History, reinterpreted
Lino Spiteri tends to be a chap one can talk to, but sometimes I just can’t understand the twist he gives to the things he writes. This was in his piece in yesterday’s The Sunday Times, for instance:
Malta has never passed through such a chaotic situation. There were parliamentary ruptures in the past. Post-war, at least three MPs crossed the floor – Johnny Cole (to Labour), Coronato Attard (to the Nationalists) and Alfred Baldacchino (also to Labour).
Malta has never passed through such a chaotic situation? Come on, Lino. It’s not as though you didn’t live through the 1981 – 1987, as I did. But maybe your memory of a government propped up on a majority of seats and a minority of votes, with demonstrations of 50,000 angry people every other weekend, bombs, people being shot at, and the army out every night at road-blocks, is a little different to mine because you actually formed part of that government and even presented a Budget tal-Qawsalla (do I remember this correctly?) as minister of finance.
Let’s stick with honesty. It suits us all a great deal better.
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Those were my thoughts while reading his piece yesterday. I am always amazed with Lino Spiteri and his flagrant apparent ‘losses of memory’ while writing his articles.
Lino Spiteri’s pieces about the National Bank of Malta saga were not exactly historically sound.
I believe the Budget tal-Qawsalla was Wistin Abela’s doing, but I could be mistaken. I have this very vague recollection of him claiming the Qawsalla title, during one of those deeply entertaining budget broadcasts when the camera would pan to and zoom in on the Republic of Malta crest at every ‘crossing of the floor for a fight’ or bout of swearing and aggression.
Lino Spiteri is in denial – somewhat naive – idealistic – not all that smart. After all, he WAS a Labour minister.
And you think that Lino Spiteri will bother replying to you? You make it sound like a conversation between two (“Come on Lino…”)
As with many other politicians of stature, he’ll ignore you.
[Daphne – I don’t say things for attention, Mandango. I am not a teenage girl or a middle-aged man with a chip on his shoulder and a seat in parliament. Lino Spiteri does not ignore me and I don’t ignore him. On the very rare occasions that we meet, we are extremely civil to each other and converse like normal people in a normal situation.]
Just hope you’re satiated by the praises showered onto you by RCC (“eloquent writer”), Charlo Bonnici (“effective writer”), and others of their ilk.
As for the real men, think again.
[Daphne – Oh dear, if only you knew. But one day, you might grow up.]
I actually remember watching the annual MLP Budget Show on TV and Lino Spiteri, then Minister of Finance, winding up his budget speech with the words “,,,u din nistghu insejjhula il-Year of Employment”.
In the following 12 months, as a result of that budget, several businesses folded up or were compelled to shed employees, and some 11,000 jobs were lost in the private sector.
Malta was in terrible crisis when Lino Spiteri was finance minister. The situation in parliament, at the moment, is not good for the nation but the country is peaceful and prospering.
The standard of living under Nationalist governments has improved exponentially. Under the three Labour governments we had in the 1970s and 1980s, and the one Labour government we had in the 1990s, the situation was terrible.
“Budget tal-Qawsalla”; this name for a budget was an exercise in incompetence and vengeful solutions affecting worker class and middle class tax payers.
I believe all budgets under MLP were given a name to sugar the poison coming out with each new tax.
Just to repeat myself ad nauseam.
Lino Spiteri suffers from a chronic form of selective amnesia.
The severity of the condition is directly proportional to the chances of PL returning to power.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120716/opinion/Gift-horse-runs-loose-for-Labour.428742
Monday, July 16, 2012 by
Lino Spiteri
Gift horse runs loose for Labour
Following was my remark:
quote: [A catch-all party cannot invite everybody to join it and then ban those who disapprove of some of its decisions, which could very well have been wrong!]
A very, very, very appropriate opinion.
On another note: I do not think that Mr. Spiteri is reading the future. More possible might be that Mr. Spiteri is thinking about his own specific plans for the future.
If I remember correctly Lino Spiteri presented the first budget of that legislature.
He could not resist a dig at the opposition (I say opposition, but he was staring at empty places, because the Nationalists were boycotting parlament at the time) when he said that in that budget, contrary to the previous one before the election, there was no money being budgeted for an election.
I read most of what Spiteri writes, even read his book “Jien u Ghaddej fil-Politika”. I think he was one of the moderates in the Labour Party. But I can never understand how a man with his knowledge of finance ever decided to support Alfred Sant’s policy of removing VAT when he knew that replacing it with any other tax would practically bankrupt the country.
As it turned out we only have Mintoff to thank for stopping Alfred Sant in his tracks. Mintoff did not topple the Sant government because of the Cottonera project. He voted against his government because he knew that Alfred Sant was going to bankrupt Malta with his financial fiasco of CET and all the other taxes attached to it.
[Daphne – Rubbish. He voted against Sant and brought down the government because he was what he always was, a nasty, vicious skifuz and yet another poison dwarf.]
In all fairness to Lino Spiteri, he did resign from Minister of Finance, but by then the damage had been done. We only have Mintoff to thank for standing up to the Sant government on his OWN.
While I am not a supporter of Mintoff, but I do appreciate that he did a lot of good while he was prime minister of Malta.
[Daphne – Oh really? What good? Facts and figures, please – and then set them off against the untold damage he did. If I gave you a hundred euros and then smashed your 500-euro vase, would you say I’d done you a lot of good?]
The only trouble is that we vote for governments to do good for country and people, but then history have a habit of focusing on the bad policies and it is that that people will always remember.
“If I gave you a hundred euros and then smashed your 500-euro vase, would you say I’d done you a lot of good?”
That’s a brilliant way of describing Mintoff’s work.
If you are creative enough, you can find some good in everyone. The fact remains that Mintoff did untold damage to this country and the social fabric of this nation. He is responsible for the great divide that there is following the British maxim ‘ divide and conquer”. He nurtured that divide as it made him stronger. The prejudice and the “ghira bazwija maltija” that he instilled in his followers were his greatest weopons.
The only reason he brought Sant down was because he did not control him unlike KMB. There was no altruisitic reason. It was simply spite. (This is in fact were one could draw a parallel with JPOS. Both spiteful, vindictive dwarves.) Mintoff started his political career the way he ended it, by bringing down a Labour Government. Should we thank him for that? yes I am pleased that Sant’s Government was hindered from creating further havoc in the business world but disloyalty can never be applauded. The one thing Sant may have achieved had he had more time – was to rid us of all those thugs who were part of the hideous ’80s. As it is, they hung on and the prospect of them being decision makers in our life again looks like it is going to become a reality.
As for lino spiteri he too is as guilty as the rest of them. Just because he has a fluid pen and is actually intelligent, he is not any less guilty. He may at times come across as being moderate but that is only because he has reached that stage in his life where he is only too aware of his mortality. In his own way he is trying to rewrite history. Just look at the way he writes about the National Bank. It is clear he wants to protect his own legacy even if it means distorting the truth or destroying the legacy of others. If anything his mild manner makes him even more despicable as the unsuspecting viewer is easily misled by him.
I completely agree with your last paragraph. May I add just one thing. Spiteri uses his pen to ward off criticism of his past, especially the time he was a minister.
Budget tal-Qawsalla? What was that?
[Daphne – The Labour government of the 1980s used to give its November budgets names, in a sort of North Korean way to do with sun and glory and so on. One of them, the one that has stuck in the minds of all the depressed and demoralised people who watched Lino Spiteri read it out on television, is il-Budget tal-Qawsalla. I believe it was the last budget of those horrible years, in 1986, when Malta couldn’t have been less rainbow-like and devoid of hope.]
“The Labour government of the 1980s used to give its November budgets names” Someone please call Sasha Baron Cohen.
I have been following his writings for ages, and the socialist-communist trait is all there to see when it comes to the US of A.
Off subject, but Madonna santa, ma tistax taqra naqra news Malta.
same subject, different perspective, lots of confusion. It takes you hours trying to filter out what they’re saying, and by the time you’re done, no-one’s interested anymore.
http://www.maltastar.com/dart/20120723-cruise-passengers-from-non-eu-countries-35-less-than-2011
http://www.maltarightnow.com/?module=news&at=It%2Dturi%26%23380%3Bmu+tal%2DCruise+Liners+ikompli+ji%26%23380%3Bdied&t=a&aid=99839077&cid=19
Lino Spiteri kien parti mir-regim socjalista tat-tmenijiet (allavolja qighed jaghmel minn kollox biex inessina). Jilghaba tal-intelletwali u ‘armchair critic’, imma oggezzjona ghall-elezzjoni wara r-rizultat elettorali perverz tal-1981 ghax ried jibqa ankrat mall-poter ghal sitt snin ohra.
Imissu jisthi. Ahjar jitkellem kif kienu johorgu il-permessi tat-trade meta kien ministru hu.
Lino Spiteri jahseb li jista jinghogob maz-zewg nahat. Fil-verita, ma hu xejn hlief socjalista.
Jekk m’inix sejra zball, minbarra l-budget tal-qawsalla – fejn ma kienx hawn hlief shab iswed fuq Malta.
Lino Spiteri ghamel ukoll budget li semmieh tax-xoghol – fejn fi zmien dan il-famuz budget il-qaghad sploda u l-uniku xoghol li kien hawn kien taht dixxiplina militari.
B’dan biss jista’ ‘jiftahar’ Spiteri. Ahjar imur jistahba bhad-dinosawri l-ohra kollha li ghandu l-Labour.