I can remember with clarity the day I first came to know Michael Mallia, who died this week.
It was 20 August 1994, a very hot day. For the first and only time in my life I had to conduct three funerals on the same day, my assistant having the day off.
Anyway on that same day I got a message that a Mr Michael Mallia from Standard Publications (ie The Malta Independent) wanted to speak to me. I found time in the congested day and met him.
Over the previous years I had started to write articles for the new publication The Malta Independent with Daphne Caruana Galizia, at that time news editor, as my point of reference.
Michael Mallia was relaying a message from the board. They were in the process of launching a daily paper in Maltese and had thought of inviting me to be the editor, since I had worked as a journalist on the Church’s Maltese language daily paper Il-Hajja from 1972 to just a few months before it was killed off in summer 1987, conveniently after the PN won the election after all those years of Mintoff.
After that first contact I got to know Michael at close quarters since he headed the editorial advisory board. Meanwhile the goalpost had shifted – after some months preparing for a daily Maltese language paper it was realised this new paper would not be economically viable and it was decided to launch an English language daily paper.
Meanwhile in the midst of a very hot controversy I had resigned from parish priest and moved back to Hamrun. I had joined Standard Publications where I was given different roles. Michael Mallia remained a fixed star for me, for us, since he was sort of seen to be the point of reference on the editorial side.
Before I came to know him, he had been very involved in the Church Schools battle with a small group of volunteers. Once the battle for survival was won, he and his small group were sidelined by the official church which took up matters from there. I never heard him grumble or harbour resentment.
Even before this he had been in George Borg Olivier’s time one of the few top civil servants handling the Europe relationship leading up to the Association Agreement.
When Mintoff came to power the small unit was dispersed and he was given a desk job with Alfred Sant as his companion. The two came from a very different mentality and political orientation yet, as Sant said in his recent autobiography, they became friends and appreciated each other.
By the time I joined the Independent, Michael had moved to the private sector and joined the wide group around Farsons. In fact, he was on the SPL board representing the (Farsons) shareholding and he left us when Farsons withdrew their shareholding to focus on core business.
We remained friends though and came into close contact in the big battle to open a subsidiary of the gas company he headed in Kirkop, next to ST, the company’s biggest client.
Ranged against them they had the residents high on NIMBY rhetoric. Michael stood firm and the company proved that, if handled carefully and expertly, a dangerous operation can be rendered safe.
Other than that I should add his participation in COPE, the private sector pressure group to counter the rampant Socialism and statalisation of the Maltese economy, and his chairmanship of PBS, the public broadcaster. I think he was never really comfortable in the public sector.
The last time I saw him was just a few weeks ago when he was one of the speakers at a protest held at Marsascala against the yacht marina project. Nothing in his appearance that day prepared me for the news of his demise.
Let the soil be light on you, Mike. Rest in peace.
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