Daphne Caruana Galizia is absolutely right. There is no point in being unchristian and crowing because Dom Mintoff has died. May he rest in peace, say I. An assessment of his life and achievements however is a different matter and will be long debated. Many, many people suffered long years of persecution and fear and misery and discrimination and loss, because that’s how he operated.

He certainly championed the ‘poor’ and narrowed the gap between them and the ‘rich’ though that is probably not the most accurate way to describe it. Many will say that he rewarded his supporters while hammering those who he considered were not. Those who benefitted still see him as a benefactor – which is fair enough – those who thought things through (and there were many) saw only a ruthless man determined to perpetuate his hold on power at any cost and they learned the hard way that if you got in his way it was curtains. I remember him saying during one of his interminable monologues on TVM: ‘in life everything is risk’ (għax fil- ħajja kollox huwa sogru) and if there is someone who disagrees with you, turn on him and take him on saying “come let us see who is the strongest”(ejja ħa naraw min hu l- aktar b’saħħtu)’. He didn’t give a damn about what damage he did and who suffered  so long as he got his way; whether it was against his own party or a trade union or an organisation, or a company,  or an individual. He understood perfectly the meaning of ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ when it came to politics and power – the doctrine of the survival of the fittest.  History is full of similarly ruthless men.

He was a central figure in the forging of contemporary Malta – that is undeniable but that does not make him a saint – or necessarily a devil.

There is also a paradox: While he exercised de facto supreme power, riding roughshod over the laws of the land and not shrinking from violence to assert his authority I believe he did not want to go down in history as a dictator. When push came to shove in the aftermath of the 1981 elections he accepted the need to preserve a democratic political facade. It was necessary if only for his amour propre for the government of the country to be seen to be elected by an absolute majority of the electorate. This gave Malta a safety net: No matter how electoral boundaries were manipulated (and Mintoff was past master at that science) the majority of the people (ie, the electorate) would have the last word. And so it came to pass that the successor he appointed – equally ruthless but lacking his aura – lost power. Malta returned to the fold of democracy under a Nationalist government, which by joining the European Union assured the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary and other institutions, individual freedoms and a market economy. Mintoff, whatever his inclination towards authoritarian rule and his impatience or intolerance of contradiction and opposition had drawn back from the brink. Malta could have ended up like any other post colonial hell hole. Why he didn’t take the plunge down to unimaginable depths of absolute tyranny has yet to be explained, for there were those around him who wanted a one party state with all that implied.  Was it that he realised that his economic policy (he favoured a centrally planned economy) had failed miserably and he had no solutions? Was it that he was very conscious of how history would judge him? Was it perhaps that in the final analysis he was in his own way at heart a democrat?

In future years dispassionate scientific ‘post mortem’ dissections of his career will perhaps suggest answers to such questions (and to so many others) and permit us to understand him and to judge him. One thing is certain: loved or hated (there probably is no media res here) he will not be forgotten. Requiescat in pace.

■ Roger Vella Bonavita

Perth, Western Australia