In March 2001, when travelling back to Sofia during an official visit to Bulgaria, President de Marco had a brush with death. On the highway, a truck lost control and ploughed into the official Presidential motorcade killing one of the security guards and injuring other members of his entourage.

Prof. de Marco visited Rome some time after this incident. As we were driving for an appointment, I saw his face suddenly change expression. I asked what was wrong.

“I am thinking about the security man who lost his life in the Bulgaria accident. He died to save my life, knowing that he was risking his life the moment he sandwiched his car between my car and the oncoming truck. I think about him and his family all the time.”

I looked at him in silence, remembering Prof. de Marco’s anguish in other moments in his recent political life – the perverse result of the December 1981 election, the passage of the Foreign Interference Act, the cruel aftermath of Mnarja 1982; the Catholic schools crisis; the raid on the Nationalist Party headquarters, the night Raymond Caruana was murdered, the frame-up of Pietru Pawl Busuttil and so many other incidents when he stood firm in resisting the various violent attempts to silence the people’s will.

His urging to cherish “Freedom first and foremost” still resounds in the hearts of all.

The people’s will was a notion as dear to Prof. de Marco as that of sovereignty for, together, the two notions gave life and substance to Malta that he so loved.

He was a true patriot and his will to dialogue at length with his political adversaries in an attempt to find mutually acceptable solutions to any crisis was a reflection of what he understood patriotism to be all about.

There were times when we discussed this. How could he dialogue with people who had acted in so dismal a manner with utter disregard to the basic principles of democracy or with those who had violently attacked or hurt him in the past?

“It is not a question of forgetting,” he would tell me, “it is a question of choosing not to be imprisoned by the past by reminding oneself all the time of what happened before. If we want to build a united country with a future, we need to look ahead.

“Remember when you had visited Romania soon after the fall of Ceausescu? You had then told me of the banners across the city of Bucharest that proclaimed ‘No one has the right to forget’ and I agreed that that was so. We can never and should never forget the past.

“Yet, we cannot walk forward by constantly looking backwards. If we do that, we would surely stumble and fall. The road ahead requires that, with a spirit of hope in others and to the best of our abilities, we seek that which unifies rather than that which divides.”

Of course, I knew he was right. After all, national reconciliation had been an essential part of the Nationalist Party political platform but what was astounding in Eddie Fenech Adami and in Prof. de Marco was their utter belief and commitment to that notion in each and every decision taken before and after coming into office in 1987.

Commitment – whether to country, family, party, profession or a principle – was at the basis of trust. Commitment gave one a sense of purpose which was becoming more and more vital in a consumer world in which we are acclimatised to dispense of things, the permanent versus the disposable.

Compassion and solidarity were for Prof. de Marco a part of his daily spiritual diet.

This was natural for him for he had a sense of family – not just for his natural one, which he cherished with great devotion – but even with those who worked with him. With the enthusiastic, loyal help of Walter Balzan and the late Joe Tonna, he made one feel one belonged not only to a team but to a family, where everyone cared for one another.

His world vision was of concentric circles of concern encompassing the Maltese, the Mediterranean, Europe and the global community.

Was this an oversimplification of the complexities of local and international politics? Surely not!

He never shied away from complex situations. Rather, he looked at such situations as a challenge. One had to find creative solutions regardless as to whether these were local crises or those within the international arena.

Resolution of crises required a key. That key was to be found in the dual notions of solidarity and commitment to what was agreed upon.

“Pacta sunt servanda, agreements must be kept,” he would at times intone.

That basic principle of civil and international law was one that historically was very close to the heart of all leaders of the Nationalist Party in their insistence that Britain respect the rights of the Maltese in accordance to its original undertakings when first invited to assist Malta.

That principle also was, and remained, dear to Prof. de Marco.

“We want to live in a country where the might of right prevails over the right of might,” he would tell the many thousands who thronged the Granaries in Floriana in successive PN meetings between 1981 and 1987.

Likewise, it was that same principle – that in international relations the might of right must prevail over the right of might – which he advocated during his tenure as president of the UN General Assembly, as Foreign Minister, as President of Malta and since.

“The keen observance of international law by all states is the best and only guarantee that Malta has for the conservation of its sovereignty and its security,” he would often say.

On Monday: The well-being of the family.