The court decision yesterday that decided in favour of National Bank shareholders who had sued the government for breaching their human rights in the take-over of the bank in 1973 was not the first, nor the last, judgement day for the bank.

As we say in today’s issue, quoting from the memoirs of a close relative of a person who was very negatively affected by the issue, the National Bank of Malta passed through many dark days between December 1973 and March 1974. Those were, one may also say, judgement days for the bank.

If our reading of the import of yesterday’s judgement is correct, there will have to be other judgement days until the shareholders get the compensation that is due to them.

It should be of concern to one and all that this court case took so long to come to judgement. One is here reminded there are other important cases, such as the BICAL one, that to the best of one’s knowledge are still awaiting judgement. Equally, people with more limited means many times face equal delays in getting a judgement delivered on their own particular cases.

In the National Bank case, as the details show (many people have forgotten, many others do not have any idea at all) there were politics involved and the aim was not far short of a takeover of a fully-functioning bank with a long and established tradition which, being private sector, was an obstacle along the path of a central economy along the pure Socialistic ideology.

The longer it took for this case to come to judgement means that now the case has been re-opened and the details will now come out and get refreshed in many people’s minds.

It is not exactly a bad thing that has happened, for truth, and the details of who did what and who said what, provide a timely warning that even though we may think that a repetition is unthinkable, given today’s changed world, and today’s changed party politics and our membership in the EU, still what happened back then in 1973 would have also been thought of as unthinkable a year or so before. And yet it happened.

Today, Malta has an abundance of banks, local and foreign, operating here. All of them have their market share and compete against each other in full freedom. There are laws governing them and a banking supervisor on top of everything. The Maltese banks, or rather, the banks in Malta, acted with full honour during the worst years of the crisis when other countries were pulled under by the faults and defects of their banks. Starting from this year, there will also be a euro-wide banking supervision structure in place.

This was not the result of the State-engineered take-over of the National Bank but rather came about as a result of policies that allowed banks to grow and thrive and to provide employment to thousands of employees who have progressed in their banking experience and skills over the years also through the judicious introduction of foreign banks who have been instrumental in putting the level of banks in Malta to such a high level.

People have suffered as a result of the National Bank take-over. Many have died. Many have had their savings taken away from them. Many have nurtured a deep sense of grievance and anger at what happened in those days. Some have even gone mad as a result and died in that stage. All those who, dead or alive, took part in that action, must be held responsible for that, now that the Court has added comfort to the long-held beliefs of the victims. Many are now past accounting for that because they have died. But the memory of what happened will not go away. This court judgement has, if anything, refreshed its memory.