Mario Felice

John A. Consiglio writes:

So Mario too has left our vale of tears. He joins that select list of fellow citizens who, with brilliant foresight and acumen, gave this dear country of ours something which, after 1960, started to become one of the basic lifebloods of its economy: our international business and financial services structure.

My late father, who was very close to Mario’s father Giovanni (perhaps the most kindhearted Finance Minister this country has ever known) used to tell me about Mario’s deep knowledge not only of legal matters but also of finance and economics, which I was then avidly studying. Then his brother Alfred once introduced him to me at Merchants Street branch of Barclays Bank. From then on we became close friends. I not only served him with pleasure and honour, but also came to see his sincerity and competence in all he said and did. He sensed how much I too was enthusiastic about his ideas and vision for the new Malta, and even when we disagreed on some envisaged eventual social impacts (higher cost housing, higher taxation, et al) I could see that he was understanding and considerate of my concerns.

Mario’s great contribution to Malta was of course his vision, and later documented plan – as first mooted to his party and then to the government – about how to go about attracting international business towards realising that here, bang in the middle of the Mediterranean, was for them a safe and welcoming place from where to both base themselves and to do good business with southern Europe and north Africa.

He eventually saw the first parts of his vision happen when the Malta International Business Authority was set up in the former Palazzo Spinola in St Julians with some very valid staff from the local banks being seconded to it, and carrying out all the early work for setting up a registry and licensing authority for international trading companies. MIBA later became the MFSC (which we often jokingly said stood for “Mario Felice’s Social Club”), and is now the MFSA. The other part was the Free Port about which he too spoke and wrote a lot.

In his political life it is probably a safe assessment that Mario was often misunderstood, both within his own party and in the country. Not everyone shared his enthusiasm for Nato, and his bubbly style of making a point, indeed often forcing it through, was perhaps something which antagonised many in his own party.

His dislike for old-style propaganda tools (posters, corner and mass meetings, wall daubing) was a known fact, but the irony perhaps is that the no-half-­measures style which he was often chided about, and advised to eschew, later became a “virtue trait” in several successful later politicians in his own party.

But Mario was also a highly respectful person... I will never forget the occasion when once, as we shared a coffee in Valletta, he confided with me his great distress at seeing a new young minister being bossed by a local well-known businessman, who apparently felt he had him “in his pocket”, with the arrogant words “You will travel with me tomorrow to..., so cancel all your appointments!”.

Mario was extremely sorry to see this happen before his eyes. For him the values of respect, loyalty, enthusiasm, and hard work, were necessary components of human relations.

As Mario Felice joins the likes of Louis E. Galea, George Bonello Du Puis, Denis Degiorgio, Cecil Busuttil, Antoine ­Tagliaferro, Philip Attard Montalto, and other dear departed before the Eternal Loving Judge, the country records and remembers his boundless intelligence, enthusiasm in all he did, and his great contribution to Malta’s success. To his wife and children, and his brothers Alfred and An-ton, go my deepest sympathies and assurance prayers for dear Mario’s soul.