Death is never unemployed. Nor does it ever take a holiday. It mows the lawn of humanity with chilling regularity. It is the most common event that makes us all equal before it. We believe death is only the beginning. That our lives are mere preparation for the after-life where we hope and pray we will get our just reward for our behaviour during the years granted to us from a God who is embodied in love and forgiveness.
Nevertheless we wish that death does not reach us, our loved ones and friends early. Whatever the promised rewards beyond it, the human frailty within us makes us to not want it to happen, though we know that it will. Recently the reaper has been particularly active among the older political class. Within the space of a few weeks it plucked four stalwart former MPs.
It took away Renato Agius Muscat, who may not have served long in the House of Representatives but who strove without fail to fashion himself as a model MP. It reached for Mario Felice, whose time in the House was also relatively short but who more than made his mark as a man of extensive financial knowledge – one committed to the Nationalist Party and the West but who could also build bridges with the then dominant Dom Mintoff as Prime Minister and his commitment to neutrality.
Death focused in particular on the Crop of 1962, so to call it. That fateful election is mostly remembered for the mortal sin the local bishops imposed on those who voted Labour, but it was also the first election to be held after four years of shameful direct colonial rule by a United Kingdom which did not always export the kind of democracy it practised at home.
I was the youngest of that crop, aged 23, when I was elected through a by election for Bertu Hyzler’s Qormi seat. When I look around me I find that most of the ex-MPs from the multiple parties that gained representation in the House in 1962 have departed. Very recently we lost another two, Philip Muscat of Żebbuġ and George Hyzler, born in Żejtun but who made Qormi his home.
Coincidentally, both of them were from my constituency, so I got to know them particularly well. Philip and I were both in the Labour Party and, as happens under our political system of proportional representation, we competed with each other for the same pool of Labour voters. Yet our competition never became dirty. We respected each other and collaborated during the years we spent together in Parliament.
George Hyzler was from “the other side” so, notionally, an adversary. I can say that was only in form. We never crossed swords directly, never attacked each other. We were friends throughout our overlap in the House and remained so when we both had left it. It was not just me – George was a friend to all. He was a gentleman, in politics and beyond.
Both Philip and George were also doctors. Between them they covered the bulk of Qormi. Being a doctor helped in politics. But as doctors they helped everyone who sought their services, not just those who voted for them. I have no direct experience of what it is like to be in politics nowadays. But in our time, mortal sin and all, there was a camaraderie which was quite remarkable.
Last week Death also took away Bishop Gerada. Soon after he was sent to Malta in the middle 1960s with a brief to try to heal the politico-religious wound, Fr Charles Vella asked me to go along to the Bishop’s house in Żejtun. He wanted a first-hand account of what was going on. I went and flatly described how my wife and I had been married in the sacristy, and how my uncle, Gamri “Amleto” Spiteri had been buried in unconsecrated ground after a roof fell in and a beam from it wounded him mortally. I said there were other cases of similar treatment.
Bishop Gerada was aghast. I could tell he barely believed me. With the distance of time, I hardly believe it myself that we went through such times. But, we did.
I pray to God that will never happen again, in my lifetime or beyond. The sufferings of the time were almost worse than the sufferings of the finality of death. They symbolised the death of reason.