Much time has passed and few remember that, 27 years ago almost to the month, the man who becomes our President today, George Vella, turned down the chance to become Labour leader. The events surrounding that episode suggest that Joseph Muscat is right to say Vella can be a unifying figure but, I’d add, only if we don’t take a glib view of what unity is.
Just after the Nationalist Party romped home at the 1992 general election, to win a second consecutive term of office, the then Labour leader, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, shocked a mass meeting of party supporters by announcing his resignation. But more astounding was his announcement that he was recommending George Vella as his successor.
Everyone was surprised. Vella had first become an MP in the mid-1970s but had never served on the front bench; indeed, he had lost his seat in 1987. No one was more astounded than a wide-eyed Vella himself, who bluntly told TV cameras that the announcement had hit him like a cold shower.
There could be no illusions that, should Vella have contested a leadership election, he’d win outright, given the outgoing leader’s endorsement. A tense closed party meeting followed, of which I was given details by a participant (several years later).
Mifsud Bonnici himself had been designated successor by his predecessor, Dom Mintoff, and last thing Labour needed at the time – seemingly unelectable and burdened with an undemocratic reputation – was another leadership succession that didn’t follow a truly free and open contest.
According to the account I was given, the obvious leadership hopefuls were quiet. The man doing all the expostulating was Vella himself. Mifsud Bonnici drew Vella aside, but within earshot of my informant, who watched with grim amusement as Vella remonstrated and demanded to know why he had been nominated, to which Mifsud Bonnici imperturbably replied: “Because you speak French,” and that, apparently, was going to be a vital leadership asset as the debate over EU membership unfolded.
As it happens, 10 years later, as the EU debate reached a climax, Vella did repeatedly cite a French-language tract by Pierre Moscovici (then France’s Europe minister) to argue that Labour’s idea of a specially tailored partnership with the EU was possible. But I doubt Mifsud Bonnici really did ever have French on his mind.
Vella might not have then been a national figure but he had already made his mark within Labour. Soon after the 1981 election, believing there was a chance the Labour government might legislate for matters that went against their conscience, Vella and some fellow Labourites declared in advance they would not go along with such proposals should they surface – in order to bind themselves before party politics made such commitments impossible.
That might have contributed to the loss of his seat at the following general election, although more important was the way he campaigned in his Żejtun constituency, making it clear that he had no truck with some of Labour’s other politicians on that district, their names a byword for corruption and their thugs known for their violence.
In 1992, during the brief interlude when Vella seemed to be the next leader, those thugs went to offer their homage at his home, and Vella made the news by chasing them out into the street and shouting, for all to hear, that they had dragged Labour’s name into the gutter.
It was Alfred Sant, the man who really became the next leader (after Vella announced he would contest only for the deputy position), who is often credited with the purge of the thugs, and that’s true enough because only a party leader could do that. But the first public anathema from within Labour was pronounced by Vella.
What emerges from this thumbnail sketch are two salient features that remain relevant today: a loyalty to the party (enough for him to decline the offer of the leader’s position in the party’s best interests) but also an independent-mindedness that is not afraid to speak up on behalf of conscience.
An independent-mindedness that is not afraid to speak up on behalf of conscience
The independence of mind must owe something to having a hinterland beyond politics. In a radio interview conducted by Charles Abela Mizzi in the summer of 1992, Vella spoke of his long walks to Marsacala’s then near-wilderness at Munxar, his interest in geology (if memory serves me), and his experience as a family doctor attending to patients over their lifetime.
Abela Mizzi kept trying to make the interview about savoir-vivre, pressing Vella to affirm his love of this fish dish or that stew. But the doctor really opened up when talking about death, about the incessant, ultimately losing battle to save patients known for decades.
It’s been 27 years but you can still hear echoes of some of this in Vella’s recent public protests against the government’s new IVF law. He must have known – anyone would – he’d probably be considered for the presidency shortly afterwards. He didn’t care.
Just as, in 2009, as MP he didn’t vote for George Abela to become president (he was absent) because he couldn’t abide him – despite all the press cooing about national unity because the Nationalist Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi had nominated a Labourite for the presidency.
Vella’s critics will reply that what happened 27 years ago might all be very interesting but has nothing to do with the price of eggs since. The price of the long campaign to keep Malta out of the EU (of which Vella was an important figurehead), the price of being part of the charade of Parliament’s vote, in 2012, censuring Richard Cachia Caruana, then Malta’s ambassador to the EU; above all, the price of giving a parliamentary vote of confidence to a real beauty like Konrad Mizzi.
Now, I don’t think any of these things cover Vella in glory but the picture is more complicated because so is the country’s recent history.
From Vella’s parliamentary speeches over the years, it is clear that, however much he was disenchanted by the 1980s Labour government, he also sincerely believes – indeed, takes it as fact, like many Labourites – that the Nationalist Opposition of the period was equally to blame for the troubles. His denunciations of the post-1987 PN governments make it clear he sincerely believes they were turning Malta into a partisan fiefdom.
The point is not whether he’s right but that he took his decisions, including the vote for Mizzi, believing he had to decide whether it was in Malta’s interest to satisfy what he considered to be grasping, hypocritical opponents.
In all this, he is like most of us – ambivalent about his own political party, especially in its current incarnation, and deeply distrusting of the others. I rather like the idea of a President who has had to struggle with unity, and who is too principled – obstinate, if you insist – to pretend it’s effortless.
Let’s be clear. Widespread corruption-with-impunity makes real unity impossible. But we can still affirm a commitment to unity.
Elevating the Constitution to its proper place – as the source of the civic values that unite us – and proselytising to every school and every band club, at every unveiling and every ceremony, is the kind of five-year plan we need from a President. I think Vella can pull it off.
ranierfsadni@europe.com
This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece