Lino Spiteri has refuted Eddie Fenech Adami’s allegation (in his recent biography) that the ex-Labour Finance Minister was among those who opposed Mr Mintoff’s views that another General Election be held in early 1982 to rectify the skewed results of that held in 1981.

There are one or two points that remain indelible on my mind about Mr Spiteri’s stint as Finance Minister in the anni di piombo of the 80s.

The lesser point, though it came later, was one of his budgets. He named that budget “Is-Sena ta’ l-Impjiegi” (The Year of Jobs).

By the time that budget had run its course a year later, unemployment in Malta had hit 10,000+, an all-time high.

One must remember that the labour force then was much smaller than it is now by some 30,000, which meant that the figure of 10,000 seeking a job hovered above 10% of the labour force. 

The other point that sticks in my mind like a sliver of bone that sticks in one’s throat is this: Less than a month after that Day of Infamy of 12th December, 1981, some 30 Labour ministers and backbenchers went on State-run TV, the national broadcaster that had long since become nothing less than the party’s main political organ, to give their views on the results of the General Election, an election in which a straight fight between two parties resulted in the party polling more than 50% of the popular votes becoming the parliamentary Opposition with three seats less than the minority Labour Party.

Sticking out like a sore thumb was Mr Mintoff’s absence.

Oh, yes, for all it’s worth now, in that election I had voted Labour.

The TV studio set consisted of two rows of chairs, on a split level, and the Labour MPs trooped in, smirking from ear to ear. 

Each MP defended the skewed result with a grin that must have gone straight through the hearts of the majority of the Maltese electorate. Each defended the result as complying with the law of the land. 

That was the Night when the Lights went out in Malta. When being legalistic overruled what was democratic. 

Among those night’s leading lights, the Night the Lights went out in Malta, was Malta’s current eminence grise, Lino Spiteri. 

His smirk, as he regurgitated what his brothers-in-arms had spewed out before him, was as endearing as theirs.

That night, when fixing my gaze on those rows of chairs, I could not help but conjure up images of a gallery: a rogues’ gallery alternating into a shooting-gallery-in-reverse. 

Mr Spiteri, the dictum of a good writer of short stories that you are is: “Re-write, re-write and re-write. And when you’ve finished re-writing, re-write... again.”

Do your readers and the rest of Malta’s electorate a favour and stick to re-writing only your short stories.

Do not try re-writing history. 

You have always given the impression that you are very much your own man. Why weren’t you man enough to repeat in public what you alleged in your regular Sunday column of another paper?  

You were man enough to go against the prevailing current in your Cabinet, so you say. Granted you were not man enough to do that in public. 

But couldn’t you have been man enough and refused to take part in that TV programme that night, the Night the Lights went out in Malta? 

You were man enough to advise Mintoff (after stepping down as prime minister) to go curl up in some corner and write his memoirs. He didn’t because he couldn’t. He knew that to do so would mean re-writing history. 

For Mintoff may have hit many highs in his time. And many lows. 

But none so low as to try re-writing history.

Joe Genovese

Birkirkara