Senior figures in the Nationalist Party who predicted defeat in the 1996 general election were considered defeatist, President Emeritus Guido de Marco has revealed in his memoirs.
Prof. de Marco recounts: "There was great optimism within the party. Those of us who had reservations about our prospects in the forthcoming election were considered defeatist. Austin Gatt, as secretary general, was efficient and innovative but he ensured that the decision-making process evolved from the centre and, more specifically, from the secretariat, divesting the periphery of power.
"Richard Cachia Caruana was exercising the same power concentration process at Castille. This went against the leadership style introduced by Eddie (Fenech Adami) who wanted ministers to assume their responsibilities and to work as one team... I resented this attitude and my ministry did not succumb to interference."
The book, entitled The Politics of Persuasion, makes a number of interesting - and often candid - revelations with regard to the battle for the Nationalist Party leadership, the difficult days of political violence in the 1980s, the process through which Dom Mintoff toppled the Labour government in 1998 as well as a fly-on-the-wall view of local politicians and foreign personalities. It also contains vivid human accounts of the war years and more personal episodes in the former President's life.
A resonant theme throughout the book is Prof. de Marco's pursuit of the European ideal and he gives a blow-by-blow account of Malta's road to EU membership.
"Within days (of the 1998 election) I flew to Vienna to present to the Austrian chancellor, Wolfgang Schussel, a letter requesting the reactivation of the island's application for EU membership... In less than six months I had undone the harm caused to the membership process in the previous two years. The difficult political battle had been won.
The Politics of Persuasion will be launched at The Palace in Valletta on Wednesday in the presence of President Eddie Fenech Adami, who wrote the foreward, and be available in bookshops in the coming days.