In his column last week, Lino Spiteri wrote about what he called ‘Fenech Adami speculations’ and took Eddie Fenech Adami to task for having stated in his autobiography that with regard to the possibility of holding an early election after the perverse electoral result of the 1981 “a number of his Cabinet members were opposed to this, particularly his finance minister Lino Spiteri”.
In his article, Spiteri asked: “Speculation aside, what are the facts?”
It so happened that at the time I was the editor of the Nationalist daily In-Nazzjon Tagħna (with the word ‘nazzjon’ deleted as a result of an anti-democratic and anti-constitutional law introduced by the Labour government) and I can vividly recall what was going on in the very early days after that perverse election result.
The general election was held on Saturday, December 12, 1981, but the official result was not made known before the following Tuesday night.
For those who might have forgotten, in that election, the Nationalist Party polled 114,195 votes to Labour’s 109,990, with the PN gaining 51 per cent of the popular vote and the Labour Party obtaining a three-seat parliamentary majority.
An editorial in Times of Malta on December 17, 1981, succinctly described the result as follows: “The situation is locally unprecedented in that we never had a party polling itself more than 50 per cent of the popular vote without obtaining a majority of the seats in Parliament.”
As for Spiteri himself, one should stick to facts, bare facts, like those that emerge from contemporary writings in local newspapers.
I can even now – 33 years after the events – recall my astonishment at seeing Spiteri being the one and only Labour ‘heavyweight’ to come out so openly and distinctly to defend Labour’s position at the time and vehemently making the point that it was politically and morally correct to govern the country for the next five years notwithstanding the fact that Labour was repudiated at the polls by the majority of the Maltese people.
Lino Spiteri attacked Fenech Adami for saying that Dom Mintoff should not accept to form a government
Spiteri, rightfully branded as a ‘moderate’, wrote two back-page articles in l-orizzont, on two consecutive days, on December 16 and 17, 1981, during those crucial and delicate days following the perverse result.
In his first article, Spiteri justified what happened by reiterating that our proportional representation system, though often giving an equitable result when comparing the percentage of votes with the percentage of seats, does sometimes give variations, (as if this was a fluke and not a manoeuvred gerrymandering of the districts).
He also stated that “now the government is in Labour’s hands, a legitimate government, elected through a most democratic process under the watchful eyes of the general public”.
In his second article – a fierce and politically-charged piece under the heading of ‘In-Nazzjonalisti m’għandhomx jilagħbu man-nar’ (‘The Nationalists should not play with fire’), Spiteri attacked Fenech Adami for saying that Dom Mintoff should not agree to form a government since the party achieving a majority of votes should not be in Opposition.
It is very relevant to point out that Spiteri wrote these two articles before Mintoff made his first speech after the result, during the Labour Party’s general conference.
I also remember writing a front-page article for In-Nazzjon of December 17, 1981, to rebut, point by point, Spiteri’s article in l-orizzont of December 16. Significantly, my article was entitled: ‘Il-Maġġoranza tal-Maltin mal-PN... jgħid x’jgħid Lino Spiteri’, (‘The majority of the Maltese are with the PN... whatever Lino Spiteri says’).
I need not add anything else. My intention is only to reinforce what Fenech Adami states in his book regarding this particular period of our political history.
I am sure that Spiteri, as a veteran journalist himself, agrees that facts are sacred and should not be bandied about.
Victor Camilleri is a former editor of In-Nazzjon and Il-Mument.