Death is always hungry. Last week it took away from their families and the whole of society two of Malta’s leading and most beloved sons. Ċensu Tabone and Peter Serracino Inglott had become men for all sectors, for long admired even by those who had disagreed with aspects of their multifold activities over the years.
Ċensu Tabone and Peter Serracino Inglott had become men for all sectors, for long admired...- Lino Spiteri
Dr Tabone, who travelled the route from MP, to Minister, to President, was far more than a politician. His skills in the medical profession had earned him international renown. His family life became a model for us all. Yet it is as a politician that he will be mostly remembered.
He was one of the four main stalwarts that saw off the George Borg Olivier era. Together with Eddie Fenech Adami, Guido de Marco and Ugo Mifsud Bonnici, he helped rebuild the Nationalist Party into a formidable political machine.
Ċensu was fiercely partisan, experiencing hard work and hardship in the interest of the party he loved and militated in. Still he kept the good of Malta always in sight. Quick of wit and sharp of tongue he was not politically cruel or distant, though relations between him and Dom Mintoff never became easy. He was hurt by the Labour Opposition boycott when he became President, but probably understood it was payment in kind.
Happily, though, his dignity as the first-appointed Nationalist President and better sense on the Labour side helped to cure the rift. Alfred Sant paid him one of the warmest tributes when he was interviewed by TVM in midweek.
We overlapped in our political careers, in a relationship which never had the opportunity to become close but was always friendly. But I came to know him best a few years ago when both of us had retired from it all. Prof. Godfrey Pirotta invited us to a joint session on politics at the Gozo branch of the University.
At the ripe young age of 95 Ċensu was as always lucid and articulate. He was that and more on our way back to Malta. Tête-à-tête he talked freely and unreservedly about his life in politics, giving me insights into his at times brittle relations with friend and foe alike. The details will remain between us, but it was fascinating listening to the honest reminiscences of a man who had been through it.
His family and Malta have lost a great man. He will not be forgotten.
I met Peter Serracino Inglott in 1964 when he returned to Malta from his studies abroad and I was editor of It-Torċa. In the heat of the politico-religious stand-off he was introduced to me as a priest with very liberal views. The subsequent half century was to prove that true. On that occasion, he made it clear he saw holes in the Labour Party position. He went on to build a dazzling reputation as Malta’s leading philosopher and thinker, like Dr Tabone gaining renown beyond our shores. He influenced the intellectual life of many of his students and friends.
Among them was Louis Galea, of liberal mind when still young and helped by Peter to develop that and to have a cataclysmic influence in the Nationalist Party. Fr Peter was also an early friend of Dr Fenech Adami. Their friendship developed into close political collaboration, with the priest influencing the politician’s thoughts, drafting his main speeches and contributing to the drawing up of Nationalist Party manifestos.
Fr Peter, through his collaboration with Dr Galea and Dr Fenech Adami, shifted the PN to the centre of the political spectrum and helped it develop its social content. Little wonder that some saw him as a priest-politician. He was that and remained so despite Archbishop Mercieca’s admonitions for the clergy to stay out of politics.
But Fr Peter’s political role was not of the blind partisan kind. His incursion in the political scene by changing the Nationalist Party changed the face of Maltese politics. A few hours before he died I met Richard England at Mater Dei Hospital coming from Peter’s bedside. We shared the reflection of the grim irony that the possessor of such a brilliant mind had to be struck down by a cruel brain disease.
Such is life. And such is death. Time will not diminish the respect, awe and love so many Maltese have held for Peter Serracino Inglott for so many years. Great men live on after death.