Some days ago, former prime minister Eddie Fenech Adami turned 84. Social media, Facebook mostly, where the elder statesman does not administer an account, was awash with photos of people, mostly my age and younger, with Eddie.
Fenech Adami was an elderly gentleman when he sealed Malta’s place in the European Union. All things being equal, the younger generation would not have associated themselves with him. An elderly gentleman, known for his conservative stand on many issues, is not exactly what drives the younger generation to the polls.
Yet they warmed up to him, believed in him, because he excited them with his vision of Malta as an EU Member State. And they came in their thousands to his mass meetings and flocked to the polls.
It was the younger generation which decided Malta’s fate and convinced their parents that membership was the only way forward. I come from that background. I was a university student back then – active in the Student Democrats Association. Along with many others, we spent countless hours on campus, away from the lecture halls, campaigning actively to persuade our university colleagues that Malta’s place was in the EU.
Admittedly, we didn’t need to do a lot of convincing. University students were, in their absolute majority, in favour of membership. Not necessarily their parents. Mine weren’t, but Eddie convinced me, through his words and actions, and I convinced them. They never looked back.
That was the story of hundreds of other university students. It was Eddie, after all, who enabled people from my background – the lower middle classes (my father worked in a factory all his adult life, my mother was a housewife) – to further our studies and achieve our lifelong ambitions. We made our parents, who worked hard and sacrificed a lot to enable us to succeed, proud – because Eddie Fenech Adami enabled that to happen.
Eddie Fenech Adami enabled us to achieve our lifelong ambitions
Away from the university campus, it was a different story. Labour did its best to convince people that membership spelt an economic disaster and that manual jobs were at stake.
It was an uphill, and while young people in university were mostly in favour, those working in factories, but also thousands of small and medium-sized businessmen and businesswomen, were genuinely scared that Labour’s doom-and-gloom prediction might turn out to be true.
Eddie and the Nationalist Party had a lot of convincing to do. And they did it by telling the truth, by saying things as they were – by being factual. Because they believed that theirs was the right and proper way forward. And people came along and endorsed Eddie’s vision.
I don’t remember the Fenech Adami of the late 1970s and early 1980s. I was born in 1980, a year before the PN won the general election but was deprived of governing.
Our elders recount the hardships Malta went through in those turbulent times. Freedom of expression and association – the basic foundations of democracy were at stake.
But Eddie and his party did not give up – they never did. Resilience was key to Eddie’s success.
And when one of his was killed and another charged, falsely, with his murder, when Labour Party thugs burnt down the Times of Malta’s offices, ransacked the Archbishop’s Curia and his family residence in Birkirkara – Eddie Fenech Adami did not respond with violence but peace.
He got the late Fr Peter Serracino Inglott to lead a prayer vigil shortly after Raymond Caruana’s death – when most of his vocal supporters were baying for blood. Had Eddie given in to their demands, Malta would have endured a civil war the repercussions of which would have been felt to this day.
The rest is history. He led a string of Nationalist Party administrations which laid the foundations for today’s economic success. It was under his premiership that new economic niches were created which today employ thousands of local and foreign workers.
But it is young people’s admiration for Eddie in his prime, and today as an 84-year-old gentlemen, which fascinates me. For it is not a common occurrence that social media – where young people live, exchange thoughts and make new friendships – is awash with photos of teenagers and middle-aged men and women with an elderly man – unless he is their grandparent.
But Eddie Fenech Adami is widely seen as my and the younger generation’s grandfather – the elderly man you trust, look up to, the one who, regardless of age, you appreciate it was he who laid the foundations for today’s success – our success. This is why the young love Eddie. Ad multos annos.
Frank Psaila is a lawyer and anchors Iswed fuq l-Abjad on NET TV.