'Diplomat by Destiny'

Author: George Saliba

Publisher: SKS Publishers / 2025

Pages: 339

Autobiographies are great because they tell you what happened 'from the horses' mouth' but then you are subject to the author's way of seeing things.

This current season is seeing no less than three autobiographies all from the Left of Malta's political divide - this book that I am reviewing today, one by Charles Flores that I will be reviewing next week and one by Evarist Bartolo which has not been sent to me so far.

It would seem that those who are not active any more take to writing.

Having said that, there is nothing comparable coming from the Nationalist side, not that there are no stories to be told from that side.

This autobiography tells about the career in the Maltese Diplomatic Service of George Saliba.

Like other diplomatic services, the history of the Maltese one is a mix of the political appointees and career diplomats.

The author is one of the former. He was born and brought up in Zurrieq, in the South of Malta, a mostly farming community centred around the church, the rivalry between the Santa Katerina main feast and the more popular (and Labour) tal-Karmnu feast.

The author made it to the Lyceum, then just beginning in the new premises in Hamrun.

This was the early Sixties when Malta had just became independent and when the Labour Party, long repressed under Archbishop Gonzi, the British colonial power and the Nationalist Part was beginning its long march which was to lead it to power in the 1971 election.

The author was a member of the MUSEUM and his immediate family was Nationalist but his wider family was Labour. The events he saw around him in the 1960s made him quit the MUSEUM and move to Young Christian Workers where he fell under the influence of Fr Peter Serracino Inglott. The hounding of Prof PP Saydon helped him to move to Labour. But he remained in the periphery of things. When Labour was elected in 1971 he was employed in the management structure of the farmers' cooperative KPH.

In life sometimes a lucky break comes along and he was lucky in being selected to go and study at the Plater College in Oxford when one of the people chosen dropped off. Another student at this College, which benefited from being in Oxford and able to mix and attend at some of the university functions, was Lino Spiteri, later to become Mintoff's Finance Minister and Deputy Governor of the Central Bank, apart from unsuccessfully challenging for the leadership of the Labour Party.

The author's first stint in the Foreign Service was when he was chosen to be Malta's Ambassador to the Gulf States when Mintoff summarily sacked those career diplomats who had obeyed the PN directive to strike on Mnarja Day.

This appointment came when he was preparing to get married and set up a family home. But since he was appointed to represent Malta in six different countries and Mintoff, stingy as always, did not open an embassy in the region, the author had to travel all the time.

Besides, Mintoff expected to be briefed personally after every trip and kept coming up with all sorts of initiatives.

The author's second lucky break came when he was chosen as Malta's Ambassador to Libya from 1987 to 1993.

There was now a new government in Malta, a Nationalist one, but the author mentions Guido de Marco and  who had good relations with Libya and who helped him in his task.

This was the time when relations with Malta were at a low ebb following the median line dispute and Libya's gunboat diplomacy.

He tells us how he found the embassy in a ramshackle state but he refrains from naming and shaming his predecessor. This trait would be repeated in other posts later on in his life especially when in his next post he was sent to Moscow and found that the ambassador there was the same one he had succeeded in Tripoli and the embassy was the same shambles.

The names are publicly available so one does not immediately understand why they are not here.

It was not just the embassy building that needed seeing to but also the staff as disputes and even fights were the order of the day.

The author's time in Libya was overshadowed by the explosion of a plane over the Scottish village of Lockerbie in 1988 and its consequences as regarding Malta seeing the West became believers that the bomb had been sent from Malta.

The author and Malta in general have never accepted this theory but from then onwards the die was cast to blame Gaddafi.

The Arab Spring was coming and the end of the Gaddafi regime.

The author had long left Tripoli and now as the Maltese Ambassador in Moscow he would witness the end of the Yeltsin years and the beginning of the Putin era at a time of great hardship and poverty in Russia.

One here must pay tribute to the author's resourceful wife who began learning Russian while still in Libya and who went on to graduate in Russia.

In 1996 the short-lived Alfred Sant government came in and the author was hurriedly appointed Ambassador to the United Nations but his term in Moscow was not over so he had to commute between Moscow and New York for a time.

He also had to learn about multilateral diplomacy from country to country diplomacy, especially the workings of the Security Council.

When de Marco was appointed President his personal secretary was appointed Ambassador to the UN and the author was made to terminate his post.

The same happened when the author was about to end his Washington post and the author asked for a six month extension so that he could assist his son with his finals but the minister, Joe Borg, refused.

 The author came back to Malta and was not given any work to do but instead was given a tedious job, an EU post, but he left after six months.

Then he joined the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean art Spinola Palace but left soon afterwards.

After the Labour victory in the 2013 election he was appointed Special Envoy of the Union of the Mediterranean based in Barcelona but left due to lack of agreement.

That seems to have been the story of his life.