Let’s be honest. Education was never the forte of the Maltese Labour Party and the University seems to be its Achilles heel. A long history of controversies, most of them needless, characterised various Labour-led governments, particularly in the past 50 years of independent Malta.

As if not to be outdone, the present Labour leader lately managed to stir up a hornet’s nest with regard to our University by declaring a unilateral war against what he is proclaiming to be its ‘monopoly’ in our education realm.

In a recent speech in Marsascala, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat reiterated that “some of the arguments put forward in the past days (about university education) can be traced back to a circle of vested interests that have much to gain from the current closed-shop university system, lorded over as it is by the few, for the few”.

To most people this seems to be an uncalled for spat, but those more connected to our University – students and academics alike – are interpreting it as a pitiful provocation to pick a fight with them. And given Labour’s past, and even its immediate past, they cannot be way off the mark.

From what I have learnt and researched (as this was before my time) Prime Minister Dom Mintoff in 1978 caused a veritable earthquake at the University of Malta when he split it in two, by first closing what was called the Polytechnic (today’s Mcast) while its remnants were amalgamated with the rest of the University after siphoning off the faculties of law, science and the arts. The resultant university was to be called the ‘New’ University, while the other faculties together – apart from the Faculty of Theology, which had to be taken care of by the Church at Tal-Virtù – were to be called the ‘Old’ University.

This brought about an exodus of academics from our University and most of them successfully found a way out either in other sectors or went to search for greener pastures abroad.

In 1980, another important change was brought about by a Labour government by which, through another amendment to the Education Act, the Faculty of Law was once again incorporated within the ‘New’ University, which thus became, again, one, because the ‘Old’ University, comprising the faculties of science and the arts, was suppressed altogether.

Education was never the forte of the Maltese Labour Party and the University seems to be its Achilles heel

All these so-called ‘reforms’ by Labour were followed by the notorious ‘student-worker’ scheme and also the system of the ‘parrinu’ (godparent) needed to sponsor every new student who had to make it to the University through a discriminatory 20-point system.

To add insult to injury, when Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici took over the Education Ministry prior to his appointment as Prime Minister in 1984, at the height of the Church schools debacle, he decided “the need was felt to limit the entry of students in various faculties according to the country’s exigencies, that is, according to the number of jobs the country can provide to those coming out of the University.

“We are doing this,” he said, “in the country’s best interests so not to be exposed to what is happening in other countries where such students resort to terrorism.”

In plain, simple words, he imposed the numerus clausus.

Sixteen years of Labour governments (1971-1987) left their indelible marks on the whole tertiary sector, and it took a superhuman effort by Education Minister Ugo Mifsud Bonnici who, through the 1988 Education Act, literally rebuilt our University with the reintegration once more of the three faculties ‘disbanded’ by Labour, namely arts, science and theology.

Ugo Mifsud Bonnici also introduced the stipends system, and with this wind of change, coupled with the injection of new funds and the recruitment of additional academic staff, the University of Malta phoenix rose from the ashes with renewed vigour and enthusiasm. The student population literally ‘exploded’ and important academics also returned from abroad to rejoin our University.

But, as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end, and in 1996 another Socialist government was voted in and, once more, it discovered a new bone of contention to pick up another ‘fight’.

Education Minister Evarist Bartolo – yes, the same present-day minister – decided to significantly change the goalposts for the issuing of stipends to students and this led to an all-out war between thousands of students and the Alfred Sant administration.

It is, I think, very pertinent and relevant to point out that Muscat, when he was still a Super One reporter prior to the 1998 general election, wrote a book about Sant and his 20-month administration.

In it, Muscat openly states that the University was the protagonist of one of the biggest but “very much needed” controversial decisions taken by that administration. He was obviously referring to the ‘reformed’ stipends.

Needless to say, it had to be, again, a Nationalist government that addressed and solved that problem to the satisfaction of both students and parents on one side, and academics on the other.

And now, under another Labour Prime Minister, we are witnessing a new episode in this never-ending saga of Labour’s tendency to make our University the battleground of its prejudicial stance against this powerhouse of education.

The least Muscat should do is to take a close look at the history of the past 50 years and arrive to the conclusion that his party has always emerged badly bruised when it started battling quixotically against this institution which really belongs to us all.

Tagħna Lkoll indeed!

Kristy Debono is the Nationalist Party’s spokeswoman on financial services, IT and gaming.