When Dom Mintoff distanced himself from the Labour Party in the 1996-98 Alfred Sant Labour government he did not do so because he expected to be named a minister, or to become prime minister. He had already been there and done that.

His was not a personal quest, an ambition for power because he felt he was the best man for a job that had been given to another, and thought that all the other ministers were idiots or had been promoted in spite of not having delivered.

He did not complain that he was being kept aside, and that he was never listened to. He never said that democracy had been crushed by an oligarchic system made up of people who worked in the same building as him.

He did not show us his Form II results to tell us how brilliant he had been at school (who knows, maybe he got 100 per cent in religion as well); neither did he point fingers at his former classmates because they had reached positions he aspired to hold or attended meetings in which he craved to participate.

He did not go on TV and leave his mobile phone switched on and brag about how many messages he was receiving in support of what he was saying (and, really, I cannot imagine Mintoff using a mobile phone, or having a one-to-one with Lou Bondi, for that matter).

Mintoff never told us that he had been a top student from kindergarten upwards. He boasted about what his policies had brought about for the country, firmly believing that they were the right ones for this country, but never about how good his thesis was – good enough to be implemented as a law, and today, tomorrow.

He did not despair to the point of coming out with statements tantamount to a cardinal sin to the people who elected him, such as the comparison that state broadcasting was worse than during the time when the Opposition Leader’s name was not even mentioned and when the party in Opposition had to make its voice heard through makeshift broadcasting from Sicily.

He did not call or SMS editors at an unholy hour because he was big-headed enough to expect to be heard, and thought they had all the time in the world for him as he talked for an hour or more without listening to what the person at the other end had to say.

He was not acting selfishly in his thirst to become someone everybody talked about, just for the sake of being talked about. He did not phone reporters to demand that his name be printed, and chase them with documents he had signed just to see them in print.

He did not threaten to sue journalists for libel if, in what they wrote, they continued to question his line of reasoning or his behaviour, or if they saw through his words and realised that there was more to what he was admitting, and that his calls for better administration were simply a way of saying that, if given the chance, he could do it better.

Mintoff used his time in Parliament well, and the eloquence with which he was gifted was an asset in the way he explained himself to put across his ideas. He kept his followers hanging on to his every word. One may not have agreed with him, but he was always coherent and easily understood. He knew where he wanted to go and many times he arrived there, perhaps in a roundabout way, but never going off at a tangent and then forgetting what his initial argument had been.

He did not sulk or throw a tantrum like a five-year-old child who has not been given the sweets or toy he wanted. He did not hold the country to ransom because his personal desires were not being met, but because he genuinely believed that the Labour Party of the day was not the same party he had built and loved.

He did what he did – some Labourites have still not forgiven him for it, but many still see him as Is-Salvatur ta’ Malta, and he is still revered as such – because he saw the social conscience of the party he had painstakingly constructed over decades being thrown to the dogs. The raising of energy costs at a time when the price of oil was $12 dollars a barrel (it is now 10 times as much) was a decision Mintoff never accepted.

He is not loved by Nationalists, who see in him the man who clung to power and threw the country into political chaos when he failed to recognise the 1981 election result as having been a defeat for his party. But his political opponents respected him.

Mintoff was also intelligent enough to take a stand against his new leader, but never go directly against him by saying he had lost confidence in him. His oratory skills enabled him to imply the truth – at least as he saw it – but he always kept his options open.

In 1998, Mintoff was at the end of a political career that, love it or hate it, is intrinsically linked with the way the country developed from the end of the Second World War to the end of the century. Fifty whole years of ups and downs and, after that public life came to a stop in 1998, Mintoff still grabbed – and grabs – the headlines whenever there are concerns for his health.

Most of all, Mintoff was not a great pretender. He did not want it all, and want it now. He knew when to hold his horses, and when to go for the sting. He might not have been an example of what diplomacy is all about, but he certainly knew when to draw a line.

He did bring his party down, but he had previously taken it to unprecedented heights.

Dom Mintoff did not seek to become part of history, but it was history that found a place for him.

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