Editorial | Sunday, 29 March 2009

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The end of the Eddie era

Love him or hate him – and it seems these are the only two available options, in a country still viscerally split down the middle – few would deny that Eddie Fenech Adami has shaped Malta’s landscape like no other politician: with the possible exception of Dom Mintoff, whose career was longer, though less politically successful.
When he steps down as President of the Republic next Saturday, Eddie will be able to look back over a political career spanning more than 30 years, including no fewer than five electoral victories as well as the successful EU referendum in 2003.
Of course, it was not all champagne and roses. Eddie rose to the PN leadership at a turbulent and often violent time, when democracy as we know it was all too often under threat. His was immediately a baptism of fire: in 1979, just two years after taking over the party leadership, his home and legal offices were ransacked, his family threatened, and several of his supporters injured in numerous scenes of political unrest.
Perhaps the most serious challenge came in 1981, when the Labour Party under Mintoff held onto government despite ostensibly losing the popular vote. The 1981 election continues to cast a long shadow over Maltese politics to this day, but will also be remembered as a test of Eddie’s mettle, at a time when his hold on the party – and later the country – had yet to solidify.
With hindsight, the PN’s leader’s decision to boycott parliament for over a year will have to go down as an astonishing political gamble, at a time when the ruling party was often accused of harbouring dictatorial ambitions. To some, it was sheer madness; but the boycott showed another side to Eddie Fenech Adami. As a strategy it worked surprisingly well, amplifying the perceived illegitimacy of the Mintoff administration, and ultimately dispelling the notion that brinkmanship and aggressive political tactics were the exclusive preserve of the Malta Labour Party.
In this respect, one can argue that Eddie Fenech Adami was a transformational figure, both as an Opposition leader and as Prime Minister between 1987 and 2004. Immediately he realigned the Nationalist Party’s ideology towards the centre left of the political spectrum, thereby sweeping the Socialist carpet from under his rivals’ feet. More to the point, he also brought a new sense of urgency to the PN rhetoric in the 1970s and 1980s – an urgency that was perhaps lacking under Borg Olivier, and which opened him to criticism for bordering on the seditious... but which all the same successfully delivered the country from the threat of serious political violence, where a lesser politician would almost certainly have precipitated full-scale conflict.
As for his career as Prime Minister, it would be well to remember Eddie for his many successes: from steering Malta into the European Union against all odds; to transforming the economy from a closed and isolationist market, to the economic liberalism so many of us were brought up to take for granted.
But of course, in a career even half as long as Eddie’s, it is inevitable that he would also have incurred enmities and made mistakes; and like all transformational politicians there will always be those who disapprove of the changes he effected.
Eddie is credited with rescuing democracy, and there is much truth in that assessment. But in many respects the democracy he restored was a democracy fashioned in his own image and likeness. Under his tutelage, the Nationalist motto of ‘Religio et patria’ became less ‘Nationalist’ and more ‘national’ (some would also say, less ‘patria’ and more ‘religio’); and despite rising to power on the battlecry of “Work, Justice Liberty”, it remains debatable whether Eddie ever achieved the levels of national reconciliation he once promised to deliver. Certainly some of the shortcomings of his predecessors were retained – notably our national bad habit of limiting public appointments almost exclusively to government ‘yes-men’ – if in more palatable forms. And while Eddie ushered in pluralism to the Maltese media, it was pluralism ‘à la Fenech Adami’: with the Church and the political parties given their radio licences a year ahead of everyone else.
In the final analysis – which in any case will have to wait, for Eddie’s career is not quite over yet – the biggest mistake of all was arguably not made by Eddie Fenech Adami himself; but rather by his followers, who deified their leader to unsustainable proportions. Viewed from this god-like angle he is bound to disappoint all but the most faithful Nationalist acolytes. Viewed as a politician, complete with flaws, there is no doubt that he has been an extraordinary influence on the entire country.

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