EDDIE AQUILINA on the marks of a leader who went beyond the old notions of left and right, winning over adversity time and again
What is the indelible mark Eddie Fenech Adami has left on Malta through a long career that has straddled most important offices of state?
You can make an endless list of his achievements, but, in essence: he brought openness to a country whose default setting tended towards isolation; he saw opportunities where others saw difficulties, and those opportunities are now benefiting large swathes of our population; and he had confidence in the Maltese – a confidence that has been repaid time and again in his record of electoral victories. In 1977, when he took over the PN’s leadership, Eddie Fenech Adami had the foresight to shun the posturing of Dom Mintoff who had been Prime Minister for the previous six years. Never pompous or presumptuous, he perceived that what Malta needed was not post-colonial theatrics that were at least two decades past their sell-by date, but the confidence and progress to catch up with the rest of what was then Western Europe.
His first big test came early and with intensity: how to react to the 1981 election that Labour stole. It was easy to race to a bloodbath. And there was more than a stolen election: corruption was a way of life; unemployment alleviated only by thousands of irregular government jobs; there was the political violence Fenech Adami himself experienced with his family, the Caruana family in Gudja, unions, NGOs and the Church; socialist controls on anything and everything; and a general air of Malta becoming a Socialist police state.
Eddie Fenech Adami made the Nationalists more than a popular peaceful political force – he forged a national movement to convince Malta of the openness of a European way as the political prerequisite for a country of opportunity.
The long campaign to win back the very essence of democracy paid off in the momentous 1987 election. It was not an easy start when Eddie Fenech Adami took his first oath of office, a full five and a half years late. He inherited a morally bankrupt Malta, lacking even the most basic infrastructure, with high unemployment despite the worldwide economic boom of the mid-1980s. But in difficulty he saw opportunity; he was confident the Maltese could deliver.
The transformation Fenech Adami brought about was as wide as it was significant: thousands of productive jobs in the private sector, an infrastructure befitting a modern economy, a doubling of Malta’s foreign reserves from Lm400 million to Lm900 million, thousands of students at University, a widening of the social safety net, a new concept of solidarity that goes beyond the state, institutionalised social dialogue in what is now the MCESD, huge investment in public and Church schools, a share-owning democracy harnessing the productivity and efficiency of privatisation, a modern hospital in building and equipment, a wide programme of heritage protection, sustained economic growth in renewed manufacturing and new sectors such as maritime, technology and financial services... you can go on.
Yet, like many great leaders, Fenech Adami met electoral adversity in 1996. His response? Perseverance despite the scribes who were then telling him to go, but who did not want to see Labour’s deep fault-lines and contradictions. Then, like picking up a discarded diamond and dusting it to rediscover its full brilliance, the electorate gave Fenech Adami his third electoral victory in 1998 to add European Union membership to his achievements.
Again, this came in the face of adversity. Europe did not come out of an organic popular movement, but out of the vision of Fenech Adami. Back in 1979 he made EU membership the main plank of his party’s platform before Labour’s dalliance with the likes of Kim Il Sung and the Ceaucescus. In the EU issue, he also had to face the doom and gloom of KMB and Alfred Sant, and even Joseph Muscat whose television programmes went to show that progressive open politics was being forged by Fenech Adami in his late sixties, and opposed by Muscat in his late twenties. Labour’s doom and gloom he countered with his vintage message: fiducja.
His crowning glory came on those fateful days of 8 March and 12 April 2003, when he convinced the electorate of our European way and a fourth mandate he immediately fulfilled in Athens.
And then his foresight again, choosing the time for the PN to elect a new leader, giving Lawrence Gonzi enough time to prove himself in the rest of the legislature, with Eddie Fenech Adami acceding to the presidency – a fitting holder of an office of state he helped to create from the Nationalist side when he was able to bridge with Labour in 1974 to fashion a settled Constitution with which all political parties agreed. And, as President, Fenech Adami proved the scribes wrong yet again, fulfilling his duties with propriety and dignity.
The essence of Eddie Fenech Adami’s main achievements is that he went beyond the old notions of right versus left, of liberty versus equality. He instilled confidence in the ability of the Maltese despite starting with huge handicaps, brought about opportunity, emphasized solidarity and values, led us to Europe as political, economic and cultural openness: this is the fruit of Eddie Fenech Adami’s labour.
At the end of a political career spanning four decades, he leaves the mark of openness, opportunity and confidence long to be prized by the people he led and served.
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In 1977, when he took over the PN’s leadership, Eddie Fenech Adami had the foresight to shun the posturing of Dom Mintoff who had been Prime Minister for the previous six years. Never pompous or presumptuous, he perceived that what Malta needed was not post-colonial theatrics that were at least two decades past their sell-by date, but the confidence and progress to catch up with the rest of what was then Western Europe.
