with a discussion on the man who was kidnapped, held captive for 55 days by the militant communist group Brigate Rosse and whose body was found in car trunk in Rome on 9 May, 1978.
The audience who attended the talk was first treated to a video clip of Aldo Moro, as Prime Minister, wishing Malta well on its Independence.
He had welcomed our country’s independence with “emotion and joy” and commented about the two nations’ common history. “Malta can always count on Italy’s friendship” and offered his country’s help. Mr Moro had also remarked that the two islands should strive to promote peace and progress in the Mediterranean.
During Friday’s commemoration, Vice-President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies and president of UDC, the political heir of the Democrazia Cristiana, Rocco Buttiglione remembered the days when Mr Moro would visit young people as he was always on the look out for new ideas. Mr Buttiglione said Mr Moro thought of creating a new movement that incorporated religion and culture, as he was feeling the DC was fast becoming obsolete.
His major problem, said Mr Buttiglione, was that he was fundamentally a man of peace. He sought to reconcile the Left and the Right, who were keen on settling scores that went back to the WWII, which had also been a civil war in Italy between communists and fascists.
Mr Moro sought to reconcile them to the last on the negotiations table, but failed to realise that they wanted to settle their scores on the battleground, said Mr Buttiglione, a professor of political science and philosophy.
President Emeritus Guido de Marco remembered the how he criticised Mr Moro for collaborating with the Mintoff government of the 1970s while the Nationalist Party was undergoing terrible hardships. He had said this at the DC headquarters at Piazza del Gesù where a Nationalist delegation made up of himself, former presidents Censu Tabone and Ugo Mifsud Bonnici, current President Edward Fenech Adami and current Speaker Louis Galea, was involved in talks.
“Mr Moro taught me to look beyond the status quo,” he said, as keeping ties with the MLP administration meant keeping contact with Dom Mintoff. This would in the end help the PN rise to power.
President de Marco remarked that Italy has always kept the promise made by Mr Moro 44 years ago to be a friend to Malta.
President Emeritus Ugo Mifsud Bonnici said Mr Moro reconciled the dilemma of being a good Catholic with being in politics. While one preached unity, the other tends to divide, he said. Dr Mifsud Bonnici said Mr Moro always saw men as men and not as socialists, communists or liberals. “He transcended the barriers of politics though dialogue,” he said.
Mr Moro was also a professor of law and ethics and always believed the law and statehood moved hand in hand, said the former president. He remarked also that while Alcide De Gasperi, first leader of the DC and born in Trento, looked at Europe from his birthplace northwards, Mr Moro, who was born in Apulia, was much more oriented towards a Europe that collaborated with its Mediterranean neighbours.
Enzo Scotti, former minister in Mr Moro’s national solidarity government, described how the statesman realised that only the Compromesso Storico, a government of national unity, could save Italy from civil war.
He lauded Mr Moro’s exceptional negotiation skills and his ability to read the signs of his times, like the riots of 1968.
Many have pondered why Mr Moro was killed, said Mr Scotti, who pointed out two theories; the first one being the BR’s effort to stop communists who had severed their ties with Moscow to go into government while the other theory views the murder as an attack on the DC and an attempt to spar civil uprisings. The first theory, he said, was the most accepted one, however, historians nowadays tend to converge on the second one.