Two stalwarts of faith (3)

At the age of 17 I returned from reading for a diploma in social and political science at a Jesuits College in London more than ever determined to enter politics and much more convinced than before that the right road was that based on the Christian Democrat principles. My family was very close to George Borg Olivier, a highly convinced liberal, but I turned more than ever to Ċensu Tabone, the greatest Christian Democrat of all at the time. As Simon Busuttil very generously recalled in his opinion piece Ċensu, The Founding Father (March 21), (contrary to many others who always denied my part in all this) I was very close to Dr Tabone during the founding of AŻAD. Indeed Dr Tabone had adopted me politically and in my youth I worked hand in hand with him on a number of projects.

Dr Busuttil was very right in emphasising that one of Dr Tabone’s great achievements, at a time of upheaval in the country and within the party itself (as it tried to get to grips with the extremely difficult situation in the late 1970s) was the absolute need for political education at every level. I was eager to do my part and this started an intense four-year period of my life when my trips to Carmel Street in St Julians were continuous. Besides the added value of partaking of Maria’s constant kitchen offerings, Dr Tabone was a great teacher to me. Once he had an idea in his head he would do all that was necessary to make sure it came to fruition.

Dr Tabone was at first hesitant at what I could be capable of doing but once he saw me setting up Studenti Demokristjani Maltin in my first month at University and my constant political writings, especially in Il-Mument, his political adoption of me was complete.

In the next months we worked in parallel to achieve a tremendous amount. Our first collaboration was in the Skola Politika within the party itself. The brainchild of Dr Tabone, the school developed very rapidly and organised courses and seminars. I worked particularly hard on the history lectures. Dr Tabone was acting as general secretary of the party while I worked as secretary of the school. Most of the teaching was done at the upper level of the Osborne Hotel in Valletta. One of my most difficult tasks was to get Dr Borg Olivier to sign the certificates! But we were more ambitious than this.

In those months I was very active on the international student level and with the help of a German colleague, Gerd Langguth, I managed to get funding from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, very well explained by Dr Busuttil, for a large group of party activists, led by me, to a workshop at their school at Eichholz. It was a tremendous success. It was the start of a long load that led to AŻAD helped in a tremendous way by Dr Tabone and his outstanding collaboration with the German CDU party and all the European Christian Democrats. It could not have happened without Dr Tabone but I also had a very important part through the CDU youth and student sections who supported us tremendously.

The Konrad Adenauer Foundation was ready to give us full financial support. The main obstacle was that they wanted a letter from the leader of the party confirming that he knew about the local academy and the persons involved. I took my carefully drafted letter to Dr Borg Olivier at least four times. He was not convinced and did not sign it. In the end the Germans, after a number of telephone calls, accepted that the letter be signed only by Dr Tabone, the secretary. AŻAD was born and grew in a short time and angered the government of the time so much that they ended up drafting a bill to try and stop it.

Once AŻAD was set up at Tagliaferro Centre in Sliema, the party had to choose an executive secretary. Having finished my degree I hoped against hope that I would be chosen as I was full of ideas.

I was not. Richard Muscat was. That decision, insisted upon not by Dr Tabone, destroyed me for a very long time. No one would even dare employ a 20-year-old political candidate in 1976.

The decision affected the road I had to take to make a living and still affects me today. I was devastated.

Dr Tabone was the only one who understood and tried to help me.