Fr Peter Serracino Inglott means many things to different people, but 20 months after his death, his life is documented in a “warts and all” biography by professor Daniel Massa. Kurt Sansone gets a sneak peek of the book.
Eddie Fenech Adami had been at the helm of the Nationalist Party for three years when he was asked to attend a secret meeting in the basement of PN general secretary Louis Galea’s home in Mqabba.
This was the autumn of 1980 and in just over a year’s time the country would be heading towards the most contentious general election in recent history.
Dr Fenech Adami’s ascension to the party’s top post was a turning point for the PN. Until then, the party carried the label of being aloof from the travails of ordinary people, disconnected from the workers.
Three years after being lifted shoulder high by councillors, here was Dr Fenech Adami sitting in the basement of a house that overlooked a disused quarry with his general secretary waiting for the third person to appear.
This is the set-up for the next scene to unfold, which is described in detail, possibly for the first time in print, by author Daniel Massa in his biography of Fr Peter Serracino Inglott, PSI: Kingmaker.
Prof. Massa writes that when Dr Galea took the initiative and invited the PN leader and Fr Peter to his basement cellar, he was well aware that this unofficial gathering was Maltese political history in the making.
“Here was a meeting between a liberal, progressive, forward-looking ‘red’ priest and the leader of the Nationalist Party whose main inspiration up till then was a socially conservative Christian doctrine à la Alcide de Gasperi.”
An article Fr Peter had penned in English that appeared in the July/August dossier of the International Foundation for Development Alternatives (IFDA) and which was subsequently translated into Maltese for the priest’s monthly magazine Illum, was central to the conversation.
“If ever there was in the past three decades of the PN history, an undeclared defining moment, this non-partisan article was it,” Prof. Massa writes.
It was the “root cause which led to a radical review and renewal of the political and social policies of the party”.
The article laid out a progressive agenda for change based on dialogue and solidarity, which Dr Fenech Adami recalled as being the antithesis of the political system prevalent at the time.
Back in the basement Fr Peter, who, very much in character, arrived 30 minutes late – a trait that became the stuff of ‘legend’ among French seminarians who over the years heard the story of Fr Peter’s first very late arrival in the snow at the Séminaire des Carmes in 1958 – was presented with a three-foot-high pile of papers.
The PN was actively preparing for the 1981 general election and the party had held several meetings with its supporters to formulate a policy.
The pile contained the ideas and suggestions that came out from that inward-looking exercise.
But the party leader and his general secretary were not after intellectual drivel. They represented a political party that wanted to win the election and to do so “they not only needed to design an effective strategy, but also realign, reshape the Nationalist Party structure”.
Prof. Massa writes: “At Mqabba that afternoon Fr Peter had a very specific aim: ‘I would not just say a Christian Democratic party but strongly to the left of the Christian Democrats’.”
Fr Peter’s agenda was pretty much in line with Dr Fenech Adami’s undefined vision of a party “close to the workers” espoused in his first off-the-cuff impromptu speech as leader of the PN three years before.
But the slogan, the clichés, now had to be translated into a concrete electoral programme that would lead the party to victory after two election defeats.
Prof. Massa says that Fr Peter immediately stuck out his neck and “at the risk of alienating Eddie” expressed his view that the PN had not done enough to be able to attract workers to its cause.
“For, there was no denying that all the important social legislation on the island had been fathered by the competition. At that stage, Fr Peter urged commitment to a new ideal.”
And in that “historic” meeting in Mqabba, Fr Peter was tasked with establishing a workable credible synthesis from the pile of documents and papers.
Prof. Massa quotes Dr Galea: “Fr Peter kept flicking through the papers, reports and documents and he said that if they really wanted to establish a dialogic society… he would want them to do much more.”
Fr Peter now believed that his priority was to help get the Malta Labour Party defeated at the polls
Months down the line the draft product was a pile much larger than three feet, that included transcripts of dialogue meetings with people beyond the party’s confines.
Fast forward to 1987 and Fr Peter was heavily involved in writing the PN’s electoral manifesto.
The tense political situation had by then degenerated into violence, thuggery and even murder.
It was in the wake of the Raymond Caruana murder at the PN Gudja club in December 1986 and the police’s subsequent attempt to frame the innocent Pietru Pawl Busuttil of the drive-by shooting that convinced Fr Peter of the need to get the Labour Party out of power.
“Fr Peter now believed that his priority was to help get the Malta Labour Party defeated at the polls, following which there should be a strong push for genuine reconciliation,” Prof. Massa writes.
The famous Għoxrin Punt – the 20 points that synthesised the PN’s electoral manifesto for the 1987 election – had Fr Peter written all over them.
Prof. Massa says Fr Peter could not be made minister by Dr Fenech Adami but he was “as close to being the kingmaker as you can make it”.
Dr Fenech Adami sent for Fr Peter, before he even talked to his own elected members on the formation of a Cabinet. However, Fr Peter regretted that as an adviser to Dr Fenech Adami he was not wise enough to suggest the method adopted almost 10 years later in South Africa when, after the end of apartheid, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established by law.
The South African commission gave criminals and culprits the opportunity to confess their guilty actions, asking pardon and receiving it there and then.
Fr Peter regretfully argued that a similar procedure could have been adopted in Malta post-1987. Instead, there was a half-hearted attempt to go to court in a few cases.
Fr Peter’s initial flirtations with the PN that developed into a fully fledged immersion as a personal adviser to Dr Fenech Adami did not endear him to Labour, even though close friends like Dr Galea insisted that the thinker was more interested in advancing ideas rather than a partisan agenda.
Had the Labour Party asked for his advice, Dr Galea told the biographer, he was sure Fr Peter would have given it.
But despite his leftist sympathies, the biography documents Fr Peter’s admission that he never voted Labour because the party kept “adopting idiosyncratic policies” like integration with the UK in the 1950s, conflict with the Church, thuggery as a mode of government and euroscepticism in the more recent past.
ksansone@timesofmalta.com