During the unveiling ceremony of President Emeritus Guido de Marco’s statue in front of the law courts, my thoughts went to when I was a young court reporter for Times of Malta. De Marco was busy defending a client of his even though his presence was urgently required to address a Nationalist Party meeting held not far from the law courts. He used all his persuasive diplomacy to time the mid-morning break in the trial by jury proceedings to coincide with the moment when he had to address the political rally. Of course, he succeeded, as the conniving smile of the trial judge, the late Ċensu Scerri, amply demonstrated.
To my mind this incident, which occurred during the electoral campaign of 1981, was symbolic of de Marco’s vision of balancing his two professional vocations: that of the law and the legal profession on one hand and that of serving the Maltese nation by always being on the front line of Malta’s political events. To him, these two vocations had to coexist side by side since his philosophy was that the practice of one enriched the vision of the other.
Yet, this was also the time that saw the advent of the full-time politician even among those politicians who were occupying the seats of the Opposition. The first prominent politician to hold a full-time post within the Nationalist Party in Opposition was the mercurial Louis Galea as secretary general, who soon was to be followed by none other than the leader of the party himself, Eddie Fenech Adami.
De Marco, then deputy head of the party, resolutely adhered to remaining a full-time lawyer-politician, since, to his mind, this allowed him to keep a closer feel of the people and, therefore, of the electorate. His decision, however, did not make him a part-time politician nor, for that matter, a part-time lawyer.
He breathed and lived politics every minute of his existence just as much as his very lively mind kept analysing the niceties of the law. To anyone who experienced de Marco’s daily sessions in which he met his clients in his legal office in Ħamrun, politics somehow and mysteriously always made its way in the discussions he had with his clients.
Politics for the first time became an incessant talking point within practically every household
It indeed was a time, in the 1970s and the 1980s, in which political crisis followed political crisis with our democratic institutions creaking under the pressures of Mintoffian intimidation.
Politics for the first time became an incessant talking point within practically every household with our daily working and family routines continually disrupted by the dramatic events shaking peaceful coexistence to the core. So, in a way, all of us became student-politicians or even worker-politicians and, to this extent, we could identify fully with politicians such as de Marco who replied to the threats to democracy by not allowing intimidation to give up our way of living.
This explains why thousands upon thousands started attending mass meetings for the first time and, therefore, standing up and being counted became part of our daily existence even if it meant endangering our livelihood and often our own safety. We could therefore empathise with our lawyer-politicians who also faced the same exact exposure to our everyday life as we did.
Naturally, the combination of the full-time politicians and of the full-time lawyer-politicians made of the PN at the time a political force to be reckoned with leading the nation’s long run to re-establish majority rule and democratic legitimacy for Malta.
Yet, to de Marco, the siren call of the law courts and the legal practice never went missing. In the two-year interlude in holding a ministerial post during the short-lived Alfred Sant administration, de Marco was determined to revive his presence at the law courts. Then, he demonstrated that even a great legal mind, such as was his, did not shy away from conversing with the younger generation of lawyers in the premises of the Chamber of Advocates, on the latest legal developments and, yes, even brushing up his vast legal knowledge
When the Prime Minister, Joseph Muscat, unveiled the statue, what I saw was indeed de Marco, in exactly the same posture, walking out of the law courts on his way to address his very beloved electorate, who, in turn, never failed to reciprocate their support to their lawyer-politician.