Is Lino Spiteri suggesting that Mintoff and AST were not in their right mind?
Published:
April 16, 2012 at 8:50pm
“The suggestion is absurd both in political as well as in economic terms. No one in his right mind would wish to project the idea of expanding a political relationship with North Korea.” – Lino Spiteri, in The Times today.
What exactly has changed about North Korea since the days when the government of which Mr Spiteri formed part had a special relationship with that country?
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North Korea did not change yet it could be that Lino Spiteri did.
The only thing that changed is the government. Since 1987 Lino Spiteri feels safe to express his opinion. He was afraid to do it, or thought it was not worth it, during the Mintoff years and therefore he lumped it all.
He seems to forget that he was a government minister during those terrible years. But we do not.
“The suggestion is absurd both in political as well as in economic terms. No one in his right mind would wish to project the idea of expanding a political relationship with North Korea.”
I don’t think that anyone is suggesting that those wishing to project that idea are in their right mind, or ever thought they were.
If I understand Lino Spiteri well, no one in his right mind would wish that the Korean people would greet the centenary of the birth of President Kim Il Sung with shining achievements in economic construction under the wise leadership of the dear respected Kim Jong Un, and hope that everything would continue going well in the DPRK.
And if I further understand Lino Spiteri well, no one in his right mind would tell a North Korea Ambassador that satellite launch by the DPRK is a legitimate right of sovereign states, and express a will to work hard to expand the friendly relations between the Malta Labor Party and the Workers’ Party of Korea and between Malta and the DPRK in the political, economic, cultural and other fields.
The learned man has walked a tightrope for many a year. It continues.
Lino Spiteri would dearly like to say that the North Koreans were lying when they referred to Muscat’s declarations of friendship and his support for their missile programme.
Unfortunately for him, the PL itself has not denied the reports so the best Spiteri can do is to dismiss the idea as being too preposterous.
But he forgets that nothing is too preposterous for Joseph Muscat.
Malta’s youngest prattikament prim ministru cannot wait for the day when he can receive delegations with splendour from the World’s youngest national leader.
And who knows, maybe in Pyong Yang they are already rehearsing the choreography of “Ma taghmlu xejn, ma’ Doctor Muscat.”
Wrong!
The PL leader did deny that the quoted words of praise attributed to him, had not been stated by himself.
Try again Antoine.
[Daphne – In fact, he did not. Read the report in The Times again, which first says Labour denied the statements and then goes on to quote words that don’t deny anything. Compare to the president, who was far more specific: http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120414/local/President-Muscat-clarify-N-Korean-news-reports.415349 ]
The Times reported Joseph Muscat’s press conference on his return from Libya:
“During his meeting with the Korean ambassador he just expressed condolences. The colourful adjectives used by the Korean news agency were wrongly attributed to him.”
At best, he is suggesting that someone else from his party may have used those adjectives.
But he does confirm the worst bit – that he expressed condolences. As far as I am aware, no one in this part of the democratic world has expressed condolences about the Korean dictatorship.
Except for Jimmy Carter. But, “his condolences come as a tribute to the late dictator were sent by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who described the 69-year-old North Korean despot as a ‘lovely man’, who ‘was chosen by his people and regularly conducted elections’.
Didymus Mutasa, the secretary of administration for Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party, told Zimbabwe state radio: ‘He was our great friend and we are not ashamed of being associated with him.’
The dead North Korean leader was involved in the training and equipping of a para-military group in the African country in the early 1980s.
Mugabe sought help to train the infamous Fifth Brigade unit – which killed almost 20,000 people in an operation named Gukurahundi, meaning the first rains that wash the chaff. It has since been described as genocide.
Kim Jong Il played an instrumental role in training the crack special killer unit that operated outside normal Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) command.”
Now why does that remind me of Malta, 1970s and 1980s, AST, Mintoff, Labour government, secret treaties, police squads?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2077854/Kim-Jong-Il-dead-Now-Jimmy-Carter-sends-condolences-Kim-Jong-Un.html
According to Lino Spiteri, it was only a question of “effusive misreporting by the North Korean news agency”.
Quote Emmanuel Wallerstein
“10 out of the last 12 countries entering the EU had problems with their democracy”
In my opinion Malta was one of them.
We’ve been witnessing an amazing conjuring act by Lino Spiteri these last thirteen years. The complete re-invention of himself. From a Mintoff acolyte to a a champion of liberal democracy and moral rectitude. Bravo!
Meanwhile, our press and our historians drift deeper into REM.
I pity Lino Spiteri.
He is the traditional Anglu Tal -Festa.
Bil-musmar f’sormu u jkanta vittorja.
It is too late in the day for him to disown publicly and unequivocally the PL.
Pathetic.
Isn’t it bizarre how people like Lino Spiteri and Joe Grima who were prominent ministers when Malta had the best of relations with Korea and other dictatorships can now disassociate themselves from those times when democracy in Malta was under threat and pose as neutral political observers. Do they sincerely believe that we are a bunch of fools and can take them seriously? Simply unbelievable.
Perhaps he’s aiming to become the next Labour president of the republic.
Come on,we all make mistakes. Someday we all grow up. In his biography, Lucky Luciano is said to have noted, “Ah, at the age of sixty four, I got wise!” The Romans had a saying: Omnia mutantur nos et mutamur in illis- All things change,and we change with them.
Never mind Lucky Luciano.
The infamous Giorgio Napolitano now struts the European stage, the paragon of euro-democracy.
A dyed-in-the-wool Marxist, he vociferously supported the Soviet interventions in Hungary and in Czechoslovakia in 1958 and 1968.
Later on, he was all in favour of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s exile from his homeland.
Forty years later, sitting comfortably in his unique ‘ studio alla vetrata’, he was asked to give an explanation for his previous political stands.
“In politica ho maturato tardi” was his reply.
But at least he should have the decency of acknowledging his mistakes and apologising for them. People’s lives were ruined because of those mistakes and many Maltese people paid a high price during that dark political era.
So all right, bygones are bygones but at least let us acknowledge the mistakes and apologise for them rather than posing as a neutral, virgin, political observer.
I might be wrong but it seems that Lino Spiteri is having second thoughts on his declaration some time ago that he is definitely out of politics. His writings, lately, indicate otherwise.
True, lately he seems to be thumbing a lift in the Joseph Bulky Refuse direction.
What is a “holier than though stance”?
Lino Spiteri is the proverbial leopard.
He has over the years been writing as a moderate impartial columnist, but recently the Lino of old has come to the fore. Perhaps because he is sensing that the new government may be a Labour one?
Let us not forget that he was part of the government of the 1970s and 1980s. That is his legacy too and at a certain age, this is all one is keen to protect or defend, the legacy they are to leave behind.
Even if it is indefensible. So writing prolificly is what he seems intent on doing to contort that history has much as he can so that he is seen in the light that he wants to be seen.
Anyone connected to the Labour Government of the 80s should go and hang their head in shame and keep quiet unless they can do the decent thing and ask for forgiveness. All this grandstanding when they were part of Malta’s most shameful period of history and personally significantly benefitted from it, only adds to their shame.
As somebody commented on timesofmalta.com, they would do well to follow the example of Adolf Eichmann who, when accused of Nazi crimes, said in his defence:
‘I was one of the many horses pulling the wagon and couldn’t escape left or right because of the will of the driver.’
Ask forgiveness for what? For ‘some bad’ things that happened during Mintoff’s time?
AE, they won’t ever own up to what they did and how much they made us suffer. Lino Spiteri will increase his dose of trying to revisit history because he’s sensing a Labour victory.
How can forgiveness be given for crimes that the perpetrator not only refuses to acknowledge , but worse still,condones openly?
U dan ghadu Prattikament-PrimMinistru!
Mur arah de facto Prim Ministru.
Lino Spiteri is here quoted as saying that “No one in his right mind would wish to project the idea of expanding a political relationship with North Korea”, and not that no one in his right mind would wish to expand a political relationship with North Korea.
Does this mean that expanding political relationship with North Korea would be fine, provided one does so secretly?
Lino Spiteri is aiming to become president.
Reading through Lino Spiteri’s articles always leaves me with the impression that he has a strong, personal, deep-seated grudge against Lawrence Gonzi, who he always addresses in a denigratory manner as GonziPN.
For him the prime minister always happens to be on the wrong side of the fence and all the decisions he takes are grossly wrong.
When Lino Spiteri suggested that Mintoff and AST were not in their right mind, he automatically included Joseph Muscat who warmed up with the N Korean regime hoping to ‘improve our relationships’.
Making partial explanations later does not cut it.