Unimpressive drive

After patiently reading Mario Vella's article (February 25) about 15 times and devouring it raw, crunching its bones, appreciating the beautiful and the ugly, the sublime and the utterly ridiculous, digesting the bad bits and not finding many good ones, and having, without cutting corners, somehow understood it in its enormous complexity with all its absurd contradictions, readers will have gradually realised that, in his panegyric of praise for Alfred Sant, Dr Vella has cunningly inserted, here and there, obnoxious remarks about Dr Fenech Adami that very few people in their right senses would agree with.

Put quite simply, Dr Vella used his fatuous turgid article, not only to sing praises to Dr Sant, but also as a vehicle for a series of snide comments about the prime minister of our country.

Here are some of the pathetic insults heaped upon Dr Fenech Adami - "It is too late now for our aging prime minister to bridge the gap" (between his intellect and the superior intellect of young Dr Sant). Dr Vella goes on to tell us portentously: "Dr Fenech Adami is what he is... the product and prisoner of a narrowly provincial and somewhat bigoted milieu... Dr Fenech Adami is a two dimensional caricature of the real historical Europe... obviously alien to the spirit of the Aquis Europeneen. Dr Fenech Adami cannot and will never be able to match" the unique and formidable synthesis of Dr Sant's breadth of humanist culture, diplomatic, professional and political experiences, etc... and... "although Dr Fenech Adami has travelled extensively as prime minister... it is difficult to imagine (the prime minister) at home outside of his native town or his summer place in Bugibba" whereas Dr Sant "is equally at home in Paris, Brussels and Boston - the most European of US cities - or in his birthplace Sliema".

It is sad to see gratuitous insults against a prime minister being used in an attempt to enhance the image of a leader of the opposition. It is hard to believe that Dr Sant, the "European" man upon whom Dr Vella heaps praise so abundantly, is the same man who wants to hold the entire population of Malta back from taking a historic step to becoming citizens of the European Union.

Sadly, Dr Vella's article failed miserably to impress. To put it mildly, it is rare that this newspaper is graced by such drivel as he has written.