From Mr J. Agius

I followed with interest the skirmish between a certain Anthony Camilleri from Sliema and Foreign Affairs Minister Michael Frendo.

Dr Frendo attacked Mr Camilleri’s letter calling it “pathetic” and “characterized by half-baked ideas, flimsy analysis and a fossilized colonialist view of the Commonwealth”.

I made some comparisons between Mr Camilleri’s letter (TMIS, 2 December) and Dr Frendo’s article (The Times, 1 December):

Frendo: “The regional method is strongest in the United Nations and its agencies. The Commonwealth, and this is a loss, may now have joined this logic.”

Camilleri: “It is very unlikely in the present circumstances for African, Caribbean and Asian States to vote for an EU country.”

Frendo: “The Foreign Office mandarins of certain countries pressurized India to field a candidate” (a Freudian slip on Dr Frendo’s part: only Britain calls its Foreign Affairs Ministry “the Foreign Office”) and “in the end, together with the help of some ‘big fellas’, they pulled together in the last hours of this candidacy to achieve their result” (the only “big fella” in the Commonwealth is Britain, New Zealand and Australia do not satisfy that appellation).

Camilleri: “The Commonwealth is the former British empire, and it is therefore natural to expect Britain to call the shots.”

Frendo: “I was the only other candidate heavily involved with Commonwealth tasks, as both chair of the CMAG and chair of Commonwealth connects.”

Camilleri: “Dr Frendo wasted a lot of precious energy, which he could have used for better ends within the EU.”

I don’t see much difference between what Mr Camilleri argued and what Dr Frendo himself wrote.

I therefore fail to understand Dr Frendo’s letter of 9 December in The Malta Independent on Sunday in which he called Mr Camilleri’s letter an “emotional reaction”. To my mind, it was a cold-blooded, almost surgical, attempt to unveil Dr Frendo’s true political credentials. This makes me wonder whether this Mr Camilleri is really a pseudonym writing on behalf of some other, possibly new, candidate on the tenth district...

John Agius

SWIEQI