Tomorrow the country bids its final farewells to a scholar and a gentleman of the highest calibre. Malta, as well as the international community, has lost a dear friend and an outstanding statesman in the persona of Guido de Marco.

He was a man that in so many instances in the eventful course of his life transcended political lines, through his by now well-known ‘politics of persuasion’, to bring combating sides of the country together in the interest of the very country that he loved so dearly.

But such reminiscences will not grace this column today, they should be left to those who were there, to those who dealt with the man himself in such situations and who are as such far more qualified to reflect on that facet of the man’s legacy.

De Marco’s Presidency of the United Nations General Assembly put Malta at the centre of world affairs and as President of the Republic he was there in Athens when Malta’s European Union accession papers were signed, to witness the fruition of long years of staunch and unrelenting advocacy for the country’s European Union membership, even when the prospect seemed little more than a pipe dream.

Today, both sides of the country’s all-too-often diametrically opposed political spheres agree that that stance was the right one for the country and at least he lived to see the day that, when the stance he held to so firmly, was proved right.

On the international stage, de Marco was well-loved and respected – that is beyond doubt. His contributions to the Middle East Peace process and his friendship with former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat will undoubtedly go down in history.

This editorialist still remembers a day just over two years ago when de Marco, a public speaker of the highest order and a man who knew how to pull at a crowd’s heartstrings, even in death as he did yesterday, brought several members of an otherwise quite sombre audience to the brink of tears as he recounted moving details of his friendship with Arafat and the conversations the two had in Arafat’s final days.

It was an instance that truly underscored de Marco’s qualities as a first class statesman and bridge-builder. Arafat, de Marco told the United Nations International Meeting on the Question of Palestine hosted by Malta in 2008, was a leader who should have been understood better.

He described Arafat as a “great leader of the Palestinian people who, through bitter experience gained through failures and mistakes, became a leader for peace in the region”.

Recounting how he had been in regular contact with Arafat up to his final days in November 2004, de Marco, who was serving as President of Malta at the time, reminisced, “We both knew our phones were being tapped and that everything we said was being registered, we both also knew that there could be no peace in the Mediterranean unless the Palestinian and Middle East issue was solved.

“We can devise any Euro-Mediterranean process or a Mediterranean Union, and while these initiatives can do many good things, unless this issue is resolved there can be no peace in the Mediterranean.”

He harked back to how his controversial decision, as President of the UN General Assembly, to visit Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank and Jordan had provoked the ire of the United States, which had seen Palestinians supporting Saddam Hussein against Kuwait in the first Gulf War and which regarded the trip as a “visit to the enemy”.

But, de Marco argued most astutely, both Kuwait and Palestine had an equal right to not be occupied.

Referring to the Oslo Accords signed in 1993, a milestone in the conflict, Prof. de Marco, recalled how at the time, Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin had all had the “will for peace”. He added, “We did our best at the time, but it wasn’t enough.”

De Marco described the Palestinians as the “worst possible kind of refugee, refugees in their own country” – the number of Israeli settlements in Palestine had not been decreased but rather, had tripled. The situation worsened still more over the following years.”

But he was equal in his sympathy for the plight of the Israelis when he said almost in the same breath, “Israelis have also suffered so much, less at the hands of the Palestinians than at the hands of we Europeans during WWII.”

“My own plea to our fellow EU member states today is to defend and work for peace in the Middle East. Peace: we can achieve it and, I add, we have to achieve it,” he said to resounding applause.

This is just one of hundreds if not thousands of such incidents when his words left indelible marks on the memories of all those present, and where his skills as a consensus builder truly came into their own. These are the qualities the man brought to the Maltese and, later, to the international arena.

Had de Marco been born to another nation, he would have served it just as well, and had that nation been more influential, his mark on the global stage would have been all the more outstanding and indelible. Many of the messages of condolence that have been pouring from the international community bear testimony to that particularly admirable character trait.

As our sister paper put it this week, the loss of Guido has left a gaping hole in the country’s collective consciousness. He has been an integral part of all the country has passed through since Independence. Now that hole must be filled.

The Malta Independent on Sunday’s condolences go out to the de Marco family – not just our condolences, but also our thanks for him having dedicated so much of his precious time on earth to the country he held so dear, as a patriot of the highest order.

Once again, Grazzi Guido, you will not be forgotten.