End of unique political career

I believe it was Harold Wilson who once said that "every political career ends in tears". The end of Eddie Fenech Adami's unique public career has, perhaps, proved to be a notable exception.

There are several reasons for this, mostly his qualities, charisma and character. As well as due to a lucky break - he would say 'providential' - in 1998, when Alfred Sant decided that he could not handle Dom Mintoff's dissent and called an early election, just 22 months after he had beaten Fenech Adami at the polls. That was probably the only time in his long political career, that Eddie miscalculated the people's mood.

In fact, I believe his remarkable innate ability to understand the collective psyche of the Maltese people was the main reason for his success.

Somehow he could sense what the ordinary man in the street was thinking, much before the pollsters came out with their findings. Apart from this, his unwavering resolve was an inspiration in the gloomiest of times, more so when no one could see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.

The 1981 'perverse' election result, the result of blatant gerrymandering, led him to galvanise his party into a national movement for democracy. He stood for what was right. While others dithered, he did not hesitate to take the riskiest of decisions: the PN's boycott of Parliament. Saying that justice will undoubtedly prevail (is-sewwa jirbaħ żgur) would hardly have been taken seriously if uttered by anyone else.

I always admired the way he never let his emotions run away with him and when deciding how to react to events and developments, he relied on sheer logic and his moral principles. I had the opportunity to see how he acted under different kinds of pressure - from viciousness shown by his political adversaries to ineptitude revealed by one of his own team. In all circumstances, he reacted with calculated judgement rather than with outbursts of anger and indignation.

Moreover when he had the opportunity - and every justification - to humiliate his political adversaries, he always stopped short of doing so. I remember a short conversation of mine with Joe Attard Kingswell whom Fenech Adami had recruited as his consultant and who was the link between the Prime Minister's office and the Drydocks Council, then still elected solely by the workers.

Attard Kingswell explained to me that he had found working with Eddie a bit strange. He was used to working with someone who, on flooring his adversaries, would go on and kick them fiercely while in that vulnerable position.

On the contrary, he was now working for a man who on flooring his adversaries went ahead with lending them a hand to help them rise. Rather than humiliating his adversaries, Fenech Adami believed that everybody deserved a face-saver.

Although I had long before realised the difference in styles between Mintoff and Fenech Adami, nobody had put it to me in such clear terms.

Eddie respected his adversaries and there was more than one occasion when he was perturbed with the disdain shown by his party's propaganda machine towards political adversaries. Few people realise that up to the 1996 election he privately admired the hard work that Sant had put into reinventing the Labour Party.

Eventually, that hard work together with Sant's tactical - but short-sighted - opposition to VAT would lead to the PN's only electoral defeat under his leadership.

I will never forget the time when he decided that Parliament should pass a motion to honour Mintoff's fifty years of public life. Here was the PN leader honouring the man who had done everything to humiliate and destroy him and his party by fair means and foul. I was livid: I strongly believed that even magnanimity had its limits.

I was told that Mintoff was visibly moved by the gesture, although I cannot vouch for that. I left the House as soon as Fenech Adami rose to move the motion. Any other 'body language' from a member of his Cabinet would have been unbecoming.

I suspect that gestures such as his motion were a reflection of the ambiguity with which he was sometimes accused behind his back in PN circles.

In truth, he is master of the tactic of expressing oneself in a way to let the listener think something quite different from what he was really saying. As somebody once told me, what do you expect from an ardent admirer of the Jesuits?

Of course, Fenech Adami was not perfect and like every other human he was susceptible to making mistakes: more often as a result of his biases and idiosyncrasies rather than because of some mistaken calculation. He had his bad moments and his good ones but there should be no doubt that the overall result was absolutely positive.

I am sure that history will judge him favourably and that it will be difficult to find a Maltese politician who contributed as much as he did to Malta's political development and economic well-being.

micfal@maltanet.net