One crisis settled as Malta shakes off curse of Mintoff

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): Markets crash around the world, North Korean rockets fly over Japan, and Russia stumbles towards the abyss, but at least one crisis has been settled. Malta has shaken off the curse of Mintoff.

"We have to put people's minds at rest and deliver them from their nightmare of higher water and electricity bills," Nationalist Party leader Eddie Fenech Adami told supporters after being sworn in as Malta's new prime minister on Sunday night. Not very nightmarish, as nightmares go, but then Malta doesn't go far itself: the Mediterranean island group is only 15 miles (24 km.) across.

It wasn't just about water and electricity bills, though. It was about whether the Knights of Malta could create the world's smallest mini-state on Maltese territory, and whether Malta should join the European Union or go on consorting with neighbors like Muammar Qaddafy of Libya -- and, above all, whether Dom Mintoff would finally stop haunting his colleagues and the country.

Mintoff first ran for election 53 years ago. In the 1950s, when Malta was still under British colonial rule, he led his Labor Party to power promising complete integration with the United Kingdom. When London refused, he resigned -- and never forgave it.

Back in power in 1962, he led Malta to independence two years later on a tide of anti-Western rhetoric, closed down NATO bases on the islands, and proceeded to forge close ties with Libya. And most of his supporters followed him through this roller-coaster ride of changing loyalties without any apparent queasiness.

There are only 370,000 Maltese, and their history is full of war (because of their strategic position between the eastern and the western Mediterranean) and foreign domination (because they are so few). They are a complex, subtle people, deeply Catholic by religion but speaking a language related to Arabic, and over the centuries they got used to dealing with all foreigners on a pragmatic basis, not an emotional one.

During World War II, the Maltese withstood daily bombing raids so bravely that Britain awarded the whole population the George Cross for valor. Four centuries before, they fought the Turks just as bravely under the leadership of foreign Crusaders. But they never loved either the British or the Crusaders; they have learned to think in terms of interests, not affections.

Except for Dom Mintoff. Much of Malta's history for the past 30 years, both domestic and foreign, has been an exhausting psychodrama in which Mintoff jerked the entire country around in order to punish those who hurt his feelings and reward those who buttered him up. He got away with it because political loyalties in Malta are intense and hereditary; most Labor supporters could not bring themselves to vote Nationalist no matter what Mintoff did.

Even after he retired as prime minister in 1984, Dom Mintoff waged a tireless struggle to impose his own prejudices on the party. His constant sniping from the back benches helped to bring Labor down in the late 80s, and led to nine years of Nationalist rule during which Eddie Fenech Adami downgraded ties with Libya and applied to join the European Union.

Mintoff had become a liability to the Labor Party, but he couldn't stop. Labor returned to power in 1996 under a new leader, Alfred Sant, a Harvard Business School graduate who is the precise antithesis of Mintoff -- but Sant had only a one-seat majority in parliament and that seat was held by Mintoff, elected as usual by the loyal trade unionists of his dockyards constituency in Valetta.

Sant froze Malta's EU application, but he was unmistakably "new Labor" and Mintoff could not stand him. The aged ex-leader nearly brought the government down last year over higher utility taxes -- and he finally did bring it down in July, after a six- hour attack on Sant's leadership, over the question of the Crusaders.

The Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, founded in the 11th century, took over Malta in 1530 in a last-ditch attempt to stop Turkey's westward expansion in the Mediterranean. It worked: the Knights of Malta held out in their great Maltese stronghold, Fort St. Angelo, to the end of the Great Siege of 1565, turning the Turks back for good -- and then ruled Malta until Napoleon expelled them in 1798.

Now, on the 900th anniversary of their foundation, the Knights want to come back -- and their Order is stronger than ever, with 10,000 members worldwide (all Catholic, and about half nobles) and an annual income of several billion dollars. Sant's government was inclined to let them return to Fort St. Angelo, for the sake of tax revenues and tourism -- but Mintoff couldn't stand it.

The Knights would be a sovereign micro-state within the castle: they already issue their own passports, money and stamps, and have full diplomatic relations with 70 countries. It would all be happening within Dom Mintoff's own dockyards constituency, so he crossed the floor, brought Labor down less than two years into its five-year term, and precipitated an election which the Nationalists have won by what is, in Maltese terms, a landslide: 52 percent of the vote, up from 48 percent last time.

With a solid parliamentary majority, Fenech Adami will now reopen negotiations to join the European Union. "Not much has been achieved (since the EU started formal membership with six other countries in March)," observed Simon Busitill, leader of a pro-EU pressure group, "and Malta does not present particular problems for membership" -- so it can probably catch up and get on the same schedule as the others.

This is certainly not what Mintoff wanted, but it's probably what most Maltese want. (There will be a referendum on EU membership later.) The Knights of Malta will probably get what they want, too.

And it's almost certainly the last time that Mintoff's prejudices drive Maltese politics. At 82, he did not run in this election.