From my article in The Sunday Times today:
“It’s hard to find an accurate translation of the specific meaning of “ma npaxxuhomx” when it is used in the local political context. It literally means one should not act in a way that gives pleasure to the enemy. That does not merely mean ‘let us not harm ourselves in a way that gives our enemy advantage’. It means rather that ‘we should let our wounds fester, because if we were to dress them, we’d be pleasing the enemy into thinking they inflicted them on us’.
“The Nationalist Party has been having quite a bit of this in the last two years or so. Party supporters understand as much as anyone the pathological inadequacy of Adrian Delia.”