Reappraising Giorgio

One of Dr Alexander Borg Olivier’s first memories in life was when at the age of five, the home telephone rang before nine in the morning, and he suddenly saw his father turn white in the face and get down on the floor sobbing. Soon afterwards, a driver burst into the room with some news which the young Sander could just about understand.

‘Miet Nerik’. Malta’s prime minister had just passed away.

Sander’s father, 39, was Nerik’s deputy and automatically his successor, but that was something he had hardly realized or cared about right then.

An icon of Nationalist resistance to colonialism, Nerik had been the most persecuted Maltese politician ever. His deputy, Dr Giorgio Borg Olivier, had long been close to him, having first been elected to the Council of Government, together with him and Sir Ugo Mifsud, in 1939, at the age of 27, the first election he had ever contested. He had seen seen his mentor being court-martialed, imprisoned, interned and exiled.

As Mifsud had died while opposing exile and Mizzi was under arrest, it was the young Borg Olivier who had picked up the mantle of anti-colonial opposition. Upon his repatriation after the war, Borg Olivier had helped Mizzi reassert his position in the party as its leader. Borg Olivier’s tears were a heartfelt expression of reverential shock and sorrow.

This was one of the revelations that emerged from a 50th Independence anniversary commemoration last Thursday in Valletta, at an AZAD packed to the rafters and often bursting with emotion. Alexander, known en famille as ‘Sander’, is the late prime minster’s eldest and only surviving son, who has been away from Malta mostly on UN business for 40 years.

He recalled, among other things, that he had been with his father on 20th August, 1962 at the Savoy Hotel in London (as he had needed some medical treatment) when the prime minister had written to the colonial minister Duncan Sandys and demanded Independence for Malta ’as a matter of urgency’.  He affectionately recalled too how his father would retain his calm and composure even in adversity: he had never heard him shout or swear.

He also paid a hearty tribute to his mother, Alexandra, known as ‘Alex’, a Mattei, who had been arguably his father’s greatest canvasser and a popularly trusted figure and intermediary in town and village alike.

The conference was also addressed by Dr Alfred Bonnici, a leading Borg Olivier loyalist from the Qrendi district, who served as Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1966 to 1971 and later as a Nationalist MP. Born in 1934, Dr Bonnici was also Borg Olivier’s personal doctor. He was one of six Nationalist MPs who, in a free vote in parliament in 1974, had voted against the bill to make Malta a republic.  Borg Olivier had implored Mintoff to hold a referendum about the issue since the existing Malta independence Constitution had been approved in a referendum. ‘How do you expect me to go against the expressed will of a majority of the electorate by supporting your ‘republic’ bill in parliament?’ Dr Bonnici remembered Borg Olivier telling Mintoff. ‘If a majority approve of what you want, that would be fine’, Borg Olivier held, a view which Bonnici fully shared.

However Mintoff was adamant that he did not want to hold a referendum. He threatened using section 6, which held the Constitution to be the supreme law, but which was not entrenched, so strictly speaking it could be changed or removed by a simple majority if need be. That would have been altogether against the spirit of the Constitution itself but it was a ruse Mintoff threatened to resort to, had not agreement been reached with enough Nationalist MPs to garner a two-thirds majority in the House in favour of changing Malta’s status from that of a constitutional monarchy to a republic. Borg Olivier, being a man of principle, would have none of it, so much so that even when he swore allegiance to the republic he conditioned his oath by saying ‘stante il-validita’ taghha’, that is depending on whether it (the republican constitution) is valid or not.

Borg Olivier wanted to retain the link with the monarchy and the Queen partly because he wanted to attract foreign investors and settlers to the newly-independent state – in fact several British and other European settlers from East Africa, South Africa and elsewhere in the onetime British Empire then being dismantled did choose Malta to retire to. These, Bonnici added,  became known as ‘the six penny settlers’ although they were well-to-do. They bought luxurious residences and effectively kicked off the economic diversification project.

Describing Borg Olivier emphatically as ‘an honest leader’, Bonnici noted a number of instances in Malta and in Britain where Borg Olivier would scoff contemptuously at any attempt to bribe or intimidate him by any means. He was viscerally opposed to Labour’s ‘Integration’ plan and he dismissed any induced fears regarding Independence. Whenever he felt that he was being pressurized in this way, he would call the meeting to an abrupt halt and walk out.

According to Dr Bonnici, Mintoff had been inclined to boycott the 1962 election because of the humiliating conditions proposed by the commission led by Sir Hilary Blood. They called this ‘the bloody constitution’. However, Borg Olivier told him: ‘Dumink, let us contest the election and whichever one of us gets elected he will immediately proceed to London, even before convening parliament, and change the reserved clauses we object to.’ Borg Olivier’s party was returned and that is exactly what the new prime minister did.

Another incident narrated with much gusto by Dr Bonnici concerned Borg Olivier’s objection to the proposed procedure during Elizabeth II’s coronation ceremony. Borg Olivier wanted Malta’s flag and a place in the proceedings, which approximated Malta’s status to that of the Dominions rather than colonies such as Fiji or Samoa. He passed a motion in parliament saying that Malta would boycott the ceremony unless this were done. Churchill called him and agreed to his demands, but then called again to say they did not have an extra carriage as these had all been allocated. Well? Soon afterwards Churchill called again to say the Queen was lending him hers. At this point Borg Olivier said he had another request. He wanted the carriage to be driven by officers of the Malta Police Force. So indeed it was.

This resilience was a factor, as I mentioned, that no other than Mintoff had commented upon. Writing in The Malta Independent on Sunday in July, 1992, Mintoff had conceded that Borg Olivier ‘did not suffer from illusions of grandeur.’

He was ‘as suave and gentle as a mother to her babe-in-arms.’ He was also, said Mintoff, as slow and cautious as the proverbial tortoise. ‘George scoffed at the hundred days’ test; when he dug his feet, however, all the British cavalry and all the supporters around him could not shift him one inch.’

Although Borg Olivier’s charisma was very different from Mintoff’s, his sense of direction and of vision were not easily faulted. This could be seen from his unwavering quest for Independence in the Commonwealth, and his determination to see Malta as an independent, democratic, European and world-recognized sovereign state within the Western fold.

His 1965 speech to the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly held that Malta’s joining of the Council was ‘like returning home after a long absence’; and he spoke almost prophetically of a would-be European unity beyond the West-East divide. When in 1967 Britain tried to deviate from the 1964 defence-finance agreements he mobilized the entire country after him in opposition and showed Britain the door, until a compromise agreement was reached. Malta’s association agreement with the EEC in 1970 paved the way to her eventual EU membership in 2004. In the meantime, during the 1960s, he oversaw the creation of a developmental infrastructure which laid the foundations for self-sufficiency and relative prosperity. Emigration practically came to a halt.

Borg Olivier’s legacy was as much one of an independent statehood as of an internal freedom where the separation of powers functioned, law and order prevailed, and the economy took off in industry, tourism, manufacture, while education and secondary and tertiary levels began to make giant strides ahead in preparation for a new future that beckoned requiring more varied specializations and skills.

This was the same person who in 1942, alone in the Council of Government, had repeatedly called for divisions and, in the heyday of colonialism, voted against the deportation of Maltese without charge or trial. Two years earlier, together with Sir Ugo Mifsud, he had voted against the Constitutional-Labour motion that Maltese internees be also deprived of their pensions. The motion was defeated by one vote thanks to the support of no other than the (British) Lieutenant Governor and the nominated bench!

Borg Olivier died in 1980 at the age of 69 and was given a state funeral, which Mintoff attended.

Professor Frendo is Borg Olivier’s biographer. His most recent books are Europe and Empire (2012), Party Politics in a Fortress Colony (3rd ed. 2013) and Dimech’s Lost Prison Poems (2014).