I was born in 1971, in a staunch Labour family. My dad and my grandmother proudly displayed framed photos of Mintoff in the hallway; in fact, my grandmother even had candles in front of hers, and used to place her previously kissed fingers on his face, coupled with “il-bambin iżomm idejħ fuqek u fuq il-Lorry” ['May the Lord protect you and Lorry'] every time she passed in front of it.
1971 was the year that the Malta Labour Party finally won the election, and Mintoff became Prime Minister. My dad used to call me Mintoff’s lucky charm. I grew up listening to my father’s stories about the 50s and 60s – the turmoil with the Church, people buried fil-miżbla, my grandmother’s interdett because, contrary to her husband’s pleading, she persisted in walking in front of the Ħamrun church squeezing Il-Berqa in her armpit.
His passionate storytelling used to fascinate me; I could never get enough of them, and my boring history lessons faded in comparison with the way he brought his version of Malta’s history to life.
I was a teenager in the 80s, and I can’t say it was a serene time. In those years I felt shame, fear, pride, confusion, anxiety – sometimes all at once. I had friends who came from Nationalist families as staunchly fanatic as my own family, and who felt the same way about their families as I felt about mine.
We were all brainwashed, baptised into one of the two parties from birth. If this brainwashing achieved anything in my case, it was an intense disgust at partisan politics. I could not understand how a grown person could so blindly defer to some political leader even when this leader was so obviously wrong, or how they could defend actions which were so glaringly criminal and actually justify them instead, regurgitating whatever bull the party leader was feeding them.
After 21 years of brainwashing, it was my turn to vote. And much to my father’s dismay, I told him that I was not voting Labour. One of the 4,186 votes garnered by Alternattiva Demokratika in that election was mine, and of this I was proud, unlike my father, who did not speak to me for eight months afterwards as a result.
I proudly voted AD 4 times, including the last general election. I voted PN once, and I hang my head in shame to admit that in 2013 I voted Labour. Both Joseph Muscat and Konrad Mizzi contested on my district, and I actually gave my Number 1 to Konrad Mizzi, something that now brings me a lot of shame and that I will never forgive myself for. I swallowed the lies too, believing JM, KM, and the PL could save the country. Thankfully I did not repeat the mistake with Adrian Delia and the ‘new’ PN. The only person I believed was Daphne.
There were times during our Constitutional Law lectures at University, when Dr Tonio Borg or Dr Austin Bencini would mention something from those days, such as the strikes by doctors, the church school issue, the constitutionality or lack thereof of certain elections, and the younger students continue typing away on their laptops, considering these times in the same frame as the times of the Knights, and oblivious to the surges in adrenaline coursing through the veins of us older students sitting in the front row who actually lived through them.
In the same way that my dad passed on stories of the 60s to me, there were times when I discussed the 80s with my own children. As I told the stories of the atrocities, of what preceded them and what followed them, I always hoped my children would be spared such turmoil. And now here we are – I see myself in my teenage son’s eyes as he tries to understand and make sense of what is going on, as he looks for answers, as he is filled with anger and an urge for rebellion, as he resorts to mockery and memes to express his disgust at the system, and at the same time feeling helpless in the face of the obvious abuse of power surrounding him. He is living history, and in time he will be in my position – telling the stories to his own children.
There is one thing from the 80s that I am nostalgic about, however. People got angry. People made themselves seen and heard. People were courageous and rebellious. People fought back. And this is what we need now, in these critical times. We need people to get off their laptops and get up on their feet and join the rebellious crowds, to step off the fence, to stop trying to sound politically correct, to abolish cryptic messages and take a stand and actually say what they mean to say without cutting corners and embellishing.
We do not need Evarist Bartolo clutching at our heartstrings with his Facebook posts at 5am, only to support his leader later in the day. TAKE A STAND and be a role-model by inspiring our young generation to practise free and independent thinking! We do not need l-Ghaqda Studenti tal-Ligi “refraining from taking a position”. TAKE A STAND, otherwise stick to selling exam past papers! We do not need Labour politicians such as Julia Farrugia Portelli whining about “din mhix il-politika li ħlift ghaliha meta bist is-salib sentejn u nofs ilu” [‘This is not the politics I took an oath for when I kissed the cross two-and-a-half years ago’].
What’s your excuse for supporting your leader TODAY?? TAKE A STAND. We do not need Adrian Delia occasionally making a statement to pretend he is still the leader of the opposition, crying for resignations, when he and his cronies did not have the decency to resign themselves. TAKE A STAND and practice what you preach. LEAVE, ALL OF YOU, and make way for new and honest people who can shoulder the heavy burden you all left behind, of cleansing this country from the smoke you all spread to blind us and cover your sins.