Malta fully integrated with Britain in the 1950s). In so doing they are now once again splitting the MLP and paving the way for further humiliating defeats to our party.

The time has now come for all those who are really loyal to our party to stand up and be counted. All this nonsense should stop once and for all!