For decades, under Alfred Sant and Joseph Muscat, semi-literate and easily articulate in a soap box loony venom-spreading sort of way, Manwel Cuschieri had a slot on the Labour Party’s radio station spewing hate against the “enemies of the people”. After Goebbels and before Trumpian propagandists, there was our very own Manwel Cuschieri.

Along with other weaker Joseph Muscat loyalists Manwel Cuschieri has been kicked out of Labour’s radio. No one in the Labour Party ever claimed they had thrown him out because they no longer felt that hate-mongering was a proper way of doing politics. Manwel Cuschieri thinks Joseph Muscat is the god. That policy cannot survive the mounting evidence against the chief architect of the corruption that still weighs down our country.

At first Manwel Cuschieri moved to his car from where he continued his speeches to the masses. Now he’s found a home at Smash Radio which gives him their mixing deck and some accidental audience that stumbles on him.

A PR advisor would tell me not to advertise his hatred. We would be told we should ignore it and assume that most people won’t have heard it. But I want you to listen to this extract from yesterday’s radio address by Manwel Cuschieri because it is a mirror into Joseph Muscat’s mind, a reflection of his obsessions, the rantings of a lunatic hurling themselves to the padded walls.

If there is this hatred on the airwaves you need to know about it. Because you need to understand what the hard-core support of Joseph Muscat is thinking. You need to understand what Joseph Muscat is thinking.

 

In summary this particular rant is addressed at the President and Vice-President of Repubblika, Robert Aquilina and Alessandra Dee Crespo. The charges are simple.

Firstly, that Aquilina and Crespo are hypocrites for having said nothing about failures in the rule of law in Malta before March 2013 (when the PN was in government) but only spoke up after. That’s like saying they said nothing before 1950 and their reason then would have been that they weren’t yet born. For a while after March 2013, they did not speak out against corruption either. What shook them to action was the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia which, it so happens, occurred after March 2013 when his god, Joseph Muscat, created the environment that allowed her to be killed and was found responsible for just that by an independent inquiry.

Secondly, that Aquilina and Crespo are motivated by the fact that in March 2013 Joseph Muscat starved them of “direct orders” and closed “the faucet” of public money until then flowing into their pockets. This is a blatant lie. The accusation could be levelled at me because I collected a government salary until March 2013 but it can’t be put to Aquilina and Crespo who never worked for the government of whichever hue.

Thirdly, that Aquilina and Crespo were given work by the Catholic church (as a notary in Aquilina’s case, as an employee in Crespo’s) without taking into account their public campaigning of “hatred of Labour”. Another blatant lie. Both were already doing that work when Daphne Caruana Galizia was still alive and the country wasn’t aware of them.

And fourthly, that Aquilina and Crespo are the reason for falling Sunday church attendances. That one is just funny.

Along with my colleagues in Repubblika I speak out in friendship and solidarity with Robert Aquilina and Alessandra Dee Crespo who have led this small civil society organisation to a place where Joseph Muscat feels he must use his ever more limited means to get them to lose their income.

But this goes beyond sympathy and solidarity. When Aquilina and Crespo stepped into this maelstrom, Daphne Caruana Galizia’s car was still burning. We knew what we were going into. Or maybe we should have known. We knew enough not to be surprised by Manwel Cuschieri saying this stuff nearly six years later.

Notice how Manwel Cuschieri speaks of “monument ta’ xi ħadd” (somebody’s memorial) when referring to the protest site in Valletta calling for justice for Daphne Caruana Galizia. Notice how fresh their prejudice, their hatred, their obsessions remain. Notice how scared they are of the inevitable consequences of a few continuing to insist on them. Notice how determined they are to starve the few people who stand up to them of the means to live long enough to resist them.

Manwel Cuschieri calls Repubblika, repeatedly, “the extreme faction of the PN” which he needs to do in order to switch on the hatred receptors of his listeners. He rants about how Repubblika only criticises Labourites and treats Nationalists as pure angels until he remembers that isn’t the case and tries to fudge things. He says we’re an “extreme faction of the PN” because he rightly assumes it’s not a description that pleases us.

I’ll retort with a counter-description that I know pleases him no end. Manwel Cuschieri is the Labour Party. Not an extreme faction of it. He is it. Inasmuch as Joseph Muscat is the Labour Party. It will please Manwel Cuschieri to hear that. It will displease him perhaps to hear that he too is a reason for us to go on.