Same anti-Malta rhetoric

PN leader Bernard Grech. Photo: Jonathan Borg

The public opinion survey – the first since the last general election – published in MaltaToday on June 5, is the latest, and clearest, indication that with Bernard Grech seemingly at the helm, the PN stands no chance of starting its long-awaited return to being seen as a possible alternative government.

Just days after having been given the heaviest electoral defeat a PN leader had ever suffered for decades, Grech, instead of realising that undermining our country’s reputation in front of foreign audiences further undermines his own and his party’s standing with voters, did precisely the contrary.

While addressing the EPP meeting in Brussels recently, Grech once again could not resist the temptation to badmouth our country’s institutions.

At a time – this very month of June – when the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) was expected to take a decision on whether to remove Malta from its grey list (which it did), Grech  referred his EPP colleagues to “the continuing erosion of the rule-of-law  in Malta”.

And then put the cherry on the cake by also using, once again, Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder as a political weapon against the Maltese government.

This continuous anti-government rhetoric by PN exponents, especially its so-called leader Grech, when speaking at European fora, is causing widespread indignation, even among PN voters. 

Both the result of the March election and the latest survey result leave no room for doubt.

Eddy Privitera – Naxxar

Bleeding colonies

I was intrigued by the words “Malta would yield (in the words of one official) four times as much” in Ranier Fsadni’s account of Sette Giugno (June 9).

I savoured at close hand at least one aspect of the truth of this when researching the archives of Barclays Bank in Manchester for my History of Banking in Malta.

My going through the board minutes of the early Anglo Egyptian Bank (one of Barclays’s predecessors) kept churning up extensive recording of what then were vast amounts (of the Maltese’s savings deposited with the bank in Malta), which were then being regularly shunted up to London.

Fast forward many years and I am working at my desk in the head office of Mid-Med Bank here during the days when HSBC officials from their head office were conducting their due diligence prior to buying the bulk of the Mid-Med shares.

The conversation between two of these officials in the corridor could be overheard: “There’s so much in this place that we’ll repay ourselves in just a couple of years and then turn this place into a high-rise Singapore”.

Whoever said colonialists don’t bleed their colonies?

John Consiglio – Birkirkara

Malta and NATO

When Evarist Bartolo says “We mustn’t give in to NATO herd instinct” (June 10) does he mean in the same way as we gave in to the EU herd instinct? 

NATO doesn’t need Malta; Malta needs NATO, or anybody else that is happy to look after its security. We have nothing to offer NATO, the object of which is military defence. We have no army, navy or air force and should be thankful to the member states who are willing to come to our defence when we have nothing to reciprocate with.

I assume these articles are written for the narrow-minded followers of Maltese politics because anybody else reading them will burst a blood vessel with laughter.

Paul Brincau – Uxbridge, England