Labour on Libya: doublespeak and deceit

Right, thank you for volunteering in the battle for Tripoli. Now I want you to go inside, get your AK47s and backpacks, and get down to the port, where a boat will be waiting. If all goes to plan, you'll be able to fly back in Gaddafi's plane instead of getting seasick among the dogfood.

This article was published in The Times today and is reproduced here with the author’s permission.

Labour doublespeak and deceit

by Salvu Felice Pace

As dramatic events unfold in Libya, the Labour Party at last came to the conclusion that Muammar Gad­dafi is finished and they have no choice now but to join the bandwagon led months ago by Lawrence Gonzi when he declared that Col Gaddafi’s departure from power was inevitable.

But Labour’s visible reaction to the events in Tripoli is still being conditioned by the past years of cosying up to the tyrant they feted and rubbed shoulders with since the early 1970s. How on earth could George Vella, Labour’s spokesman for foreign affairs, claim that their party had “always been close to the Libyan people?

Where were Labour leaders Dom Mintoff and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici when hundreds of Libyans disappeared, others were imprisoned or were pushed to seek life elsewhere?

They were projecting Col Gaddafi as a peacemaker and as an indispensable source of support to Malta.

Even if in a limited way, they adopted some of his methods of how to deal with their political opponents.

Labour administrations were keen and unashamed to adopt measures in the field of education in particular, simply to satisfy their delusional friend’s ambition to have Malta as a pseudo colony.

For years on end, we Maltese had to put up with Libyans treating Malta as if it were their playground. Mr Mintoff’s years of flirtation with Col Gaddafi had a negative effect on the perception of the Maltese both at home and abroad by people of good will.

Labour never bothered to correct these perceptions.

Their aim was to appear before Western countries, which they hated and treated as Cain’s Europe, as having a powerful protector in Col Gaddafi.

All the talk about non-alignment and neutrality were just the gifts they had promised to Col Gaddafi in return for some short-term gain.

In his Post-bloodshed Opportunities (August 29), Lino Spiteri, in a rather naïve and deceptive way, simplified Malta’s relations with the Gaddafi regime as that of a state-to-state relationship. Nothing is further from the truth.

Statesman Eddie Fenech Adami summed up Labour’s relationship with Col Gaddafi as going far beyond this acceptable type of relationship, particularly with a neighbouring country.

And Mr Spiteri concluded: “I’m sure both Labour and Nationalists acted that way in the perceived interest of Malta, not out of love for the dictators.”

It is in Labour’s interest, well served by Mr Spiteri, that history is rewritten not to allow a thorough examination of the true relationship between the PL and Col Gaddafi.

Was it in Malta’s interest that the PL in government signed a protocol in 1984 by which Libyan military personnel were to train Maltese counterparts?

And that Libya would supply whatever military equipment Malta requested? No wonder the Nationalist government elected in 1987 revoked parts of that protocol against Labour’s wishes.

No, Mr Spiteri, Nationalist administrations did not cosy up to Col Gaddafi in the same servile manner that Labour ones did.

And for Joseph Muscat’s doublespeak about support extended to the PL over the years one has to question his intentions. Since the Libyan crisis started he insisted that the matter should not become a controversial issue.

The media he leads were reticent about Col Gaddafi’s unquestionable murderous behaviour. And now he tells us that “the current administration of the PL can categorically deny that it ever received any donations and is not informed of any previous donations to the party”.

How pathetic! Col Gaddafi sent a private jet for Dr Muscat to go and visit him after a few weeks into his leadership of the party. Wasn’t that a donation?

Or has Dr Muscat ordered that the money thus saved will be donated to charity?

When the London School of Economics discovered that Saif, Col Gaddafi’s son, had donated a substantial sum of money to the school, heads rolled and the money was turned into bursaries for students.

There are questions to be asked about Col Gaddafi’s interference in Maltese politics and I do not consider that I would be “behaving as children”, as Mr Spiteri put it, if I put some questions, without much hope of getting any reply, of course.

Is it true that Col Gaddafi “bankrolled” the PL for a time and, particularly, before the 1976 election? Is it true that donations from the Gaddafi regime helped in the building of PL’s headquarters at Mile End? Both questions have been asked before but Labour remain silent.

If Dr Muscat wants to know the truth he has working close to him Alex Sceberras Trigona, Karmenu Vella and Dr Mifsud Bonnici who should know.

Have any of the present Labour Administration gained personally through Col Gaddafi’s special relationship?

No more subterfuge, please. Some facts are already well known such as that Col Gaddafi financed an activity by the PL during the Bush-Gorbachev summit held in Malta in 1989.

Wasn’t that foreign interference in our affairs?

What right did Col Gaddafi have to state that he didn’t approve of the place where the summit was being held?

If Dr Muscat doesn’t want to answer any of these questions, I suggest that the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee should be asked to investigate the relationship between Maltese political institutions and Col Gaddafi.