Reading Lino Spiteri’s article (The Sunday Times, August 26), I could not help but observe his difficulty when considering the two sides of Dom Mintoff. Whereas Spiteri had little difficulty describing the “best of times”, as he put it, he was all over the place when trying to fathom “the worst of times”.

Spiteri tried, but in the end he merely glossed over “the worst of times” when violence against Mintoff’s opponents and sustained human rights abuses were the order of the day. Presumably, Spiteri does remember that Mintoff’s government, in which he served as a minister, was condemned by most local and international human rights organisations.

The question that should have been dealt with was whether the violence unleashed on the opponents of the Labour government was part of a strategy to subdue opponents or whether it was due to a violent faction which the Labour government could not control.

My recollection of those times is that the violence was a strategy that Mintoff adopted to suppress. Stating that during his time welfare and social services improved is no excuse for the violence inflicted.

Subsequent Nationalist governments also improved welfare and social services, but they also strengthened human rights.

Unfortunately for Spiteri, the edition of The Sunday Times that published his article also published a Mintoff quote after the attack on Eddie Fenech Adami’s home and family. Rather than unreservedly condemning such a heinous attack, Mintoff tried to minimise it by saying that such an attack was “the result of spontaneous actions after provocations”. Those are hardly the words of a democrat.

If such violence was the act of a “small rowdy group of pseudo-Labour hooligans and policemen” then the question is: Why did the Mintoff government not stop such a “small group”? Was it was because they served to intimidate the Socialists’ opponents or that they could not be stopped? If the answer is the latter, then surely one is entitled to know why such a “small group” of hooligans could not be stopped.

Perhaps Spiteri can use his extensive contacts within the Labour Party to delve into the real reasons for such a dereliction of responsibility by the Socialist government in which he served as a senior minister.