Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/416739
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 16 NOVEMBER 2014 6 News INTERTWINED between business, politics and literature the Qormi born Spiteri hailed from a rare breed that com- bined sobriety and business acumen with European so- cialist values. In 1992 he came close to winning the first round in a three way contest but was sur- prisingly beaten by Alfred Sant, a fellow novelist with less politi- cal baggage having not served in the post-1981 cabinet of La- bour ministers. Spiteri may have made a different sort of leader for the Labour Party, sober and punctilious as Al- fred Sant but more ration- al, and less messianic than either Joseph Muscat or Dom Mintoff. Spiteri expressed his more idealistic and intellectual side in writing, something which endeared him to young ideal- ists, a trait that some found it hard to reconcile with his business interests. Surely he was one of the few Labour ministers from the 1980s stable whose reputation remained unscathed despite serving in a Cabinet mired in ac- cusations of violence and corruption, pos- sibly benefiting from his "rehabilitation" in the Nationalist Party's books after falling out with Alfred Sant in 1997. He jealously pro- tected his reputation, recently going to great lengths to rebut Eddie Fenech Adami's claim in his recent biography that he was among those who opposed Mintoff's views that another gen- eral election be held in early 1982 to rectify the 1981 anomaly. Like Alfred Sant and Joseph Muscat, Spiteri did not belong to the medical or legal professions. Nei- ther was he a product of the party's media machine. In fact he owed his business- friendly reputation to his experience in the private sector. In some ways Spiteri gave his party a connection to a part of the financial es- tablishment. Up to 1970, Lino Spiteri was research officer with the Malta Chamber of Commerce. In 1973 he became chairman of the Central Bank of Malta, a post he held until 1980. Later he served as financial management con- sultant mostly to manufacturing concerns and on the board of a number of companies includ- ing: Medavia, Tumas Finance and Bortex – reportedly, it was Spiteri who suggested the Easysell name for the Tumas Fenech owned company. Possibly, his financial in- dependence made him less likely to follow his political masters blindly but it may well have exposed him to conflicts of interests had he been elected leader. Yet despite his prox- imity to big business interests, he re- gretted the drift to the centre of both major parties whom he criticized for endorsing tax cuts for the more well- off. Commenting on Labour's endorse- ment of the 2012 budget tax cuts proposed by the outgoing PN gov- ernment, Spiteri had this to say: "In 55 years observing, practising and analysing politics, I have never seen the likes of this social obscenity from either party". In the vein of a traditional socialist he remained an advocate of taxation as an instrument of social justice. Life under the patriarch At 23 years of age Lino Spiteri was elected in parliament through a bye- election for Albert Hyzler's Qormi seat in 1962. He lost his seat at 27 to regain it again when he was 41. He received his political baptism of fire in the atmosphere of the Church interdict. He recalls telling Bishop Gerada how "my wife and I had been married in the sacristy, and how my uncle Gamri 'Amleto' Spiteri had been buried in unconsecrated ground after a roof fell in and a beam from it wounded him mortally." After Labour was elected to power in 1971, Spiteri served as head of re- search at the Central Bank when a run on the privately-owned National Bank of Malta in December 1972 saw the Labour government forc- ing shareholders to sign over their shares – controversially without any compensation – to the State. Writing in 2012, Spiteri disputed the main grievances of the National Bank shareholders, who have always contended that the bank's solidity was deliberately weakened by gov- ernment-instigated rumours that prompted the run, in a bid to na- tionalise the bank – today the Bank of Valletta. In his Times Business column, Spiteri disputed this ver- sion of events, saying that as head of research he had been privy to the reports on the financial state of the bank, a major lender at the time to Malta's fledgling manufacturing, construction and tourism industries. "The conclusions were worrying," Spiteri said of reports he submitted with the inspection unit at the Cen- tral Bank. "So much so that the Cen- tral Bank drew the attention of the minister of finance to them." Spiteri recalled that in the first Cabinet meeting after 1981, Mintoff "faintly wondered whether he should govern or call another election." In the ensuing brief discussion, Spiteri asked whether the country would be thrown into confusion without a government and what if the result proved to be the same. Spiteri insists that Mintoff did not test the opinion in the Cabinet or the parliamentary group. "He never brought up the subject again in the few Cabinet meetings held thereaf- ter, until he resigned." Spiteri served as Mintoff's finance minister between 1981 and 1983. But he refused to work at Castille, fearing constant interference from Mintoff. He also served as minister of trade and economic planning under Kar- menu Mifsud Bonnici between 1983 and 1987. Despite his participation in Min- toff's and KMB's governments, Spi- teri still managed to present himself as a moderniser in his clash with Joe Brincat and Alfred Sant in the 1992 Lino Spiteri, his Business-friendly but intellectually on the left, the oldschool politician came close to taking Labour to the European social democratic mainstream. BY JAMES DEBONO Dominic Fenech on Spiteri, who was born without his left arm. "He was disabled, suffered from it, overcame it, and became the stronger for it."