It is most unfortunate that Eddie Fenech Adami appears unable to retire gracefully. First he made himself President of the Republic, stepping smartly into Guido de Marco’s shoes when the latter’s time as president was done. To do this he stepped down as premier just one year into his term of office, and when Malta joined the European Union a month later, it was Lawrence Gonzi who was prime minister and leading the celebrations, and not the man who fought the 30-year battle to get us there.

Back then, people were angry about it. They felt let down. They couldn’t understand why the man they had admired for so long had pretty much cheated them of the prime minister for whom they had voted, and made himself president, leaving his job to be done for the next four years by somebody they had not chosen, Lawrence Gonzi.

That was when the great hero of the 1980s and 1990s first sank in public esteem. That was when people began to wonder whether their political demigod might not actually have feet of clay.

When he left San Anton Palace two years ago – a figure of speech, because his wife refused to move the household there for the duration – Dr Fenech Adami told the newspapers that his only plans were to be a full-time grandfather and that he looked forward to not having to check his diary before going to bed. Michael Carabott, who edits this newspaper’s daily edition, interviewed him just before he packed his bags for that supposedly longed-for retirement. Dr Fenech Adami told him that he would continue to keep up to date with events in Malta and Europe, “but I will not actively or personally get involved” (The Malta Independent, 2 February 2009).

For the last two years he has been more or less true to his word, but the prospect of divorce legislation has proved too much for him. It has turned him into a version of Margaret Thatcher, backseat-driving, second-guessing and trying to influence the Conservative Party she no longer led. And because her shadow loomed so large, because her stature as prime minister had been so great, Mrs Thatcher made her successors’ job that much more difficult. She couldn’t accept the fact that ‘her’ political party was being managed in a way she didn’t agree with. Eddie Fenech Adami is doing the same now. He is retired, but still hoping to pull strings to fend off the divorce legislation that he refused to discuss for 30 years.

For the three decades he led the Nationalist Party, he had fought off all suggestions that perhaps, just perhaps, the time had come to talk about divorce, and maybe, you never know, just maybe, introduce it? But he was so adamantly opposed to it, so unwilling even to consider it – because Jesus said No, making it, in his eyes, an absolute truth rather than a matter of opinion held by some of those of the same religious persuasion – that divorce became for the Nationalist Party the Great Big Unspoken Elephant in the room. It became the cancerous tumour which, ignored in the hope that it would go away, instead grew to the extent that it now poses a real and looming threat to the party.

Right now, as Dr Fenech Adami insists on telling us repeatedly what he thinks about divorce, rooting his logic in what might well be a historic misinterpretation of a couple of lines in the New Testament, the rest of us out here have begun to get some idea of what it must have been like for anybody in the party machinery who even hoped to try to crack this one, knowing full well that it couldn’t be held off for good just by pretending that public opinion was Eddie Fenech Adami’s opinion. It must have been hell, getting used to a sort of permanent state of denial and hoping that the inevitable would not happen and have to be dealt with.

But now the inevitable has indeed happened, and Dr Fenech Adami told a radio interviewer yesterday that he was shocked by the referendum result because he thought that people in their great majority would vote against divorce legislation. Why did he think that? Simple, really: for years he refused to countenance any mention of divorce, and he made the great error of thinking – a common error, but very unusual for him – that if he refused to discuss something then it didn’t exist.

This supremely rational man slipped up because on this particular matter he preferred to base his reasoning on the irrationality of religious belief. And that’s dangerous for a politician because religious belief and dogma are not, as he says, absolute truths but personal beliefs and as such they are relative. His truth is not my truth. Religion forces people to think in black and white, when the real world and real life are in multiple shades of grey.

As I write this, there are conflicting reports of what Eddie Fenech Adami actually told his interviewer. One newspaper’s Internet version says that Dr Fenech Adami hopes MPs will vote No and block the divorce bill, because the referendum is “only consultative”. Another online newspaper quotes him as saying that he does not suggest MPs should ignore the referendum result, but that they should vote according to their conscience. I have been unable to obtain a transcript of the interview in time to meet my deadline, and am reluctant to rely on these conflicting reports. But if it is true Dr Fenech Adami said he hopes MPs will block the bill, then he should know that his shock at the referendum result will be as nothing compared to our shock at seeing the real and actual Salvatur ta’ Malta go down the very same path as the pretender to that title.

Dom Mintoff, too, was convinced of what he was doing, and felt justified in trampling on our rights, dignity and liberty to achieve whatever ideal or project he had in mind. The fact that Eddie Fenech Adami’s motivation is religious and Dom Mintoff’s was anything but does not make Dr Fenech Adami’s motivation better. It just makes it different. The Moses who led us to the Promised Land of Europe is now very cross because we have begun to think like Europeans. There was more than a hint of ‘Ewropa ta’ Kain’ reasoning in Dr Fenech Adami’s quoted words yesterday. With all his talk of slippery slopes, gay marriage, abortion and the evils of secularism and thins ends of wedges, he sounded dangerously like the man whose nemesis he was: Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici.

Both Mr Mintoff and Dr Fenech Adami made the fundamental error of thinking that their truth was everybody’s and that it was absolute. Fortunately, they are both out to pasture and Malta has moved on. I suppose it is a blessing that Mr Mintoff is not well. With Dr Mifsud Bonnici giving us his two cents’ worth on Gaddafi and Dr Fenech Adami doing the same with divorce, the last thing we need is a third former prime minister throwing bottles from the back of the room.

www.daphnecaruanagalizia.com