The good, the bad and the ugly

I had no reason to dislike the man when I was young. He was an exceptional orator and he was radical.  One side of my family revered him, and his omnipresence was felt everywhere - he would hijack State TV with his long monologues and sharp narratives which, more often than not, were quite entertaining.

There is little doubt in my mind that he was a much-needed breath of fresh air to the sluggish government of Gorg Borg Olivier and more importantly, he contributed to creating the corporate image of Malta and the Maltese.

Like most people, I was impressed by Mintoff's 'socialism'. But my admiration came from a distance, at a time when I couldn't fully appreciate Mintoff for the man he really was. I had a similar impression of one of his eminent ministers, Lino Spiteri, more so after reading his 1977 book Anatomija... only to realise that under his watch as trade minister (1983 to 1987), the customs and excise department was dominated  by corruption and kickbacks. 

Spiteri has since been 'rehabilitated' by the Nationalist-friendly press, and he is a successful consultant as well as a darling to the Sunday Times, and portrays himself as the oracle of political analysis.

Mintoff too was rehabilitated when it suited the Nationalists.

Getting to know Mintoff was to be a telling experience.

I cannot deny that I liked the manner in which he stood up to the British, his long weekend at Chequers discussing a possible defence agreement with Conservative Prime Minister Ted Heath is still a vivid memory.

When he insisted that Britain triple the £5 million rent it paid each year for military facilities on Malta, it led to Britain accepting to leave the island. Relations between Mintoff and NATO were no better, and reached boiling point when Mintoff told the alliance's Secretary-General, Joseph Luns, to "shut up".

But his mathematics was slightly lop-sided. He ended docking privileges for the American Sixth Fleet, costing Malta's exchequer $80m a year in the process. That was real money.

Did we really benefit from this fixation on neutrality?

I don't really know.

He convinced Italy to pledge $95m in loans and grants on top of a military assistance deal, should a non-aligned Malta come under attack. China provided another $40m while the Soviet Union signed a fuel-bunkering agreement.

Talking to New York Times he had said: "When we took office, we had an English governor general, an English queen, English currency, a Bank of England man as the head of our central bank," he said.

"We had a police force run by a commissioner who stated openly that his loyalty was to the British crown and nobody else. This was only eight years ago. Now Malta is a republic. Everything has changed. Nothing is British anymore."

There is also little to debate on his contribution to the welfare state, the plight of women, civil marriage and yes, even health. I, for one, could not empathise with the doctors: the Maltese doctors, a network that continues to believe that it is beyond reproach and control. 

Neither was I sorry to see how he confronted Archbishop Mikiel Gonzi and the Catholic Church, though I have to say I am sad to see that Mintoff's family insisted that he should have had a Church funeral. I very much doubt he would have agreed. He may have believed in God or Christ, but he was one to underline that God, Christ and the Catholic Church were necessarily interlinked. Yesterday many of those felt the whole religious ceremony a wee bit over the top for a man many thought of as anti-clerical and an atheist.

I am surprised by the fact that his last farewell is blessed by the same bigoted Church that worked to destroy him and his party in the 60s. That experience was known as the 'Interdett' and it hardened him. It is equally sad to see that Archbishop Cremona missed the moment yesterday: such a pity that his speech-writer failed to see the long-term!

He was best known abroad for his objection to the British, but only after being snubbed by the British in 1958 for refusing his demand to be integrated into Britain; a thought that petrified the British government at the time who had the other colonies to worry about.

He visited Colonel Gaddafi's Libya several times in his first two years in office in 1971, prompting Italy to pledge $95m in loans and grants on top of a military assistance deal, should a non-aligned Malta come under attack. China provided $40m while the Soviet Union, not to be outbid, signed a lucrative fuel-storage agreement. In 1974 Malta threw off a century and a half of allegiance to the crown to become a republic within the Commonwealth.

Mintoff was an irascible character and more so when he allowed himself to be surrounded by cronies.

His allowances to some of his ministers, such as the late Patrick Holland and the late Lorry Sant - a particularly corrupt and violent minister who later turned against Mintoff - cannot be dismissed, nor his decision to allow disgraced police commissioner Lawrence Pullicino to turn the police force into a terror organisation. And his tolerance for thugs is unforgivable.

His decision to reach out to the poor and improve their lot will not be forgotten most especially by those who benefitted from it. 

However, we must not forget the price for all this. His home ownership schemes, his concept of ghettoes for government flats and his decision to allow uncontrollable planning led to the rape of the Maltese countryside. Not that this changed under  a Nationalist administration, but at least the situation is now under some form of control.

His decision to allow Lorry Sant to act as the minister responsible for planning with amazing discretionary powers and his decision to allow him to go ahead with the Building Developments Areas Act was incredible.  As was his decision to appoint Lorry Sant as Home Affairs minister responsible for the police soon after the 1981 election, when Labour won an election with less votes and more seats.

His creed of intolerance and nepotism can be seen to this day in the political structures of both political parties. We call it 'the Mintoffian syndrome' and it lives on to this day.

The ethos that says 'jew maghna jew kontra taghna.'

Yet, more importantly Mintoff created great division in the country because of his consent in allowing those around him to impose political apartheid on his political opponents. Those unworthy Nationalists were discriminated against when it came to promotions, and even transferred to Gozo.

The same political divisiveness continues to this day albeit in a more elegant fashion.

Then, like now, the traditional recipients of government contracts were well known Mintoffian supporters. The big boys of yesterday remain as popular now as their contemporary counterparts.

Yet one of the worst indictments against Mintoff was his forbearance for violence.

It was no surprise, with his habit of allowing certain characters such il-Pupa (later a professed Christian and supporter of Fenech Adami), il-Fusellu, il-Qahbu and the Zejtun clan to literally surround him sent the message that 'thuggery' ruled just fine.

His policies were not always correct. The ease with which he nationalised without any respect for the rule of law was scandalous. The so called necessity of nationalising  the Bical Bank and the National Bank are cases in point. And the naïve and stupid or not intentional sale of certain assets, such as Comino Hotel, Excelsior Hotel and Les Lapins was to put it mildly irresponsible. Needless to say, the small and specific expropriation of private property without compensation was illegal and it is still being fought in the courts of law until today.

His bulldozer tactics in education with the student worker scheme led to chaos and disruption. The pupil-worker and student worker scheme combined with the 20 points needed for private school students to enter University continued to make him a hate figure. And his numerus clausus did not help either.  It revealed his autarky streak, a dangerous throwback to Nasserian times.

Yet, in so many cases his policies were embraced by the Nationalist administration and far worse, in several instances retained.  More shocking was that individuals responsible for corruption, violence, torture, mistakes or misdemeanours under Mintoff were taken in by the Nationalist administration and integrated. Perpetrators of violence and torture including senior police officers were even given promotions under the Fenech Adami administration.

Depositions of evidence against corrupt ministers such as Lorry Sant by Whistleblowers were ignored.

The Mid-Med financial case - investigated and pinpointed in 38 volumes by Justice Anastasi - were literally ignored by Fenech Adami probably because many of the individuals involved were well known Nationalists.

Which raises the other point: could it be that many individuals simply partook of the Mintoffian creed of kickbacks and did what others did?

Many businesses in the seventies and eighties simply curried favour and just moved ahead with the tide, refusing to question the kickbacks which were part of the system in the corrupt trade and permit environment of those days.

Yet Mintoff's legacy can also be retraced to his tragic and comical obsessions.

His obsession to introduce Arabic as an obligatory subject, his decision to emphasise defunct cottage industries such as caper growing, his insistence that the only trees planted should be acacias and Eucalyptus; his ban of French and Japanese products because of trade imbalance, his decision to ban The Times of London because of its 'unfavourable' commentary form some of the many key memories of the time.

There were other unsavoury incidents. The use of the word 'Malta' was illegal, just in case you don't remember. It was called the 'Foreign Interference Act' and anyone who mentioned Malta locally or abroad was liable to criminal prosecution. 

In the end, we judge Dom Mintoff from our personal experience and perspective. In my case, it is a love-hate relationship. I don't feel comfortable with the blind adulation and hypocrisy of yesterday's event nor our acceptance of his bizarre way of implementing policies.

But his worst indictment was his refusal to halt the thuggery, the beatings by well-known Labour activists.

His decision to solve the constitutional impasse created by the less votes more seats situation in 1981-1987 came only after the untimely murder of Raymond Caruana at a PN club.

It was only then when Malta was at the brink of civil strife that he mustered the courage to run roughshod over the likes of Joe Grima and Lorry Sant in parliament and pressure his party where he was no longer leader to accept a constitutional solution to the crisis.

That impasse guaranteed that the PN won 1987. 

After 1987 he remained in the background, an influence over the weak MLP leader Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, who was retained as leader of the Labour party despite his lack of leadership qualities, and his weird politics.

The election of Alfred Sant to leader and eventually prime minister in 1996 led Mintoff to lead a campaign against him.

Once again, the aura of Mintoff against the uncompromising new leader of the party would not co-exist.

This was manifested in Mintoff's silly and ridiculous objections to the Cottonera development.

His objection had more to do with his lack of influence over Sant than with anything more substantial, much to the pleasure of the Nationalists who revelled at the internal dissent within Labour ranks.

Sant lost his government, but Mintoff continued to seek attention by entering into long rambling diatribes about Europe and international politics.

And we, as journalists, were always willing to offer him a podium where he could preach and speak his intelligible form of gobbledygook.

The past 25 years are of course not of relevance to those who idolise Mintoff, neither are the memories of his great failings.

The Labour Party has of course taken the greatest possible advantage of Mintoff's death, just in the same way Borg Olivier's demise was taken advantage in 1980, by Eddie Fenech Adami. Who would not?  It will serve them well for the next election.

Of that, I am certain.

I choose to remember Mintoff for what he was: the good, the bad and the ugly.