NEWS | Wednesday, 01 April 2009

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A love-hate figure par excellence

WENZU MINTOFF on the secret of Eddie’s success; and also the divisiveness of his legacy

Eddie Fenech Adami: a very ordinary man who became a quite an extraordinary politician.
An avid church goer with a typical Maltese housewife, Mary, always by his side, Fenech Adami evoked the traditional aspirations of Malta’s piccola borghesia, working hard for the family and being at peace with one’s soul by scrupulously following whatever the local church has to say. Recollections of Fenech Adami’s first years as ‘Kap tal-Partit Nazzjonalista’ would have him driving his own mustard coloured Morris Marina and with a fishing rod in his hand, on a small frejgatina in summer at St Paul’s Bay together with his children. Once also described in a rather slighting manner as an ordinary village lawyer by none other than Daphne Caruana Galizia. party propaganda during the 1981 electoral campaign depicted Eddie Fenech Adami fixing a broken washing machine at home, or sitting on a stool and sipping tea from a tin mug at a typical Qormi bakery.
Hardly the stiffest competition one could imagine at that time to beat ‘il-Perit’: the colossus of Maltese politics, in their first and last direct wrestling match before the infamous 1981 general elections.
Fenech Adami’s election as party leader in March 1977 marked the closing stages of post-colonial politics wherein Dom Mintoff excelled, and the commencement of post-modern politics where Mintoff was somewhat at a loss. Having got used to Borg Olivier as his eternal sparring partner for 30 years or so, it was not easy for Dom Mintoff to adjust to the generational change that took place in the PN’s leadership. Fenech Adami’s election as Opposition Leader was to gradually transform the PN from a sluggish, unenergetic retrograde type of party in Borg Olivier’s time, into a mass party with the proficient organisational structure and skilful back-up that we know today.
Mintoff enjoyed deriding Fenech Adami in public meetings by calling him ‘vavu’, and Labour cartoonists followed suit by representing him as a toddler in diapers. Very similar to what the Nationalists are doing just right now, when they portray Joseph Muscat as a youngster playing politics on a Playstation. Nonetheless, Fenech Adami proved to be a formidable opponent to Dom Mintoff and all those who succeeded him at the helm of the Labour Party, winning by hook or crook five out of the six general elections he contested as party leader.
The key to Dr Fenech Adami’s extraordinary political success was brought about by his being a quite ordinary man, living a very ordinary life. But ironically it was the ransacking of Fenech Adami’s Birkirkara house and the attack on his family in 1979 that actually transformed him into a national symbol of resistance. Labour’s irascibility, intolerance and overreaction in those turbulent times, contributed in no small manner towards the building up of Fenech Adami’s political stature. The Nationalists portrayed themselves as martyrs and victims of Labour’s excesses, when if all truth be told, they were very much in command of the situation, predicting exactly how the Labourities would overreact for each and every provocation. With such an easy prey invariably swallowing their bait, the Labourites at that time played plainly into the hands of the Nationalists. The detonation of bombs on the threshold of the houses of several Labour government sympathisers, is one of those political mysteries that remain unresolved till this very day. Those were the times when the Nationalists began to develop a cutting edge in so far as political strategic thinking is concerned, which advantage they continued to uphold over the years.
During Fenech Adami’s formative years as party leader, the Nationalists managed to forge a wide based, loosely formed coalition of people who, despite their disparate social backgrounds and conflicting interests, converged nonetheless on the PN as their natural political choice. The fact that the country sorely needed a change after 16 years of Labour rule, was definitely a coagulating factor that extended the Nationalists’ appeal beyond their traditional electoral base. But I would attribute Fenech Adami’s successive electoral victories to one singular factor, his precise reading and rendering of the psyche of the average typical Maltese who would forego practically everything for his family, but would hardly give a hoot as regards the common good.
Fenech Adami’s political strategies mirrored exactly the strengths, weaknesses, emotions and idiosyncrasies that make the typical Maltese character tick. I would even dare to say that Fenech Adami’s overtly pro EU membership stance was downright successful mainly because it was built up on what actually makes the average Maltese tick.
As opposed to Dom Mintoff who endeavoured to emancipate and re-mould society – perhaps too radically and much too paternistically for the tastes of many Maltese – Fenech Adami sought to rock the boat the least possible, to the extent that he persistently refused to enact legislative changes that have been long overdue, such as the introduction of divorce.
But after so many years in power, Fenech Adami failed to realise that in the meantime Maltese society had changed so much from within, that his government had begun to appear out of synch, particularly as regards civil liberties and ethical issues where the Catholic Church still expected to have a decisive say.
In his first years of government, Fenech Adami realised significant progress by projecting stability at home and abrod in our foreign relations, which was crucial to attracting foreign direct investment on which our tiny island more or less depends. Prior to the 1987 election Fenech Adami had pleged in one of his famous ‘20 punt’ that Malta will become one nation and that national reconciliation will be achieved. But 22 years down the road, this remains by and large a dream that has not come true. We are still very much a divided, polarised nation, where half of the population feels left out and sidelined, if not outrightly discriminated against. Every other five years a virtual ‘democratic dictatorship’ is installed in power, a system of government that hardly leaves any meaningful breathing space for civil society to roam in, where Parliament has been relegated to a nonessential rubber-stamping role.
Fenech Adami’s peculiar ‘solution’ towards addressing the perennial monophonic imbalance in State broadcasting, was to create a permanent stereophonic imbalance between party political stations that oddly balance each other out. Unsurprisingly enough Fenech Adami also reneged on his pledge in the White Paper ‘Il-Bidla Tkompli’ published in 1994, whereby donations – alias bribes – to political parties should be regulated by law. The present anarchic state of affairs where transparency and accountability are completely absent as far as party financing is concerned, has had the effect of creating a democratic deficit if not a threat to democracy, where those with infinite financial means feel at liberty to buy undue influence through politicians who are more or less at their beck and call.
Fenech Adami, as in the case of the handful of politicians of fame that this country has produced, radiated extremely strong feelings, a love-hate figure par excellence, adulated and adored by his followers, and reviled and derided by his opponents. His complete retirement from the political scene will assist us all in coming to terms with this dominant political figure in an objective and balanced manner.

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