Lino Spiteri
Apologies out of season
The season for apologies is for them to be made when due. I fully understand Eddie Fenech Adami saying he was still waiting for an apology from the Labour side for Black Monday 1979 when he was Leader of the Opposition and Labour thugs terrorised his family and ransacked his home.
That happened on October 15, the same day when Labour thugs, possibly the same people, attacked and gutted the premises of the Allied Newspapers, run at the time by Mabel Strickland.
Immediately after those events Prime Minister Dom Mintoff sent a letter to Strickland wherein he made an abject apology. Was it enough to heal the wounds opened on Black Monday? Not at all, I'd say. The attack should never have taken place. It represented a grave threat to freedom of journalistic speech and thereby to democracy. But the Prime Minister's duty ran from well before it happened. He knew there were Labour thugs prone to operate outside the law and common decency too.
It was Mintoff's responsibility, in the years that he led the Labour Party, more so when it was in office, to use his political strength and the forces of law and order to weed out violent elements within the party. They were not that many and well enough known. It is impossible they were not known also to the top man.
The Labour leader did not take preventive action. More than that, though he apologised to Strickland he did not do so to Fenech Adami. That is why at a public event on politicians and journalists organised by the Tumas Foundation for Education in Journalism I said that, though I was not in politics at the time (I was head of the Central Bank) as a Labourite I was ashamed that the events of Black Monday took place.
I did that in the context of an address which had just been made by the foundation's invitee, Labour leader Joseph Muscat, after it had hosted the Nationalist leader and Prime Minister, Lawrence Gonzi, weeks earlier. Muscat referred to Black Monday. He said events like those weakened not only the politicians and institutions that suffered from them, but (also) those who carried them out and the party whom the people perceived that they represented.
He recalled that years ago as a journalist he had interviewed Archbishop Joseph Mercieca. The Archbishop, said the PL leader, had shown a great sense of historical responsibility (by) excusing himself for what Labourites had suffered during the 1960s.
Muscat said that as soon as he was elected Labour leader he had made a historic apology to those who might have been hurt by people who used the Labour Party and then cast it aside, leaving the party to bear the blot of their actions.
"I repeat that today, 30 years after incidents I referred to," he said, "because I honestly believe that people of goodwill, wherever they may be, agree with me that those events should never have happened".
Placed in context, that was nothing short of an apology. But the Nationalist leader doesn't think so. Responding to a dig by the Labour leader that the Nationalists too had their apologies to make, on Sunday Gonzi shouted out a list of Labour shortcomings, ironically demanding whether it was for them that the PN should apologise.
The rhetorical questions played to the gallery betrayed not a little effort by the PN leader to draw fire away from his beleaguered government, including for the failure of the Finance Minister and himself to apologise for the fact that, when the minister had travelled private to a football match in Spain, he had technically breached the ministerial code of ethics, though he did nothing else that should impugn his integrity.
That aside, it doesn't seem to cross the PM's mind that the Nationalists might have a little apology of their own to make for profiting from the interdict and mortal sin imposed on the MLP by Archbishop Michael Gonzi, to win the elections of 1962 and 1966, and for the fact that there were Nationalists who were not at all pleased that the Church signed a peace concordat with the MLP before the election of 1971, which was duly won by Labour.
On a personal note, entering the House of Representatives for the first time after a by-election gave me a seat in 1962, I was deliberately kicked hard in the shin by a well-known PN activist who rose from the Strangers' Gallery to do so. Delighted by my evident pain he rushed downstairs to boast to the police and whoever else could hear him that he had savagely kicked a Labour MP, identifying me by my physical difference ("Il-**** x'daqqa ta' sieq tajtu lil dak ta' bla driegh!").
Nobody from the PN ever offered me an apology during the 47 years that have elapsed from that date. Good thing I didn't hold my breath waiting for one. General apologies, like those of Mercieca and Muscat, do not beget general absolution. So what does the absence of an apology to one individual matter, huh?
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Dr Francis Saliba
Oct 26th 2009, 11:18
@VictorLaiviera
The MLP “six points” emerged in the minutes of SECRET meetings between Mintoff and Fr Prosper Grech in Rome about February 1963 and “signed by the two parties". They were published in May of that same year. Their accuracy was not contested. Mintoff accepted their accuracy when he commissioned Lino Spiteri to write six articles, under a pseudonym, so that he would explain to the MLP readers of l-Orizzont, these same MLP six points, one by one, including the one that stated “Violence in certain cases to be admissible”. These MLP six points have not been challenged by any of the participants nor by A Koster nor by the Vicar General Mgr Galea. You stand in splendid isolation in your insistence that you will not be satisfied until you see an official MLP document describing these SECRET meetings. Reasonable people would accept the above solid evidence until you assume the onus of proving your wild insinuation that all the above-mentioned people must be mistaken or that they are lying.
Victor Laiviera
Oct 26th 2009, 08:48
@ Dr Francis Saliba
As I have said in another thread, since you are the one making the allegation, you have the onus to produce proof. This, you have not even come close to doing.
Unless and untill you can produce one official MLP document supporting your false claim, there is no more to be said.
Joe Cassar
Oct 25th 2009, 21:07
@ Mr A Zahra
Would you care to explain why you left the name of Karin Grech out of your list, especially considering the fact that it was on only DELIBERATE case of political murder in Malta?
Dr Francis Saliba
Oct 25th 2009, 18:44
@Victor Laiviera You have shown absolutely nothing of the sort. You have been unable to quote any supporting evidence. On my part I quoted A Koster, The Tablet and Lino Spiteri himself to prove that one of the MLP six points was that “violence, in certain cases to be admissible”. I have quoted Lino Spiteri’s published account how Mintoff, through Attard Kingswell, commissioned him to write six articles, one on each of the six point, one by one, to instruct the MLP readers of l-Orizzont about these MLP’s six points – “… x’inhuma s-sitt punti li l-Partit Laburista ried li jidhlu f’Kostituzzjoni gdida …”. The falsehood and shame are all on your part!
paul sciberras
Oct 25th 2009, 16:50
at a zhara At last you confirmed yourself that you are living in a Utopia.
John Azzopardi
Oct 25th 2009, 16:21
Mr Zahra, for your information I am a PN leaning person and I am talking about Black Monday which happened a long time ago and yes, no one died. However, the murders you mention are not what we are talking about.
A.Sacco
Oct 25th 2009, 16:07
Far be it for me to cross swords with a man of Mr.Spiteri's calibre. He is well versed in politics, besides being a very good writer and a renowned author (incidentally I have been following many of Lino's contributions to the press ever since his regular forays in the Malta News of the 60's).
However, certain things need to be clarified.I refer to the bit where he stated that the PN should apologise "for profiting from the interdict and mortal sin imposed on the MLP by Archbishop Michael Gonzi, to win the elections of 1962 and 1966....." I would like to remind Mr.Spiteri (as if he needs reminding) that in 1962 and 1966 there were more than two political parties in the arena. In fact, in 1962, three other political parties gained 9 seats between them : the Democratic Nationalis Party 4, the Christian Workers Party 4 and the Costitutional Party 1. In 1966 the "centre parties" unfortunately did not elect any candidates, and most of their votes were inherited by the Nationalist Party.
T.Camilleri
Oct 25th 2009, 15:03
I strongly condemn all sorts of violence, no matter who is responsible for it.
Mr.Spiteri's incident in parliament just goes on to show that the PN are no virgins where violence is concerned.
At the moment our country needs only solutions to its mountain of problems and not childish discussions expertly spinned by the PN machine about events that happened over 30 years ago.
Come on let move on.
A. Zahra
Oct 25th 2009, 14:54
@John Azzopardi
"At least no one died" No at least three persons were murdered : Raymond Caruana, Nardu Debono and Wilfred Cardona. In Cardona's and Debono's case they were last seen in police custody.
@ Lino Spiteri
There is a big difference between an individual's violent behaviour, such as you and incidentally also I, experienced, and state sponsored or tolerated violence. What I and many thousands of fellow citizens were put through was state sponsored or tolerated violence. Saying it should never have happened is not enough, an outright apology is what we expect. Just a reminder: revisit Alfred Bencini's book, 'Nothing but the truth' for information on the origins of the use of violence as a political tool.
Victor Laiviera
Oct 25th 2009, 14:19
@ Dr Francis Saliba.
I see that you are repeating the false allegation that the MLP wanted " the entrenchment, in the new Constitution, of the right to practice political violence in certain circumstances".
I have shown you that this is not supported by any evidence. Repeating it here will not get you any further that it did on the other thread.
For shame.
John Azzopardi
Oct 25th 2009, 12:32
Let's move on people once and for all and address real issues. At this time, freedom of speech is not under threat and to rehash old tiimes it shows that bitterness still exist. Why not those parties involved sit down together and discuss the issue in a civil manner. At least no one died. As christians, at this point in time, shouldn't the parties involved forgive for the sake of maltese unity. That is what maturity is all about Of doesn't christian teaching does not apply to politics. I have said this many times. Maltese politicis in Malta from all sides of the of the political scene have done more harm to than anything else over the years. Peace all.
Dr francis Saliba
Oct 25th 2009, 11:45
@LinoSpiteri
Like you I never got (neither did I foolishly expect) any apology when during the 1981 elections I was kicked by a uniformed policeman in the vote counting hall. Neither did I receive any apology for the failed attempt to have me dismissed from government service by a crude frame-up that was followed immediately by a compulsory retirement “on grounds of public interest”. Neither am I holding my breath waiting for a belated expression of regret now.
An offending party must couch its unconditional apology, in unambiguous terms, so as to render it credible to, and acceptable by, the offended party. It is hardly relevant that an apology for state-condoned is considered to be adequate by someone who had previously put up, in l-Orizzont, a defense for the MLP “six points” one of which was precisely to demand the entrenchment, in the new Constitution, of the right to practice political violence in certain circumstances.
laurence schembri
Oct 25th 2009, 11:26
Mintoff`s apology was enough, Joseph Muscat did not have to offer any apologies to anyone.
In ten years time (the 40th) the Nationalists will bring up the subject again, there will never be a consensus on this Island for unity, the Nationalists simply won`t allow it.