‘Malta first and foremost’, my foot...

After listening to the Prime Minister’s annual May Day address, I have come to the conclusion that what this country really needs right now, is... an exorcist.

That’s right, folks: someone like Max von Sydow, from the 1973 horror movie of that name – or the late Fr Elia Vella: if only he could somehow be ‘resurrected’ for the purpose – who can actually rid Malta’s political system, once and for all, of the ‘ghosts of the past’ that still evidently haunt it to this day.

But in case you’re wondering what specific moment, in Abela’s speech, actually led me to that conclusion: let’s just say it wasn’t the part when his head slowly started to spin round 360 degrees; or when he suddenly sprayed his unsuspecting audience, with a jet of bright green projectile-vomit... anything as decidedly old-fashioned (by modern demonic possession standards) as that.

For let’s face it: that sort of thing doesn’t really happen in possession cases, any longer. And for this, we have the word of Fr Elia Vella himself: whose take on ‘The Exorcist’ – which he revealed in a rather intriguing MaltaToday interview, back in 2020 – was that: “the director put every possible paranormal activity into one person, and that made the character quite scary...”

Significantly Fr Vella also observed that: “the majority of people that come to us, or are brought to us, to be prayed on, [are] people that have psychological or psychiatric disturbances...”

In other words: even The Devil, it seems, has moved with the times, since the distant 1970s; and now feels compelled to update his methods, so as to properly reflect the contemporary realities he is actually operating in...

Which, I need hardly add, is already a heck of a lot more than I can say for most (if not all) Maltese politicians: Robert Abela included...

And this, naturally, brings me to the only part of his speech last Monday which COULD, in fact, have been lifted directly from William Peter Blatty’s 1973 movie.

Specifically, when the Prime Minister opened his mouth to speak... and the words that came out were not his own; but those of a former Maltese Prime Minister who has been DEAD – in case nobody’s noticed – for almost exactly a decade, now; and above all, whose ‘political vision for Malta’ has been extinct for a heck of a lot longer than that (if nothing else, because the phase of Maltese history that former PM actually belonged to, is now very firmly OVER.)

Or as this newspaper reported on Monday: “'You know where you stand with us. We deliver what we promise’,” Abela said, before closing off with a string of catchphrases that included Dom Mintoff’s famous line: ‘Malta L-Ewwel U Qabel Kollox!’ [Malta first and foremost!]’... ”

Ah, yes: the ghost of Dom Mintoff, still evidently haunting the Labour Party all these years later... even though (let’s be honest) not only is it hardly the same old ‘Malta Labour Party’, that Mintoff himself had led from 1949, all the way to 1984; but it’s not even the ‘same old Malta’ anymore, either!

Now: to fair to Robert Abela, he is not exactly the first Prime Minister of this country – or indeed, leader of any Maltese party – to have developed something of an addiction to quoting long-deceased (physically, or politically) ‘Patriarchs’ from their respective party’s ‘Glorious History’, and all that.

Just a few years ago, in fact, I wrote an article taking Adrian Delia to task, for consistently quoting Eddie Fenech Adami in his bid for the 2017 Nationalist Party leadership.

But let’s be honest: at this level, at least, there is very little difference between Robert Abela and Adrian Delia – or even, say, Bernard Grech: who has likewise formed habit of his own, of ending every single speech with an impassioned cry of ‘Is-Sewwa Jirbaħ Żgur!’... for all the world as though (as I had put it, back in 2017): “’quoting a former Nationalist leader’ still had some form of automatic currency; clearly, it is still considered a gateway to automatic acceptance, in a party (and country) that has actually moved on quite a bit since Eddie Fenech Adami said those words [...] way back in 1977.”

Already, then, we can appreciate the first of many ‘problems’ associated with that particular Mintoff quote.

Honestly, though: do people like Robert Abela (and all the others I mentioned above) ever pause to consider the actual significance of those aphorisms they keep repeating, so mindlessly, all the time?

Do they ever attempt to frame those words, within their precise historical contexts – so as to see what the people who first coined them (and whom they so lovingly echo, to this day) actually intended them to MEAN?

I honestly very much doubt it. Because if they did, they would realise that:

a) Dom Mintoff probably coined that motto around 70 years ago, or even earlier [Note: I have been unable to locate a precise origin-date for ‘Malta L-Ewwel U Qabel Kollox’. The earliest reference I could find – which is almost certainly not the first-ever usage – was in a speech dating back to 1958], and;

b) the political realities Mintoff had to contend with, all those decades ago, were somewhat different from the circumstances of today. Small example: when Mintoff first used those words as a political slogan, way back in the mid-to-early 1950s... Malta was still an official possession of the British Empire. We didn’t even EXIST as a country, for crying out loud... [Just as, paradoxically, the British Empire no longer exists today. Funny, huh?]

And one of the many things this signifies, is that: Mintoff was trying to make very specific point, with those words, in (or around) 1958. Apart from being a resounding battle-cry of defiance against [what he perceived as] a ‘foreign oppressor’... Mintoff was also trying (successfully, with hindsight) to convince the Maltese people themselves, to actually start feeling as though they really belonged to ‘a country’ – i.e., a ‘sovereign nation’, in its own right – for what was arguably the very first time, in their entire history.

There was, in brief, a historic ‘resonance’ to those words, all those decades ago... (and for different reasons, I could say the same for Eddie Fenech Adami’s ‘Is-Sewwa Jirbaħ Żgur’) – which separately explains why those same quotes – especially ‘Malta L-Ewwel U Qabel Kollox’ – went on to reverberate so successfully throughout Maltese history, ever since.

[So much so, that even Simon Busuttil was known to use it, from time to time. In 2017, he chose to end his own final campaign speech with a resounding appeal to: ‘do what Mintoff would have done, and put ‘Malta first and foremost’ on June 3!”...]

Today, however? What sort of resonance does Robert Abela actually think those words still have, in Malta’s 21st century political reality? And can he really claim – as Mintoff (for better or worse) certainly could, in his own day – to have tried his damnedest, to really place the country’s interests ‘first, foremost, and above all other things’, in ALL situations?

It certainly doesn’t look like it, to me. For no matter what we all make of Dom Mintoff’s political legacy – which remains ‘divisive’, to say the least – there can be no doubt whatsoever that the former MLP leader really DID put that slogan into practice, in terms of his own government’s policies.

To cite but one example: for Mintoff, ‘putting Malta first and foremost’ also meant enacting a strict policy of ‘protectionism’, at all levels; and full State ownership of all the nation’s strategic assets/corporations, etc. etc..

How has Robert Abela (and all his predecessors, Nationalist or Labour, since the 1990s) tried to ‘place Malta first and foremost’, on the other hand? Why, by ‘privatising’ – or somehow ‘selling off’ – pretty much every last one, of the same national assets/corporations that Mintoff had defended (and even ‘created’, in some cases) himself, throughout his lengthy political career.

Or by selling off three State-owned hospitals, to foreign investors – which is already enough to make someone like Dom Mintoff ‘roll over in his grave’, by the way – in what also turned out to be a criminal, fraudulent deal, to boot...

Anyway, I could go on like this forever: but in the interests of saving time... I’ll just close with another quote from my earlier, 2017 article:

“By quoting former party leaders like Eddie or Mintoff, all [today’s politicians] are really doing, is inviting comparison between those two politicos and themselves.

The immediate difference this underscores is that both Eddie and Mintoff had a remarkable ‘gift of the gab’: i.e., an innate ability to eloquently communicate complex political messages in simple, memorable terms.

“This also means that today’s politicians are only putting on display their own lack of corresponding eloquence; and with it, by extension, their own lack of leadership skills.

“If they really want to emulate the historic successes of the people they so lovingly echo... they should be coming up with those memorable one-liners themselves.”