9
PEOPLE
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 20 OCTOBER 2024
MATTHEW
VELLA
mvella@mediatoday.com.mt
KMB, PM with 'little
political nous', cradled
Mintoffianism to its death
In saving the sullied legacy of his difficult premiership, SKS toasts
the loyalty of Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici to the socialist ideal. His
critics too are on this festschrift, and their memories of the 1980s
are also still fresh…
NO surprises that when Labour's publishing
arm, the redoubtable Sensiela Kotba Soċjalisti,
publishes a festschrift to honour a late party
leader, the accolades come in thick and fast.
For Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, the hand-
picked successor burdened with Mintoffi-
anism's 'years of lead' – harshly derided by
critics, tarnished for presiding over political
thuggery and ham-fisted educational reforms
– the verdict jaggedly cuts both ways.
In the last phase of the 1980s, Labour had
been ushering in a slowly recovering econ-
omy and the growth of a new middle-class.
But the blight of the Church schools' closure,
the bombs and political murders, consumer
spending restrictions and infrastructural fail-
ures, seem to be all that's left of the age's his-
torical memory.
CONTINUES PAGES 14 - 15
