The Church rules supreme, ok?

I was born in the mid-70s, so my first real memory of Maltese politics was watching Dom Mintoff in black and white from an old Telefunken TV which belonged to my paternal grandfather, which would probably have been some time in the late 1970s or early 1980s. I must have watched a host of other politicians, but he is the only one who stands out in my memory.

I had absolutely no idea what happened in Malta in the 1960s and early 1970s because I wasn't there, and although I was physically present in the mid-to late-70s, I was far too young to know what was going on.

In 1979, I clearly remember waving off the last of the British troops from Upper Barrakka. The general mood was one of unhappiness. People were crying and they seemed to be angry with this Mintoff guy for some reason. I gathered that he was also in some sort of trouble with the Church, and when in the 1980s I had to spent a few months away from school, I figured he was in some way involved.

Instead of going to school we house-hopped and had mini-tutorials in friends' houses, reminiscent of Jews in hiding, in Nazi-occupied Europe. It was all very clandestine and hush hush, and it was, I suppose, quite intriguing through the eyes of a nine-year-old.

Still, I wasn't very sure why this was happening. I just watched it all play out before me like a silent movie. Except of course, Mintoff seemed more Fidel Castro than Charlie Chaplin.

Mintoff's name came up a lot in heated family conversations. My grandfather, who supported the progressive Constitutional party at the time, would sit and watch his speeches, seemingly mesmerised, and from an early age I must have developed an acute fascination with this man people were slightly terrified of, who liked to wear big chunky buckled belts and was reputedly very good at horse riding, liked to swim in the south, and play boċċi.

Once our paths did cross at the Marsa Club track, when he was on horseback and I was a very curious girl peering through the back of my mother's black Mini Minor. I seem to recall it being something of an event in my little world.

By the time the 1987 election came along, he was already getting on and had started to look like a caricature of himself. The nose was bulbous, the eyes behind the unattractive black horn rimmed spectacles seemed to pop out, and there was something quasi clownish and comical about him.

By the early 1980s, he had earned a reputation as something of a dictator. Many hero-worshipped him and had little effigies of him erected in their homes. But by '87 the consensus was that he had become a liability, that the bad that he reaped definitely outweighed any good he had sown, that his time was up and he had to go.

So, the other day, when I happened upon a 1960 debate between Mintoff and then Archbishop Michael Gonzi, I was more than pleasantly surprised. The debate was conducted in English, but for some reason it sounded like the two men were speaking Italian. You know how sometimes Maltese can sound like Arabic or Italian depending on who is speaking it. Well it's the same when English is spoken with a certain accent and tonality.

There was something very old world and classy about the whole debate and I marvelled at how Mintoff came across - his elocution perfect and faultless, his argumentation lucid, his appearance good-looking, smart, his manner composed.

He looked and sounded nothing like the unhinged unkempt Mintoff I had grown accustomed to and the one we are sometimes subjected to on Youtube today. Although, truth be told, I hear Mintoff was the sort of man who knew how to gauge his audience in a way which would make Rudyard Kipling proud - a man capable of charming crowds and kings alike.

The discussion debated on Epoka was the interdiction that was placed on the Labour Party between 1961 and 1964, when reading, advertising and distributing the Labour Party newspapers or even so much as voting Labour could be deemed a mortal sin. I was, of course, shocked by the very medieval connotations of the debate which was being re-enacted, replayed and being discussed on One TV.

The idea that 50 years ago, the Church actually went as far as to issue an interdict against all members of the Labour Party's national executive is unspeakably ludicrous. This essentially meant that many were not allowed to receive the sacraments. So they married in sacristies and were buried in unconsecrated ground, known colloquially as the miżbla, their hearses prohibited from displaying a Holy Cross.

The irony, of course, is that 50 years later the Church is still a very defining medieval force in Maltese politics. It still wields enormous influence on law in the making. We need look no further than the recent court ruling in the play Stitching, which was another slap in the face of secularism.

It reinforced the idea that our laws need to be in line with our Catholic values. Swearing is against the law because it runs contrary to our values - ergo, a play which has blasphemous content should be banned.

I suppose the court would have no hesitation banning a whodunit. Using the same forma mentis, if murder runs counter to our moral and legal fabric, then we should not be exposed to it in any shape or form. And it's the same with divorce, abortion and all the other secular evils which post-EU membership are becoming increasingly difficult to hold out on.

Whoever said that we need a third political party in Malta overlooked the reality that, in fact, we already have one. The Church rules supreme. Every five years we have an election for its runner-up.

Regardless of whether PN or PL are in power, they play second fiddle to the Church. The only person who dared to go against the grain was Mintoff, but even he, for all his bullishness, didn't succeed.

michelaspiteri@gmail.com