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Matthew Vella
Malta’s former Prime Minister Dom Mintoff told a Court earlier this week that he will not be accepting the conferment of the island’s foremost national honour, the Gieh ir-Repubblika, until he receives compensation for damages he claims he suffered when the Water Services Corporation stopped his water supply due to outstanding bills.
In his suit against the WSC, the former Malta Labour Party leader presented an affidavit to Mr Justice Geoffrey Valenzia, in which he claims he cannot accept the Gieh ir-Repubblika from President Eddie Fenech Adami.
The Gieh ir-Repubblika is a society of honour “restricted to those who demonstrate exceptional merit in the service of Malta or of humanity.” The motto of the Xirka is “Ghall-Gid tal-Maltin” (for the benefit of the Maltese).
Mintoff claims that he had already “shown to everyone that President Fenech Adami broke his oath to be loyal to the Republic of Malta and its Constitution,” referring to his public disagreement about the former Prime Minister “making an agreement with the EU, and (disagreeing) with him taking part in the decision to become President of the Republic when he was still a Prime Minister…”
Mintoff said that under these circumstances, he will not accept the conferment: “And that is why I have to insist with this honourable Court that I will not accept this medal, and until the circumstances in which I would have to accept it do not change, meaning that I would be able to accept it with a clear conscience, and until such the medal has to remain under the custody of the Armed Forces of Malta.”
The Office of the Prime Minister has so far failed to confirm whether the 88-year old former premier is in line for the national decoration from none other than his old political nemesis, Eddie Fenech Adami, who was Opposition leader back in the eighties.
If Mintoff would indeed be conferred the honour, he would also be joining the prestigious ‘society’ which includes several of his old socialist chums with whom he enjoyed fruitful relations.
Over 150 Maltese citizens have been awarded a National Order of Merit, the absolute majority having been awarded by the Nationalist government in the last 15 years.
Not uncannily, the dearth of Republic Day honours conferred in the days of Dom Mintoff and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici seems to testify to the scarcity of ‘outstanding’ individuals back in the day.
Since 1987, the Nationalist’s grand list for the Gieh ir-Repubblika totalled 45 honourable members. In Labour’s sixteen years of Mintoffian self-sufficiency, only four of the prestigious Gieh were conferred to those who demonstrated “exceptional merit in the service of Malta or of humanity”. Three of these were North Korea’s ‘dear leader’ Kim Il Sung, Libya’s own bedouin revolutionary Colonel Gaddafi, and Li Xiannan. Xiannian was the President of the People’s Republic of China between 1983 and 1988 as well as the father-in-law of former Chinese president Jiang Zemin.
matthew@newsworksltd.com
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