"When Eddie told me he wanted me to become President I took it to heart. I asked him if this was because he no longer needed me in the party. I was very reluctant and I resisted as much as I could because, as Minister of Education, I had many projects that I wanted to see through."

This sentiment is reflected in the title of his autobiography - Konvinzjoni u Esperjenza (Conviction and Experience). "My political life was motivated by conviction. However, experience shows you that life often turns out differently to what you had imagined. There is a difference between what you wish to do and what you actually manage to do. The book is about what I believed in and what I went through."

Back to Eddie Fenech Adami's proposition: "I proposed Anthony Galdes as an alternative, but Opposition leader Alfred Sant said he would back him for the time being but ask for his resignation if the PL won the following election. That was not acceptable for us. A President should serve his full term. In the end, Eddie kept insisting that I had to become President and I had to agree."

Dr Mifsud Bonnici said he agreed against his wishes because he still had a lot of reforms to carry out. "We were in the process of establishing the Junior College and I was also working on making education obligatory until the age of 18 - something that has not been done to this day. I wanted to remain for at least a little longer as Education Minister. I had only done two years out of my five-year term. I resisted and only gave up when Eddie insisted and insisted."

The early years

The autobiography is split in three parts, and was originally intended to be published as three separate books. The first part deals with Dr Mifsud Bonnici's childhood and debut in the political sphere, the second deals with the seven years he spent as minister and the final part is on the presidency.

The former President says his father, former PN Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici, better known as 'il-Gross,' did not really influence his future in politics. "When I was still young he suffered two strokes and at the end he could hardly speak. We hardly ever discussed politics. I was more influenced by his writings rather than our discussions." He is currently deciphering his own writings, dictated by his father, when he was still quite young. "My father was a professor of criminal law. He used to dictate his legal notes to my brother (former Chief Justice Gio Gio Mifsud Bonnici) and me, and we are currently trying to decipher them - the notes I jotted down as a young boy on things such as complicity and criminal intent."

 

Cheating death during the war

Dr Mifsud Bonnici still has very vivid recollections of the war, particularly two occasions when he was close to death. The family had witnessed the first bombings - on 11 June 1940 - in Cospicua, before moving to Marsascala and then to Gozo. "The first time we were in school, the one that was called tal-Orjenti. A tile factory nearby had put some of its machinery outside and a German Messerschmitt pilot - probably thinking it was some bomb-making factory - decided to strafe it with its machine guns. Fortunately, we were in a room and the pilot did not see us."

A second, more serious incident happened some time later. "We had gone to Ta' Pinu on a bus. We were on our way back, singing and joking around when this plane came out from the sky and opened up with its machine guns. We ran into a church. The driver was killed when some women told him to go out and drive the bus - which was the target - away from the church. I can still picture him lying on the church parvis, with blood coming out of his mouth. I will never forget these experiences."

Political debut and Erin Serracino Inglott

Dr Mifsud Bonnici had graduated as a lawyer when he was asked to stand for election on the PN ticket. "Borg Olivier had already asked me to be a commissioner during the Independence referendum. Later on he asked me to become a PN candidate. The people that pushed me the most, however, were the members of the Senglea and Vittoriosa sectional committees."

Little did he know that his good friend, the scholar Erin Serracino Inglott, had similar plans. "He was a neighbour and a friend. We discussed a million things and I learnt a lot from him. I was unaware that he was thinking of going into politics. When I was asked to contest the election I delivered my first speech at the Senglea PN club. He read about it in the papers and told me later that he had been thinking of launching his campaign in Senglea were he to contest the election. "He said 'don't worry, you are younger than me and you should be the one to contest the election, not me. You have my vote.' He kept his word."

 

A different style of politics

Dr Mifsud Bonnici says one of the qualities which helped him through a smooth presidency was the political style he adopted in the 60s. "I was a party activist but I was not one to hate or antagonise the other side. I always believed that you should not push people away if you want them to vote for you. I wanted to have a good relationship with the entire population and I had that. I had a good relationship with many Labourites. Because of that, some Nationalists accused me of being too friendly. There are people who still criticise me to this very day for treating 'them' too well."

Organising the disorganised Nationalist Party

Soon after being elected to the PN's ranks, Ugo Mifsud Bonnici set out, along with many others, to reorganise the Nationalist Party which, according to him, suffered from an organisational and ideological deficit at the time. "There was nothing. George Borg Olivier knew how to be a leader but when it came to organisation it was complete negation." He recalls that, at the time, the party did not even have a person in charge of memberships (tesseri). Censu Tabone, another former President and PN Secretary General, took care of these shortcomings.

Dr Mifsud Bonnici was very much involved in the setting up of the PN's newspaper and printing press. The party needed a daily newspaper - its weekly paper did not have a good reach. "A plot of land was bought and the Stamperija was built. We bought the printing machine, which was worth some Lm7,000 at the time and we trained and employed journalists. The daily paper was published for the first time in June 1970 and it took me a long time to write the leading article."

The PN's statute was also changed, turning the party into a more modern, organised entity. "Just to mention a few of the shortcomings, candidates were chosen by a show of hands and a lot of shouting. There was no proper procedure."

 

Telling Borg Olivier he had to go

One of the hardest tasks undertaken by Dr Mifsud Bonnici was telling George Borg Olivier - the PN's leader for several decades - that the time had come for him to make way for a new leader. "No one wanted to tell him so I offered to do it as long as I could choose who to take with me. I chose Josie Muscat and Karmnu Caruana. We went there at 11 at night. It was a very sad thing to do. He was a great leader of the party but his health had deteriorated. It was a very difficult episode." He writes in his book that Borg Olivier told them - "May you never have anyone come to your home at 11 in the evening to tell you what you have come here to tell me."

 

The perverse result of the 1981 election

He was one of those who suggested the PN boycott of Parliament after the 1981 election, in which the Malta Labour Party won more seats without obtaining a majority. "I felt that we had to show the whole world that the result was not a coincidence. We had known well in advance what the MLP was doing, playing around with the districts. We said it in Parliament so when the result was made official we needed to show, in the strongest possible terms, that this was no coincidence. Our boycott really hurt Mintoff, who did not want to appear as a ruler without a majority before his socialist friends. I used to tell him that this was not gentlemanly behaviour because he had previously stated that he would not rule without a majority. We started amending the Constitution only when Mintoff realised that he could no longer keep this up."

 

Raymond Caruana and Tal-Barrani

"Eddie and I were attending a party celebrating Jose Herrera's graduation as a lawyer (his father had invited us) when we received a call telling us that one of our supporters had been killed in Gudja."

Dr Mifsud Bonnici recounts to the very last detail the scene of the murder of Raymond Caruana - who was shot with a submachine gun while in the PN Gudja Club. "It was raining and when we arrived the spent cartridges were still lying around. You have to imagine this scene - this man lying dead in a pool of blood. He died in a terrible way. Eddie was shouting 'does no one know what happened here?' It was a horrible scene."

He was also one of the first to arrive at Tal-Barrani where those terrible incidents took place on 30 November 1986. "We were the first ones there so we decided to wait for more of our supporters. When they arrived we moved on to Zejtun and the police started shooting gas canisters at us. I still remember the man who wet a handkerchief in a puddle and told me to cover my face with it. These were dramatic and terrible moments that I sincerely hope the country never goes through again."

 

The 1987 PN electoral victory

During the 1987 election, Ugo Mifsud Bonnici, Louis Galea and Guido de Marco were told not to leave the counting hall. "The projections showed that we were winning the election but then the Gozo ballot boxes started coming in and it looked like we had lost a number of votes over there. Our people panicked - especially when they saw Lorry Sant banging against the Perspex and shouting at the counting agents - and decided it was better to leave. I had to physically stop people from leaving."

He recounts a moment he shared with Marie Louise Coleiro Preca, who at the time was the MLP Secretary General. "The best moment was when Marie Louise Coleiro came up to me and said they would guarantee safe passage to our people if they won and asked if we would offer the same guarantee if we won. I told her we had no control over the police. However, as time passed and it became clear that we were going to win the election, we started speaking to the police and eventually assumed control over them from the counting hall. The transfer of power was so evident, you could physically see it."

 

Reforms in education

While the third and final part of his book deals solely with his term in office as President of the Republic, the most extensive is the second part, in which he speaks about the seven years he spent as minister. Dr Mifsud Bonnici speaks proudly of the education reforms. "We had to change practically everything. We had to make the university autonomous again. We had to reintroduce discipline in our primary schools, which were being led by individuals who came in as "volunteers" during the teachers' strike. We had to reorganise the trade schools. I also spent five years dealing on Church schools and lands. It was probably one of my biggest efforts. Kindergarten became mandatory for everyone from the age of three and we introduced Systems of Knowledge. The Education Reform was the biggest challenge."

His portfolio in the 1987 Cabinet included, apart from Education, the Environment, Broadcasting, Culture, Youth, Museums and Sport. "Do you know what the first law that I passed as Minister was? The one turning Filfla into a nature reserve."