Word: mintoffs
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...Mers-el-Kebir. Last week they got another potential port of call when Malta's Labor Party won a one-vote majority in the island's Parliament. Malta has long been the unsinkable aircraft carrier of the British Mediterranean defense system, but Labor Party Leader Dom Mintoff won the election partly by promising the island's 320,000 inhabitants that he would relax this link to the West. The Russians do not really need another naval base, but they may find irresistible the idea of just showing the red flag on an island that was long...
...ceremonies, his motorcade was stoned, and at the independence day parade, mounted police moved in to break up a riot. When the Union Jack was hauled down from the Valletta parade-ground flagpole, vehement boos were mixed with the crowd's cheers. Ex-Prime Minister Dom Mintoff's opposition Malta Labor Party even went so far as to boycott the opening session of the islands' Parliament - in which it holds nearly one-third of the seats...
This feud set the stage for the bitterest election campaign in the island's history. Lined up against the Labor Party were five other parties, all acceptable to Archbishop Gonzi. While Mintoff ran on a hate-Britain platform that urged an independent, neutralist Malta, his chief opponents, the Nationalists, advocated independence within the Commonwealth. (The island currently has self-government except in defense and foreign affairs, which are supervised by a British high commissioner.) But in the months leading up to last week's election, foreign policy issues were overshadowed by the emotional struggle between church and state...
...Open War." Churches drowned out Socialist rallies by loudly ringing their bells for three hours at a stretch. On the narrow streets of Pawla, Labor Party youths and Young Christian workers fought pitched battles with stones and wine bottles. Posters proclaimed: "Every vote for Mintoff is another thorn in the Sacred Heart of Jesus." Maltese spinsters paraded in a pilgrimage of prayer for his defeat, wearing the faldetta, the traditional national headdress. Concluded an English observer: "This is open...
...clearly defeated. Polling one-third of the popular vote, it lost control of the 50-seat legislature, keeping only 16 seats while the combined opposition won 34. Of these, 25 went to the Nationalists, whose leader, George Borg Olivier, will be asked to form the new government. Laborite Mintoff scoffed at the results, labeled the election "the most unfair in the island's history...