Karl Stagno-Navarra catches up with former FPTA chairman HARRY VASSALLO, who in 1984 fronted the Constitutional case against legislation that threatened to close down Church schools altogether
As former chairman of the Federation of Parents, Teachers Associations (FPTA), Harry Vassallo expresses “enormous satisfaction” at the news that Church schools arenow looking at a projected expansion that will allow a further intake of students over the coming years.
And well he might, considering that in 1984, he himself had been pitched headlong in a battle for the future of these selfsame schools. Speaking to MaltaToday almost 25 years later, Vassallo recounts the events that characterised the tensions of that time.
In his own words, 1984 was a “do-or-die” year for the survival of Church schools in Malta... and with them, the issue central to the entire debate: i.e., the right of parents to choose schools for their children.
During the early 1980s, Vassallo had been catapulted to the chairmanship of the FPTA, that was formed to group all the PTA’s around the country, putting him on the frontline of events that saw him engaged in round-the-clock discussions with government, the Church and related associations.
“My acceptance to lead the FPTA had practically pushed me into Hell,” he recalls while explaining that as a consequence of his daily appearances in the media, he had been ordered by the government of the day not to report any more for work as the lawyer for Lohombus Bank and the Finance Bank.
“They practically halted any income for me,” he explains, adding that notwithstanding the difficult times for his family, he chose to fight the battle anyway because he believed in the cause.
“If we gave up, it would have meant the end of Church schools in Malta,” Harry Vassallo says. “We had to fight it at all costs, because based on the experience of the Blue Sisters, once the clergy and religious orders would pull out of the schools, there was no way that they would have ever returned to Malta. This would have spelt doom for the majority of schoolchildren, who would have forcibly had to attend government schools, which at the time used to promote the declared doctrine of ‘nurturing a socialist generation’ – which none of us wanted.”
Flipping through a number of black and white photographs that show Henry at the frontline of the church schools saga, he remembers that intimidation had led to a warning about his imminent arrest with the possible charge of incitement.
“We organised numerous rallies, marches and public meetings, with an enormous one held in Hamrun, and the police just showed me they were ready to pounce on me….”
Harry Vassallo also recalls his meetings with the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Casaroli, as well as with Pope John Paul II, who expressed his concerns about the situation in Malta, where government was close to expelling the religious orders involved in education in Malta.
“As FPTA we teamed up with the Church, then led by Archbishop Joseph Mercieca, who was in negotiations with the government. They were very tense times, because the Education Act, passed by Prime Minister Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, had in fact ordered a closure of the schools by
withdrawing the licenses to operate...”
Recalling how he had to temporarily move his whole family from his house in Sliema, given the tensions and the risk he and the family ran of an attack by Socialist sympathisers, Henry Vassallo adds that he instituted a Constitutional Case against the government for his son’s right to a Church school education.
Assisted by human rights lawyer Prof. Giovanni Bonello, Harry Vassallo’s case was immediately faced with a series of abstentions from the judiciary, either because of pressure they were under, or because their own children attended to Church schools. In the end it was Judge Wallace Gulia who invoked a rare ruling that kept him as a judge to hear the case, as it was a civil right for anyone to have a member of the judiciary to hear a case even if there were grounds for recuse.
The case however fell ‘sine die’, given the developments of the early 1990s, when an agreement between the Vatican and the Maltese State was reached.
Years on, Harry Vassallo reasons that it “was a fight worth fighting.”
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