Former Prime Minister and Labour Party leader. Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici has passed away, the Labour Party said in a statement. He was 89.

Mifsud Bonnici's niece Paula, who is a Nationalist Party MP, said on Facebook that the funeral will be held on Monday at 2.30pm at the Immaculate Conception church in Hamrun, "according to his wishes".

In its statement, the PL said that Mifsud Bonnici will be remembered for his democratic socialist ideals, which he embraced with conviction and which led him to dedicate his life working in the best interests of the working population.

As a lawyer of the General Workers' Union, Mifsud Bonnici worked hand in hand with the Labour Party, then led by Dom Mintoff, on industrial law and had opposed the idea that workers are sent to jail for going on strike. 

Dom Mintoff had later proposed that Mifsud Bonnici becomes the Labour Party's deputy leader and, eventually, was nominated as designate leader, and later leader.

In both occasions, Mifsud Bonnici's nomination had been approved unanimously, the PL said. 

He had served as part of Mintoff's Cabinet and served also as Minister for Employment and Social Services, Minister of Education and Deputy Prime Minister, in different times.

He became Prime Minister in 1984, a position he held till 1987, when he had then become Opposition Leader until 1992.

He served as an MP until 1996.

The PL said that it recognised his work to instill and promote socialist principles. 

The PL also expressed its condolences.

Mifsud Bonnici was born in 1933 to a predominatly Nationalist family. His brother Antoine was for a time parliamentary secretary in a PN government and his cousin Ugo was a PN Minister and later President of the Republic. He graduated as a lawyer in 1954 and specialised in industrial relations.

Mifsud Bonnici had become Labour Party leader and Prime Minister at a time, in 1984, when the party was in power in spite of having obtained fewer votes than the Nationalist Party in the 1981 election. But in those times there was no constitutional provision to amend situations which saw parties obtaining fewer votes but more parliamentary seats being elected to government. Changes were made late in the legislature which, in May 1987, allowed the PN to return to government - in that election, the PN had again obtained fewer seats, but this time there was a constitutional provision which allowed extra seats to be given to the party to be able to govern.

He was the first Prime Minister of Malta to have been sworn in to the post without ever having contested an election.

Mifsud Bonnici was prime minister in what could be described as Malta's darkest days, and the months that preceded the 1987 election were earmaked with political violence, including the killing of PN activist Raymond Caruana in December 1986. A week earlier, the Nationalist Party had been refused permission by the police to hold a mass meeting in Zejtun, a traditonally Labour stronghold. The town had been ringed with barricades and as PN supporters made their way to the meeting, police officers had used tear-gas. Several people had been injured.

Mifsud Bonnici will also be remembered for leading the government's battle to close down church schools, the "jew b'xejn jew xejn" (free of charge or nothing) campaign. Ultimately, church schools had remained open. 

In 1984, Mifsud Bonnici was also present when the offices of the Maltese Curia were ransacked after a demonstration by workers of Malta Drydocks. He had then described the workers as the "aristocracy of the working class".

As Prime Minister, he was also the lead negotiator when Egyptair Flight 648 hijacking took place and the plane landed in Malta. Sixty of the 92 passengers had been killed.

Mifsud Bonnici had strongly opposed Malta's membership in the European Union. He had launched the Campaign for National Independence and proposed an alternative association agreement with the EU, an idea that was rejected. In later years, Mifsud Bonnici continued his campaign against Malta's membership on Smash TV.

The Nationalist Party also expressed its condolences, saying that Mifsud Bonnici worked hard for the ideals he believed in.