Yana Mintoff Bland has demanded that her father Dom be shown the respect which she claims he deserves.
The Times in its comments quoted Yana Mintoff Bland as objecting to her father Dom Mintoff being “shown as being partisan and interested only in his supporters.”
It was only last week that The Sunday Times reporting an interview with Albert Mizzi former Chairman of Air Malta quoted Mr Mizzi as saying the following about her father :
“I remember one time when someone mentioned something to him about corruption. He turned to me and said, is it true? I replied: ‘That what’s people are saying’. His response was: ‘What can I do if that person has helped me to build up the party? Can I take action against him?’ You see, this is small Malta.”
Being a Mintoff supporter in those days paid huge dividends.
I have already in the past put on record my own stories about pressures exerted by Dom Mintoff through a PN politician as well as through an army official for me to withdraw a human rights case in Malta’s Constitutional Court against one of his Cabinet Ministers. I did not budge but the pressure kept mounting. And on top of all that I even had my professional warrant as an architect withheld for 4 years after graduating. A fact also confirmed by the Injustces Commission which investigated my claims.
My experiences are just one of the many which those who disagreed with or criticised Dom’s government and methods suffered repeatedly.
A few did not survive to recount their ordeal as they paid with their lives. It that sense I may be lucky, but that is nothing to thank Dom about.
Blog ta' Carmel Cacopardo 
Well said indeed. Mintoff certainly did a lot of good things for Malta, but the people of Malta suffered so much except for the minority that were his close supporters.
People who lived in those times certainly remember the gross abuse that was carried out especially against the environment and many Maltese individuals and companies. One really sympathises with all those who suffered cruelly at the hands of the later Mintoffian ”regime”. Some people, as Perit Cacopardo points out, paid with their very lives – they could not stand the blatant injustices….
Mintoff did a lot for Malta but he also wrecked a lot.
History has repeated itself. The P.N. certainly did much but it has allowed abuse, inefficiency and mismanagement to tarnish its record as happened to the Labour Party in the later interval of Dom’s ”rule”.
Like Mintoff, Lawrence Gonzi has for a long time been putting Party and Personal interests before National interests. He used public money to stifle Ministerial and Backbencher criticism even giving himself and Cabinet a hefty weekly pay rise behind the backs of everyone. Arrogance and unnecessary spending of public money have been hallmarks of his administration. Also Constitutional and other Law deficiencies by the present and recent P.N. administrations all cry out for protest.
Hopefully the coming elections will see those protests vindicated.