I refer to Eddie Attard’s interesting article entitled ‘Malta’s longest serving Police Commissioner – Vivian De Gray’ (The Sunday Times of Malta, June 19).

In it he states that in spite of the good relations with the Prime Minister, De Gray tendered his resignation twice during the premiership of George Borg Olivier. Besides such offers of resignation the article also states that the Commissioner was not on speaking terms with the Prime Minister’s Administrative Secretary, and that he had even contemplated pressing criminal charges against Borg Olivier.

Borg Olivier was known for his diplomacy, and would have no doubt striven to maintain good diplomatic relations with the Commissioner. I would like to share with the public a little anecdote told to me directly by my father Victor Ragonesi, who served as both personal adviser to Borg Olivier as well as Political Secretary of the Nationalist Party.

In those days of upheaval, when the vital point was being raised on whether the Commissioner of Police was answerable to the Prime Minister or to the Governor, my father described how one day Commissioner De Gray paid him a visit and informed him that he had been instructed by the Governor to carry out a search of the records and files in his office.

My father promptly replied that he had two things to say. The first was directly to the Commissioner himself, to the effect that he was not answerable to the Governor but to the Prime Minister.

The second statement by my father, who was not particularly known to mince his words, was that the Commissioner should duly inform the Governor that if he wished to search among his papers, he would have to do so “over my dead body”.

Needless to say, Commissioner De Gray, who had shown where his loyalties lay, turned on his police boot heels and never returned to carry out such an office search in the name of the Governor.

I think this little anecdote sheds a little more light on the complexities and realities of the political confrontations and allegiances that were taking shape at the time, of which Commissioner De Gray was very much a part.

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