Men’s greatness is not measured by the length of their obituaries, nor by the intensity of the hatred of those who rejoice in their death.

Men’s greatness is best measured by the positive and lasting change they bring to society around them and by such a measure, no one stands taller than Dom Mintoff, who passed away this week at the age of 96.

Mintoff’s unforgiving critics make false judgement by using the wrong compass of where history starts. Often, such criticism is based on events that happened late in Mintoff’s second legislature of the 1970s and his performance after that. That is wrong. Mintoff’s history should start from the post-war period, when he practically took into his own hands the physical reconstruction after the devastation of war and pledged to dedicate his political career to redeeming Malta from the chains of colonialism.

Those who did not live through the misery of the 1950s and the 1960s can never appreciate the degree of change that Mintoff brought about. Before he imbued the nation with the self-confidence to believe that we could stand on our own as a sovereign state, the general thinking was that we were too small to dream beyond the confines of colonialism or neo-colonialism, with theoretical political statehood but inevitable economic submissiveness. We were conditioned to think that Malta had no economies of scale to keep itself economically sustainable so we should be eternally grateful to our colonisers or neo-colonisers for taking us under their patronage. We were forced to believe that the imbalance between the supply of labour and work opportunities could only be addressed through mass emigration rather than home-grown economic development.

We were trained to think that it was a privilege to live in a confessional state where the Church decided whom we should choose as our civil leaders and to how much education we should have access, in small doses, as excess of it – like Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night – could surfeit the appetite for materialism and kill the spiritual fervour of the soul.

Before Mintoff showed us that there was another way if we truly believed in ourselves, it was considered the natural order of things that most of us were poor, that a very select few had a God-given right for untaxed riches that could last several lifetimes and that the interests of the Church and the privileged were the only things that the colonisers needed to bother themselves about, as they would take care to ensure that the general population would be happy with the few crumbs that fell off the table without any 1919 Sette Giugno type of insurrection.

It takes baby-boomers like me to recall how I had to drop out from 6th form in 1969 to take the first job that was offered to me at the age of 17 as my family could not support me through the expense of pursuing a university degree. Don’t I remember my father and elder brother being persistently chastised within the family to the point of persecution for daring to use their brains and back Mintoff’s ‘sitt punti’ rather than blindly accept that Archbishop Gonzi knew best as he had a direct link to the Almighty who was giving him the inspiration to impose mortal sin on whoever gave Mintoff’s views a fair chance?

Mintoff changed all that by the sheer force of his character, bringing about lasting change against all odds and against the stiff resistance of those who were well-served by the status quo. He eradicated material and intellectual poverty and changed us from a confessional state to a democracy where the Church has freedom to teach but not to impose its ways on those who, voluntarily, have moved away from its teachings.

So how is it that even in death there are those who see Mintoff as a villain rather than as a political giant? There are three reasons for this.

Firstly, Mintoff’s character was honed by the stiff resistance to change that he had to overcome in his struggles. He was rough around the edges, though for those who really took the time to get to know him, he remained always sweet and genuine at the core. His negotiating tactics were hard and possibly vicious. He created or bluffed alternatives – even when he had none. He was a brinkman in the extreme – willing to stick to his principles rather than settle for patched-up easy compromises. His losing two elections rather than seeking any compromise with the Curia bear witness to this. Such roughness often rubbed people up the wrong way and they never had enough time to taste the sweetness at Mintoff’s core.

Secondly, the change process – even when perfectly successful – leaves a few losers behind. Those who were well-served by the status quo, those who had to give up their privileges and those who were exposed to competition based on competencies rather than birth-rights, tend to carry persecutory grudges verging on a thirst for revenge, rather than see change as a worthwhile process for achieving broad-based development leading to social cohesion and true moral values.

Lastly, it is true that after the closure of the military base in March 1979, Mintoff had achieved everything for which he had worked in his political struggle since 1945. Following this struggle, spanning 34 years, Mintoff had a very common problem that missionary type leaders often face. Once the mission has been accomplished, such leaders should logically ask themselves what’s next, what are the leadership skills needed to achieve the next objectives and do they have the skills necessary to reach these new objectives?

Even if they manage to define new objectives (which is difficult in itself, as often they tend to presume that protection of the accomplished mission should remain a sufficient and permanent objective) such missionary leaders rarely have command of the skills necessary to face new challenges. The skills needed to achieve change are different from the skills needed to prosper in the stability that follows it.

Having achieved all that he had worked for by March 1979, and this refers not only to closure of the base, but also to economic progress that had eradicated poverty, to building a robust social services structure, to gaining nearly full employment and dismantling obsolete structures such as war rations of basic foodstuffs, Mintoff became a sort of rebel without a cause. It is not without reason that many criticise the Mintoff era between 1979 and 1987 (he had resigned as party leader and as Prime Minister in 1984) without giving credit to the first 34 years of his political career.

One could argue that the end did justify the means. The end for Mintoff was protecting his major achievements by entrenching neutrality and freedom from military bases in the Constitution. He sacrificed everything else that stood in the way, and achieved the entrenchment just before the dissolution of Parliament in 1987. Was it worthwhile? Although I thought differently at the time, now – with the benefit of hindsight – I think it probably was. It avoided the risk of Labour falling into a post-Mintoff leadership struggle while still in executive power and offered a smooth alternation of power in 1987, which was not quite possible in 1981, based on the Constitution as it then was.

And in the end, knowingly or unknowingly, Mintoff – more than anyone else – shaped Malta’s entry into the EU in 2004. Without his revolt against his own government in 1998, Malta would have never made it to join the EU in 2004. In spite of his contradictory pronouncements, Mintoff would have liked nothing better than being a Prime Minister attending EU country leaders’ summits where decisions needed majority approval. If he was in favour of integration, with a few seats at Westminster and equality in social services, how could he have been against EU membership, giving disproportionate rights to small countries and preparing a clear road map for achieving economic harmonisation throughout the EU?

For me there was no one like Dom. Rest in peace, Leader.

www.alfred-mifsud.blogspot.com