In picking some merits and demerits of heads of government since 1921 (Whose Independence, September 21) I recalled Sir Ugo Mifsud who had suffered a heart attack on February 9, 1942 while opposing an “emergency ordinance” intended to exile Maltese nationals who were British subjects. It transpires that the “one Bartoli” I had mentioned in an aside – his full name was Albert V. Bartoli – was Gerald Bartoli’s late father whom he wrote to defend against the least suggestion that by his “interruptions” he could possibly have been responsible for the death of Mifsud (Using History Wisely of September 30). There was no attribution of motive or a direct nexus. The sequence of events cannot be denied, least of all by suggesting that Sir Ugo, who was only 52, “may have been suffering from any other medical ailments that could have induced his untimely death”.
In a moment of utmost gravitas Sir Ugo felt he was being ridiculed by the heckling Bartoli just as he was mentioning “the perils of the voyage” and the want of any “assistance” and “aid” to the would-be Maltese deportees. Mifsud directly chided Bartoli by name in the Council of Government shortly before he collapsed: “There is nothing to laugh at Mr Bartoli! I hope you can understand the strength of my argument. I am speaking here frankly. There is a section in this country who is thirsty for blood; but I am speaking to free men who, I hope, will consider this matter on its own merits and without any political passion.”
It seems however that Mr Bartoli still has not understood the strength of Sir Ugo’s argument. “It is also on record,” he writes, “that Sir Ugo’s eloquent defence was considered as a flawed interpretation of the constitutional law of those days. He was democratically voted against by 17 members of the Council of Government against two members of the Nationalist opposition…”
He is wrong on all counts and is in no position to try pointing his finger at me. So right was Sir Ugo in his constitutional argument, let alone in its moral and human aspects, that the position he exposed was confirmed by the highest courts of the land. Lest Mr Bartoli now attribute some “purely political agenda” or a “personal agenda” to the courts too, it bears saying that the judges most concerned had (like A. V. Bartoli) been members of Lord Strickland’s Constitutional Party before they were raised to the bench (A. J. Montanaro Gauci and George Borg). And yet neither one nor the other adjudicated Sir Ugo’s constitutional argument to have been “flawed”.
Those voting for the government side led by an army general in 1942 included some ultra-loyalists or submissive, deferential Maltese elected members who did not have it in them to disassociate themselves from what was a draconian piece of legislation driven by ulterior motives in the attempt to undo an already pronounced court sentence, so that the regime would have its way with their backing, if not indeed at their prompting. If wartime justified a government, in this case an occupying power, in doing anything, even to its own subjects, humanity could turn a blind eye to the most horrendous deeds. History might as well not be written if we are still unable to face past facts today in a supposed age of “human rights”.
Those voting against were not “two members of the Nationalist opposition”. It was only one: Dr G. Borg Olivier. Mr Bartoli can double-check that for himself in my Maltese Political Development 1798-1964, to which he made specific reference. Before voting alone against this illegal and unconstitutional ordinance which led to the life-threatening deportation in bomb-infested waters of scores of Maltese without charge or trial, Dr Borg Olivier spoke thus: “It only remains for me to register a negative vote in my own name and on behalf of Sir Ugo Mifsud who has authorised me to say that he was going to vote against this Bill under discussion consistently with the speech which he could not finish because at the time he was feeling unwell.”
“Because his time was up”, interjected once again Mr Bartoli (p. 534).