PN remembers the violence of the 1980s…

Launching a series of events and activities aimed at 'commemorating' the political unrest of the 1980s, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi this week claimed that remembering the past helps us 'appreciate what we have today'.

But while the PN media are currently going into overdrive to recreate the Tal-Barrani incident, Zejtun wedding shoot-out and the murder of Raymond Caruana - among other throw-backs to the so-called 'dark days' of Old Labour - pundits on both sides of the political divide question what appears to be a case of selective memory. 

Among the people to raise such questions are former Nationalist minister Michael Falzon, who pointed out that current Police Commissioner John Rizzo (appointed under a PN administration) was also the man who arraigned Peter Paul Busuttil for the murder of Raymond Caruana in 1986.

Busuttil is widely acknowledged to have been framed for that murder, in a police operation which involved the planting of the murder weapon - a sub-machine gun - on his property. Referring to the subsequent promotion of Rizzo to commissioner as 'one of the ironies of history', Falzon openly questions the wisdom of drawing attention to these incidents, when so much about them remains a mystery to this day.

"How can the PN reconcile their strategy with the fact that one of the protagonists of those events - not a major protagonist, perhaps, but a protagonist nonetheless - was later made Police Commissioner under a Nationalist administration?" he asks.

This fact alone today prompted a right of reply from Commissioner of Police John Rizzo, who dubs Falzon's implication as being 'totally devious': "The Commissioner of Police categorically denies that he himself was the officer who arraigned Peter Paul Busuttil in court. As he had expressed in many occasions, Mr Rizzo was never involved in the investigation, arraignment or in the prosecution of Mr Busuttil's case.  His only involvement was to escort and provide security, together with other police officers, to Mr Peter Paul Busuttil on his way from Police Headquarters to the Law Courts.

"This fact could easily be verified and confirmed by Mr Peter Paul Busuttil himself.

"It is also pertinent to point out to your readers that Police Commissioner John Rizzo climbed the various rungs of promotion in his policing career due to his meritorious achievements and this under both administrations."

Falzon is not alone in pinpointing this anomaly: Wenzu Mintoff, former Labour MP and the first chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika, likewise singles out the promotion of Rizzo, among others, as an indication that the raking up of 25-year-old incidents serves also to distort the history hidden behind them.  

"I have been foremost in the Labour Party to condemn violence during that time," Mintoff recalls. "I even paid the price for my stand as I was expelled from the Young Socialist League in 1985 and from the Labour Party in 1989. But I have always argued that the strategy of tension in the 1980s was also based on the provocation of those who always threw the first stone and were the first to hide their hands. And while some of those involved in acts of violence declared themselves as Labourites, there are various mysteries surrounding dubious figures like Inspector Joe Psaila. Significantly, after the 1987 general election people like Inspector Joe Psaila, who were involved in a number of frame ups including that of Pietru Pawl Busuttil, were not expelled from the police corps. The latter was promoted twice up to the rank of Assistant Commissioner. Significantly the person who arraigned Peter Paul Busuttil in court now occupies the rank of commissioner..."

Mintoff recalls how it was the Alfred Sant led government which actually expelled people like Joseph Psaila and Charles Cassar from the police force.

"On the other hand, people like Gianni Psaila (il-Pupa), who was involved in various acts of violence, changed sides and appeared next to Eddie Fenech Adami before the 1996 election after being rehabilitated and depicted as a superhero by party propagandists."

Echoing Deborah Schembri - formerly the IVA campaign manager in the divorce referendum, and now a Labour Party candidate - Mintoff argues that the PN's strategy says more about the party currently in government, than the one in opposition.

"It is nothing new that when the PN has its back against the wall, it inevitably tries to play this card. The fact that the PN is choosing to fight the next election by re-exhuming the past is a sign that Gonzi is not comfortable with the present."

Elsewhere, however, the PN initiative to re-examine political violence of the 1980s - by means of articles in In-Nazzjon, and a TV series hosted by Medialink journalist Dione Borg - has been welcomed as a fitting commemoration of an important historical period.

For Dr Frank Portelli, a PN delegate and former MP, remembering such events is as natural and meaningful as any other historical remembrance.

"These events, such as that of the killing of Raymond Caruana and the frame up of Pietru Pawl Busuttil, mark the abyss the Country had reached in 1986 and have left an indelible mark on the nation," he comments. "There is no doubt events like this should be remembered much as we commemorate remembrance day for those who died in the great wars."

Asked if he sees this as a political stratagem, Portelli is openly sceptical as to whether such initiatives will actually influence voters.

"It would be wrong to assume that remembering these events will influence the minds of young voters who do not share this collective memory directly," he said. "Keep an eye on the question in the polls - who do you trust most - the answer to this question is likely to reflect the voters' intention."

Michael Falzon agrees. "However, I doubt this initiative is aimed at the under-25 age bracket, which has no memory of these issues," he appoints out. "If so it is unlikely to succeed. Young people today are likely to react just as my generation did when we were young, and our parents told us about the hardships of the war. We didn't live through it ourselves, so we couldn't relate to it directly."

When it comes to an older audience, Falzon concedes that the effect may be considerably different. "I believe it is targeted towards middle-aged people, and the message is to remind them of what the alternative to a Nationalist government might be. I think they have a point, too. I for one believe that Labour has changed since those days; but they haven't made enough of an effort to prove it. Ideally a line should have been drawn at one point: Joseph Muscat should have apologized for those years, and promised that the Labour Party would never again resort to violence as a political tool..."

But neither Muscat nor the PL ever quite made that commitment, Falzon continues, so the wounds have never really healed.

Even so, it remains a fact that Joseph Muscat himself belongs to a generation which never really experienced those years directly. And among older generation which did, there is by no means a consensus on the historical interpretation of those events.

Professor Dominic Fenech, historian and a Labour activist in the 1970s, argues that the campaign is itself part of an ongoing approach which over-emphasises "the 'atrocities and iniquities' of past Labour governments.

"We are reaching a stage where it is automatically assumed that everyone agrees all that happened was wrong," he said. "Even if we accept this basic premise - and it is not widely accepted - the PL has already paid the price in full. Look at how many elections it has lost in the meantime. But to argue that Labour can never be considered a legitimate alternative because of things that happened 25 or 30 years ago... that is ludicrous."