NEWS | Wednesday, 01 April 2009

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Michael Falzon

It is one of those ironies of fate: had George Borg Olivier not refused to consider that he would be succeeded as PN leader in his lifetime and had he not stuck on to his post with all the skills and stratagems for which he was well-known by his contemporaries, Eddie Fenech Adami would not have been his successor. He then turned out to be the right man for the right moment.
I got involved in the Nationalist Party towards the end of 1973, when the party was in the doldrums – when Mintoff had already overwhelmed Malta and started pushing it in what, I instinctively felt, was the wrong direction.
By the time Eddie was elected PN leader, the Nationalist Party had lost the 1976 election and I had even managed to become an MP via a casual election. The five years between 1971 and 1976 had not been wasted: the old party statute that was an anachronism and was replaced by a new one that took the best of two or three years to be charted and approved. The party had had been given a real earth-shaking and radical change and it was the ‘new’ party statute that led, inevitably in those circumstances, to the process of the change of leadership.
Eddie had made a mark via his appearances on television. The previously unknown lawyer from Birkirkara who had failed to get elected in the 1962 and 1966 elections – and who entered Parliament via a co-option following the death of a Nationalist MP – suddenly became the talk of the town. The way he made his arguments struck a cord with the viewers. Somehow he always sensed the people’s mood. Whether television was made for Eddie or Eddie was made for television is a moot point. In the end it was television that made him!
In the 1976 election he garnered a large number of first preference votes; his tally was surpassed only by those of Dom Mintoff and George Borg Olivier. He was the PN’s rising star and it was obvious that he had become a leadership contender – something that would have been considered absurd three or four years previously.
After the 1976 election, it took some time as well as a lot of manoeuvring within the party before the race for the leadership was on. That is, of course, another story, to be told elsewhere in the future.
When the race was on, it was actually a race between Eddie Fenech Adami and Guido de Marco, even though Censu Tabone also contested and – predictably – came a distant third in the first vote. An open political party leadership contest was something practically unknown in Maltese politics. We had been born, and bred on a diet of ‘Mintoff vs Borg Olivier’ for so long that the idea of such a contest was a novelty. I was one of those who backed Eddie from the very start, with no disrespect to the other contenders. I reckoned that he was the best bet if the PN – and the whole country – were ever to manage to get rid of the Mintoffian yoke. Eddie took the contest in his stride with the three contestants holding small district and local meetings to talk to all councillors. He successfully put across his ‘vision’ for the PN’s future. When Guido told one of these gatherings that the country needed a ‘Winston Churchill’ with the implication that he was the man to fill that role, Eddie responded by telling his next gathering that he was also capable of acting as a ‘Winston Churchill’, while actually lighting a cigar... Those present took the message: you have to vote for the real thing and not for the trappings that could be easily put on and off.
The majority of PN councillors opted for Eddie and after the second vote – that was a direct two-horse race – Guido withdrew his nomination. Subsequently Eddie more than surpassed the 75% approval vote needed for his election. Eddie’s first speech from which the best known quote is ‘Qalbna mal-Ħaddiema’ (Our heart is with the workers) set the tone of his leadership: he led the PN to forage in Labour’s traditional electorate, enough to reach a majority made up of the rainbow coalition that eventually won the day in 1981 and 1987.
In those dark days we believed – and dreamt – that Eddie would be the man to redeem the country from the dark, narrow, blind alley in which it had been steered. Eventually the dream was realised in May 1987 – but a lot of turbulent water had yet to pass under bridge.
On Eddie’s taking over the PN Leadership, the ‘new’ party statute and structure fell into place and started to make sense. The party had come back from the dead! Mintoff’s Labour Party reacted savagely – after each of his speeches, one Minister after the other made official statements in Parliament to ridicule some particular aspect of the speech. The Labour media ridiculed Eddie’s relative inexperience by referring to him – as well as depicting him in cartoons – as a baby. It was obvious that Mintoff was facing what to him must have been an unknown quantity.
Then came the infamous Black Monday, with Labour’s rent-a-crowd going haywire and attacking Eddie’s home in Birkirkara. His family had to flee over the rooftop and all his belongings were scattered in the street. Never had a Maltese political leader suffered such a humiliation at the hands of his political adversaries. Eddie withstood the attack bravely. He got to know about it via a telephone call while in the Opposition’s room in Parliament, practically at the same time that Guido came in with the news that the Times building was in flames. He immediately requested to see Dom Mintoff, told him what had happened and went on to say that if the crowd were to go on and attack the PN headquarters in Pieta’, he would not be in a position to restrain a backlash. The country was on the verge of a civil war. Mintoff ordered the Commissioner of Police to ensure that the PN headquarters would not be attacked and soon after the crowd dissipated.
It was the day when Eddie put country before himself and his family. He had passed a very severe test that any political leader would prefer to avoid.
Even during those terrible times, Eddie was looking ahead at a bright future with Malta’s lot being anchored with the European Union. It was obviously more of a political decision than an economic one. But Eddie had still to deliver the country from the madness it was embroiled in.
The 1981 election was the first one that the PN contested under his leadership, and it was won by none other than a gerrymandering con. We took some time to comprehend what had happened: until someone added the first preference votes and realised that the PN had garnered a majority of votes. Immediately Eddie also realised that the country could not accept the result lying down as if nothing had happened and Eddie launched a five year campaign to ensure that it would not happen again. Eddie metamorphosed the PN into a national campaign for real democracy, speaking incessantly in countless mass meetings. Once, when the Executive was discussing on of the party’s annual report, it transpired that the party had organised 40 mass meetings in 12 months, leaving only 12 free Sundays. I cynically congratulated Eddie for repeating the same message in 40 different ways…
Eventually we made it to the Constitutional amendments on the eve of the 1987 election, but only after the rent-a-crowd went so berserk that even Mintoff had to come to his senses.
On a glorious spring day in May 1987, Eddie Fenech Adami kept his promise and delivered us. He became Prime Minister and Malta suddenly had a future.
For this the country owes him its everlasting gratitude.

Michael Falzon is a former Nationalist MP and was a Cabinet minister under Fenech Adami

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