Parliament pays tribute to former Labour minister Lino Spiteri

The House of Representatives this evening paid tribute to former Labour minister Lino Spiteri, who passed away on Friday, aged 76, after a long battle with terminal illness.

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, Opposition leader Simon Busuttil and a number of MPs from both sides of the House personally paid their condolences to Spiteri’s relatives present in the House.

Muscat said Spiteri was one of the best persons to ever serve the country, something which was recognised across all political spectrum.

“He was known for his consistency and for his contribution in public life,” he said.

Focusing on his political life, Muscat said Spiteri was one of the few people who was prepared to say what he really thought, rather than what the politicians wanted to hear.

“I frequently sought his opinion on different matters,” the PM said, adding that Spiteri used to find a balance between being business-friendly and pushing forward a social agenda. “He was an advocate of the needs of businesses but he never betrayed the social-democratic ideologies.”

Muscat said a consensus developed by Spiteri and former Nationalist Minister John Dalli had led to the creation of a sound financial services system, a consensus that was carried forward by subsequent ministers and shadow ministers. 

He said, that he was fascinated by Spiteri’s way of finding a balance between the political and personal life: “Spiteri told me that politics is a phase of one’s life. He remained present in the political sphere because he, seemingly, found a happy balance.”

Muscat said Spiteri had pushed forward the philosophy that, for a person with disability, it shouldn’t be the government that decides what a person does but it should be the person to be in control of his or her life.

The PM said it was “ironic” that his funeral was held on Budget Day, when usually it was the day when everyone would turn to Spiteri’s reaction and opinion.

Muscat said Spiteri used to talk about the turbulent 60s as “a state of fact” that helped develop him in the man he had become. “He was an analyst and he held no inhibitions. That was Spiteri, a man who always respected his beliefs.”

Taking the floor, Opposition leader Simon Busuttil described Spiteri as a person who represented diversity.

“He reminds me of the youth because he was only 23 when he joined the House of Representatives. What he did should serve as an encouragement to the youths,” he said, hailing him for the political journalist and opinion writer he was.

Busuttil said Spiteri broke barriers and did not allow his disability to stop him from doing what he wanted to do. He lauded him for being an impeccable writer, an economist and a formidable political adversary “who never resorted to personal insults”.

“As a finance minister, Spiteri presented two budgets. And between these two budgets, 14 years apart, he recognised that the economy had changed and his approach changed.”

Busuttil lauded Spiteri’s political courage after taking the decision to resign as finance minister. Spiteri's last foray in politics was in 1998, having retired after resigning as finance minister from the Sant administration of 1996-1998. But he remained one of Malta's most prolific writers and political analysts, with his keen eye for detail and incisive dissection of politics never departing from him.

Busuttil commented that Spiteri’s courage was one to look up to: “Let’s face it, few are the politicians who choose to resign.”

Speaker Anglu Farrugia talked about his time when he and Spiteri used to share the same benches. Admittedly, he said, those were not easy times but one had to admire Spiteri for his courage.

Spiteri’s early start in politics saw him elected to the House at 23, serving as a Labour MP for the next 21 years. He was a member of the Labour cabinet as finance and trade minister in the 1980s, having sparred at times with the blustering Dom Mintoff.

He was also a deputy governor for the Central Bank in the 1970s, witnessing the rapid industrial changes under the Mintoff government and the nationalisation of private banks.

After the resignation of Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici in 1992 as Opposition leader, he unsuccessfuly ran for Labour leader, being beaten to the post by Alfred Sant. By 1997, he had fallen out with Sant and took the momentous decision to step down as finance minister.

Spiteri admitted that contesting the 1996 election when he disagreed with his party's pledge to remove VAT, was his gravest mistake. “When Dr Sant announced that the party would remove VAT he hadn't consulted anybody. He didn't consult me as shadow finance minister. When that happened in 1994 I should have immediately resigned, but I didn't."

He resigned from the Cabinet in 1997.  Spiteri also said he had voted for EU membership. In 2008, he was awarded Ġieħ ir-Repubblika and made Companion of the Order of Merit.