Today, apart from repeating his typical dictatorial diatribe, that the opposition and civil society is “an establishment” only because civil society won’t allow Robert Abela to rule Malta like a dictator, Abela added a new demographic twist to his diatribe.
Today, Robert Abela gave me the honour of having privileged knowledge unbeknownst to the Maltese folk in the North. I, as a person from the South, apparently, know that certain individuals in the Opposition camp like Jason Azzopardi and Robert Aquilina are part of the “Establishment” and still control the country through the courts and other mysterious means.
Robert Abela’s comment today was a grave insult to people from the South, especially to people like me who have begun our political life in left-wing groups actually protesting against Jason Azzopardi and his friends who were in government. At the same time that we were in the political trenches to fight for a better and modern version of Malta, Robert Abela was beginning his career as a money-launderer to Malta’s top cocaine importers, apart from inheriting the lucrative public contracts his father was rewarded.
So, as a young kid from the South, I’ve seen and experienced the actual establishment both under PN and also under Labour. Robert Abela was made and built by the PN-Lawrence Gonzi establishment I fought against. He wasn’t even part of the youth movement that supported the Labour Party unto its electoral victory in 2013, he sat in the shadows and was nowhere to be seen. He entered silently into politics by hanging unto Joseph Muscat’s entrails, and when the time was right, he offered his services to his master in exchange for the premiership. In the history of the Labour Party, and probably even in Maltese politics as a whole, there has been no other Labour Party leader and Premier who was as close, as molded, or as symptomatic of the Establishment as Robert Abela. Very few in the history of Maltese politics come as close as Robert Abela to being prime examples of the product of the Establishment.
In fact, Robert Abela represents everything that I have fought against in my early days in Maltese politics: the rent-seeking politicians and building contractors who captured the state, especially the criminal lawyers whom we saw as opportunistic abettors and facilitators of Malta’s rent-seeking regime. Today, Robert Abela pretends that he is a man of the people who is leading a people’s party. He is mostly self-interested and still lacks a political formation through education and meaningful experience. What makes him less dangerous than Joseph Muscat, is that many of us have learned our lesson, and today, we are not letting down our guard. There are more of us who would not compromise with a Labour Party in government just for the sake of being in power.
The Labour Party is the most powerful entity in the country, it has captured most of the state and wields indiscriminate and nearly absolute power in the economy and society. It’s the fact that Robert Abela can’t still control the judiciary that is frustrating him and making him fear his and hisd Party’s future prospects. Abela thought he could ride on Labour’s popularity of 2019 and rule like a dictator. But after 2019, many like me had also said “Never again”. Now, the ountry has changed.
So, from my personal experience as a young kid from the South, the fight against Robert Abela and his leadership of the country and the Labour Party is part of our unfinished business of our fight against the establishment of Lawrence Gonzi and the old, corrupt, incompetent, incapable, bleak and conservative Rent-Seeking Malta. During this struggle, we got sidetracked by Joseph Muscat who turned the Labour Party into a fully-fledged criminal organisation. The result was a sort of back to square one with a member of the old Establishment running the country: Robert Abela. It’s as if Joseph Muscat pulled us back in time by ten years.
Now, Robert Abela is struggling for his political survival, disappointed that his delusions of 2019 did not hold. It’s obvious that he will blame everyone else apart from himself for throwing the Labour Party into the pits. Typical behaviour of someone coming from the Establishment. Those of us from the South who sought to think independently, be succesfull and change the world around us for the good have a very different experience from Robert Abela’s. We grew up having learned from a very early age with experiencing the world around us, that life was not fair and that everything was against us. Yet, that despite everything was and still is against us, we could learn to find our dignity and thrive after survival. And this is why unlike Robert Abela, we are not in politics, journalism, activism or whatever, to buy boats and take month-long holidays – we actually want to create a better world around us because we know very well how hard it can be.
Website Editor
Historian and Publisher
Leave a Reply