This year marks 50 years since the late PN MP Joseph Cassar Galea was involved in a plane crash, when the light aircraft in which he was flying, together with a number of other passengers, crashed into the crocodile-infested Demerara River in Guyana, South America, on 4 December 1964. This event coincides with the 50th anniversary of Malta's independence which was also celebrated this year, and in which Dr Cassar Galea, who was a lawyer by profession, played a vital role by working side-by-side with then Prime Minister George Borg Olivier. It also coincides with the 25th anniversary of Dr Cassar Galea's death.
Dr Cassar Galea and the rest of the passengers had miraculously survived the crash into the filthy water and he even helped other passengers break out of the plane after he smashed the cockpit's window. He eventually died on 14 December 1989. The cause of his death was never established, but there were suggestions that it could have been an indirect result of the crash. The first question that springs to mind is how this could possibly be the case, considering that he did not die instantly in the crash but 25 years later?
Duncan Barry interviews one of his children, ANNA GRIMA, who gives an insight into what may have led to his death, while also recalling her father's constant uphill struggle in politics when, on the PN ticket, he contested a district that was known - and still is to this day - as being a Labour stronghold.
"As you may know, some viruses have an incubation period. My father ended up in the filthy waters of the Demerara River as a result of the plane crash, and there have been suggestions that he may have died from some virus that has an incubation period of 25 years. He died exactly twenty five years later," Mrs Grima said.
The river rises in the central rainforests of Guyana and flows north for 346 kilometres until it reaches the Atlantic Ocean.
"He always informed himself very well about countries he was about to visit and this time was no exception. He had read, among other things, that the Demerara River was not only filthy but also infested by crocodiles but little did he know that he would end up in those waters," Mrs Grima added.
"You can only imagine the feeling of fear that engulfed him when the plane crashed into the river because he was quite informed about where he had ended up," she added.
According to Dr Cassar Galea's daughter, he smashed the cockpit window with his bare hands to save himself and the other passengers, who included an Indian Chief Justice by the name of Tek Chand, who had no idea how to swim, and the pilot's nine-month-old son.
Dr Cassar Galea was one of 11 individuals chosen by the British government from all Commonwealth countries to supervise the general election in British Guyana which, at the time, was a British colony.
But back to the incident. The crew and passengers remained in that water for a good 45 minutes until help arrived.
"The pilot ended up in a psychological hospital as he could never come to terms with what happened and blamed himself for the incident since apparently, he had forgotten to press the undercarriage button - something that haunts me to this day as well, each time I travel.
"I always ask my husband if he heard the undercarriage closing after take-off," Mrs Grima said.
"In fact, it also haunted my father for the rest of his life as he refused to enter a car wash as it all came back to him when he saw the water splash against the car. To him, this was a horrific recollection of when the plane crash-landed in that water."
The whole family had gone to the airport to meet his plane. "We hadn't the slightest idea then that my father had been involved in a plane crash.
"He never turned up, and my mother took us back home, oblivious to what had happened", she said.
Mrs Grima recalled that Victor Ragonesi, the former PN secretary-general, called my mother to tell her that my father had been involved in an accident. A few days later he returned home.
"I remember him saying that the gold chain he wore around his neck which carried a crucifix and a medallion of Our Lady, broke on impact. The medallion still hung from the chain over his shoulders, but the crucifix was nowhere to be found," she said.
Dr Cassar Galea had suffered injuries to the face and back, apart from psychological problems, and the back injuries gave him problems for the rest of his life. "I can remember my father coming home and saying that he had been given an injection for his back to ease the pain and telling us that we could never imagine the pain he went through from the injection.
"He was also in plaster from his chest down to his waist," Mrs Grima said.
A recollection of the Lorry Sant days
She recalled: "My father had had a massive argument with Lorry Sant in Parliament. [Sant had served as Minister of Works but was in Opposition at the time.] During the heated debate, Sant hurled insults at my father. When the sitting was over, my father, who was of small stature, barged into him and nearly knocked him over.
"When he came home he told us that at least the plaster cast under his clothes had served some purpose!"
Cassar Galea's political life and legal profession combined
The first time Dr Cassar Galea stood for election to the Legislative Assembly was in 1950, when he contested the fourth district - which comprised Paola, Tarxien and other neighbouring towns - on the PN ticket. He was eventually elected as a member of the Legislative Assembly in 1951 and was given the job of overseeing the opening of the first PN club in Paola, which was the first club the PN had after the First World War.
He also served as Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, agreeing to accept the position so that the government would not collapse. He worked very closely with Dr Gorg Borg Olivier so that Malta is granted back its autonomy. He was elected to Parliament once again in the general election in 1962.
The government sent Dr Cassar Galea to the UK to represent Malta in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. Apart from participating in various meetings and discussions, he forwarded a number of suggestions to be included in the drafting of the Constitution tied to Malta's independence. He also formed part of the government delegation that travelled to the UK for talks about independence and it was he who opened up the discussion on TV at the time about the independence referendum. Dr Cassar Galea was appointed Vice President of the Council of Europe and presided over various CoE sessions.
All this and more was included in a general election flyer of his dated December 1986.
Mrs Grima said that being a lawyer by profession made it even harder for her father to be elected, apart from the fact that he contested a district where Nationalist Party supporters were scarce.
"Living in Paola was a massive disadvantage for me; I couldn't even have any friends but the few Nationalists who lived there treated us like royalty. The rest hated us with a passion.
"Many a time, when we waited for the school bus, insults were hurled at us because the Labour supporters living in Paola used to claim that we were privileged due to the fact that we attended a private school.
"When we grew older and were old enough to vote, a man who went by the name of Frankie il-Killer used to accompany us to the polling booths out of fear that we would be threatened by the other side's supporters. He was one of my father's canvassers.
"This was especially because Lorry Sant used to stand in the school's courtyard on polling day. My father never feared him, however: the PN always sent my father for TV debates on which Sant appeared on the panel," she said.
Don't get confused: it's Paola not Pamplona. Bull used to intimidate the Cassar Galea family
"Charlie l-boxer, a Labour Party stalwart of the time, used to bring a real bull to our doorstep and threaten us that he would get the bull to charge our front door with his horns.
"My father once told him that if the bull's horns touched our front door, he would show him who Cassar Galea was," said his daughter. The Cassar Galeas had security outside their home for years, come rain or shine.
Mrs Grima recalled a lighter moment: "He used to travel a lot after he became Vice President of the Council of Europe. According to the late Guido de Marco, once when he was accompanying my father on a trip to Paris or Strasbourg, they were in the hotel's elevator and a woman entered and my father passed a comment in Maltese. On leaving the elevator, she said to them: "Inthom Maltin bhali" ("You are Maltese like me.").
"But my father used to say it was Guido who made the remark and Guido said it was my father!
"As parliamentary sittings used to go on until 3 am at the time, we hardly ever saw my father, she said. "He was a busy man, trying to cope with his profession and politics.
"He had his offices in Valletta, where he received clients who needed his legal advice, and he met his constituents in his offices in Paola and also at home.
"But one thing he never missed was coming home in-between his legal and parliamentary work to have a snack with us and to recite the rosary.
"He always made up for the time he missed spending with us as a family. Each and every Sunday he would take us out for a meal at a Xemxija restaurant and later for tea at the Xara Palace Hotel," she said.
Raymond Caruana murder
According to Mrs Grima: "My father had left the PN Gudja club about 20 minutes before Raymond Caruana was shot dead, but in a matter of minutes he was back at the scene; he was captured in a number of images taken after the shooting which show him looking on in horror."
Cassar Galea encounters another setback during his political life
Mrs Grima said: "It is evident that some of his colleagues never liked him; somehow they felt he was in the way. In fact, most of those who contested the elections ended up in some senior position or other over the years, be it President of the Republic, leader of the party he represented, ambassadors and so on and so forth.
"I once wrote to Dr Fenech Adami, when he was Prime Minister, to try and convince him to set up a memorial to my father. I suggested they name the PN club in Sta Lucija, which was about to be officially opened, after him, but I never received an acknowledgement.
"My father was one of the six PN MPs who voted against Malta becoming a republic. He was never pretentious but in the eyes of this clique he was in the way, and they had all prepared their future positions.
"His colleagues only rewarded themselves and made sure my father did not stand in their way.
"At one time, the clique even tried to get him off the political scene. A newcomer (persuaded by the clique to contest the election on the PN ticket in my father's district) had a double-barrelled surname beginning with Cassar, which meant he came after my father on the ballot paper. But because this new contestant was 'persuaded' to drop his last surname, his name appeared before my father's. This resulted in my father losing a lot votes for two reasons: "Firstly, because the older generation knew him as 'Sur Cassar', so they confused the two, and secondly due to the lack of education in those days, when many people could hardly read."
And this was the start of Dr Cassar Galea's downfall in politics. "Having been a lawyer and not a doctor contesting on the PN ticket, my father continued to lose out on votes. He always contended that being a lawyer in politics did not help, the disadvantage being that a lawyer had as many enemies as he had clients.
"Besides, doctors are closer to the electorate since they visit homes, so in a way, this was another setback."
Mintoff asked him to contest election on MLP ticket
Mrs Galea recalled: "Once, in the middle of the night, when my father was driving back home from Parliament, the driver of the car behind him started flashing its lights at my father's car. My father eventually pulled over and, to his surprise, the person in the other car was then Prime Minister Dom Mintoff. This was in the late 1950s. He tried to convince my father to cross the floor and join his party and promised him that if he weren't elected he would appoint him a Judge with immediate effect, an offer he obviously turned down."
Dizzy spells leading to Cassar Galea's death
As related previously, Dr Cassar Galea died in 1989, and although the cause of his death was never established, it could have been a result of the filthy waters in which he had ended up in the plane crash.
"In November 1988 he was admitted to St Luke's Hospital for some tests after experiencing dizzy spells. As there was no CT scanner in Malta at the time, he had to be flown to London as a wheelchair case.
"When he arrived in London he started to deteriorate but the night before he left Malta, he told me that he had dreamt that Eddie Fenech Adami was supposed to visit India in 1989 and on his arrival he found nobody to greet him. So in his dream, my father packed his case and set off for India to make sure he was there to greet Eddie."
It is understood that Dr Fenech Adami's visit was indeed planned.
"It was one of Papa's last dreams, I suppose, because in the UK he deteriorated even further. You can imagine, he was flown to Malta as a stretcher case and took up nine seats on the plane.
"An English doctor told my husband that we should prepare Papa's grave because he had only a couple of weeks to live.
"He ended up living for much longer than that, despite being in a coma for nearly a year, at least. My mother was at his side, day and night throughout his stay in the hospital when he was in a coma.
"Cockroaches crawled on the nurses' aprons at St Luke's Hospital. When we used to visit him at St Luke's, the ward was infested with cockroaches; they were even crawling on the nurses' aprons.
"At the time, doctors only questioned what he had eaten during his visit to South America. Some doctors, however, did suggest that the virus they suspected could have infected him when the plane crashed into the Demerara had an incubation period of 25 years. He passed away at the age of 69."
Mrs Grima recalls asking the PN to consider setting up a memorial in memory of her father. "I only asked for my father to be remembered in some humble way, no need for anything out of this world. I mean, a monument had been built to Lorry Sant, despite the injustices for which he was responsible.
"My father was so into the PN that whenever I discussed politics with him and suggested that the PN could have been wrong in some of the decisions it took, he always found a way around it and defended his party. He always supported the PN, unlike others within the party who were previously followers of another party, namely that of Herbert Ganado," she said.
'The time came when the 'clique' wanted to get rid of Borg Olivier'
When a dinner party was organised by my father for his constituents to celebrate his 25 years of service in parliament, back in 1976, a number of top PN officials (the clique) turned up uninvited.
"Borg Olivier looked at my father and said to him: "Help me, they've come for me."
The people to whom Dr Cassar Galea's daughter refers as 'the clique', according to her, used this special occasion, which meant a lot to her father, to convince Borg Olivier to step down and abandon the leadership when the PN were in Opposition.
She said that her father had become Speaker in 1953, having served as Deputy Speaker, to avoid the collapse of a PN government and to ensure that the Budget would go through.
He was the only Speaker of the House who ever plucked up the courage to suspend Dom Mintoff from the House of Representatives.
"I mean - and then he gets all this flak," Mrs Grima said, referring to the obstacles he encountered from his own colleagues in the course of his political career.
"This is only the tip of the iceberg; it would take me volumes to relate everything that took place. Don't get me wrong, I'm not 'a switcher' - but I am hurt," she concluded.