At one time it was almost fashionable to describe the late former Prime Minister George Borg Olivier as being slow-moving - not to say lazy. By nature immensely phlegmatic, calm and composed when all and everyone around him is breaking down, he would drive his friends as well as his adversaries crazy.
In politics, he once told me there are three kinds of problems: one third have no solutions (so don't even think about them), one third solved themselves on their own (so stay away from them) and the remaining third - just one third - are real problems calling for a solution.
The difference with Dr Borg Olivier was that he had, let's call it strength of character, the capacity to take it easy, sleep on it, take it in stages and let all others exhaust themselves putting forward proposals. Then he would light the fifth cigarette and make a few very meaningful and wise remarks.
He tried never to impose himself openly but whatever decision was made it would be carried out only if, I repeat, only if, he supported it. Yet, he was not a dictator, not even a pocket dictator! I liked him.
Once, and only once, I visited Dom Mintoff in a small building next to the Central Bank where it was rumoured he was in charge of "bulk buying" or was it "counter trade"? I brought to his notice what I felt was an injustice. He immediately made the appropriate verifications and immediately gave my friend his fair share of an otherwise big bone of contention. Mr Mintoff never let grass grow under his feet. But what was more extraordinary at this meeting were Mr Mintoff's complaints that he had called on Ministers Guzè Cassar and Vincent Moran to visit him and they both were so busy they could not find the time! This seemed to him to be the mother of all ingratitudes! I agreed and told him, to his amazement, that he was a uniquely lucky man. Why? I told him very clearly he has had the good fortune to be present at his own funeral!
Once upon a time, I visited, together with my father, Archbishop Michael Gonzi who also happened to have been knighted and to be an honorary Brigadier General in the British army. Because of this rank, every time he drove by car opposite the Main Guard he received the appropriate military honours. He would appropriately return the salute by lifting his sacred hat.
But what my father remarked to the Archbishop - the conversation was otherwise spread far and wide - was that he, my father, was very "pleasantly" surprised that on visiting the cathedral at Mdina he found himself faced by a greater-than-life statue - a faithful replica of His Grace.
"Do you think I should have trusted my successors, when I would have departed, to put up my statue? Of course not." But what astonished me most was that my father completely agreed with His Grace's suspicions! To round up. If these three characters - let's call them personalities - were all six-footers, the history of Malta would have been very different indeed.