“Imma Padre (I was still a priest then) ma tarax li l-Ewropa hi immorali?” (But Padre don’t you see that Europe is immoral?).

That, in just one sentence encapsulates Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici (henceforth KMB). This must have been told to me on either side of the hard-fought EU accession referendum, but most probably after, when he and Dom Mintoff attempted a rearguard exit from the EU.

“Immoral” not because of some moral issue like abortion, but as I remember it because of CAP, the common agricultural policy, about which much could be argued but it could hardly have been called immoral.

That’s the man who tragically became prime minister at a crucial time in the history of the Republic.

There is no doubt that KMB was a saintly man who shunned honours and wealth and who on principle did not charge the people who sought his legal advice. So did some of his family who like him did not charge the poor for legal advice. And of course there was the shining example of his uncle and namesake Il-Gross (Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici) who died a pauper.

There was another resemblance – Il-Gross in his final stage had moved out of the party, the Partito Nazionalista. Others followed suit, such as KMB’s brother Antoine who first made it to Parliament within the ranks of Ganado’s PDN. KMB went the whole hog – he switched to Labour first by helping out the General Workers Union and then was roped in by Mintoff to join the party as a counterbalance, in Mintoff’s mind, to Lorry Sant and his development cum construction phalanx. Later, Mintoff was to admit in Parliament that choosing KMB had been a mistake on his part. But we’re jumping to conclusions here.

My family had reason to be grateful to the Mifsud Bonnici family – his father and then his brother were our family doctors. And I was friends with his brother the priest. But an honest appraisal of the man must not stop at his personal qualities, which have been aired these past days without pointing out the glaring mistakes he made himself responsible for in his public life. He lived most of his life on the wrong side of history.

On 23 November 1985 a hijacked Egyptair plane landed in Malta. After hours of negotiations Egyptian commandos attacked the plane and 57 persons including two hijackers were killed. It was the most serious attempt before 9/11.

The prime minister then was KMB who also led the negotiations and took the crucial decision not to get the Americans nor the British or the Germans involved and to rely solely on the clumsy Egyptian commandos with the tragic results that ensued. KMB always defended his decision and never ever as far as I remember expressed remorse or contrition.

This ‘mistake’ if we can call it so derived directly from Mintoff’s anti-superpower doctrine from which we are still suffering today due to the obscene deal Mintoff struck with a Nationalist Party deprived of government in the 1981 election – majority rule accepted henceforth with constitutional neutrality as the counterpart. The two issues were completely unrelated and majority rule should have been accepted with no conditions attached but there you are.

It was this anti-anything that smacked of the West that conditioned Maltese politics in the years leading to EU accession and even later, as told earlier. Today, after the 2003 referendum and election Malta warts and all is part of the EU and none, bar a few Maltexit fans, dream of exiting. Least of all the Labour government with its four MEPs and millions of EU funds coming our way.

But what people still blame KMB directly for was the terrible Church Schools saga of the 1980s when KMB was minister of education first and prime minister later.

Over the past days I have coincidentally reviewed the book by Fr Anton Azzopardi SJ on St Aloysius College which includes a very detailed blow by blow account of the extreme pressure by the Labour government to get the Church Schools to renounce to all fees.

You have to read the actual account to sense the hatred that was involved in the KMB slogan “Jew b’xejn jew xejn “ (No fees or no schools) – schools closed and guarded by police and by thugs against the teachers and parents, children running from house to house and hounded by the government media and possible retaliations, mass transfers of teachers following a strike. Never had such Communist tactics been used in our country.

Again and again KMB had never expressed regret about all that took place nor regretted or apologised for the disruption and hardship caused to entire generations of students. On the contrary he always took the high moral ground that this was a “sacred battle “. He never stopped to ask what business it was for a government to undertake such a crusade or at least whether any alternative was possible or also that such a crusade could bring out a very anti-liberal hardcore deep in the Labour DNA.

Nor did we hear any peep from him in these last years as his beloved Labour Party became the party of developers and construction moguls. Nor when it became so mired in allegations of corruption and its successful leader had to resign. A word from its former leader might not have changed the course of history but could have helped provide the party with a glimmer of hope.

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