Confessions of a European Maltese
by Alfred Sant
published by SKS
In 2003, Alfred Sant, the well-known politician, intellectual and author, published a first volume bearing the title Confessions of a European Maltese. While being a defence of his own and Labour’s opposition to Malta’s joining the EU as a member, the book gave a detailed account of the first part of his career when he was a diplomat serving Malta in Paris and then Brussels, ending in his decision to resign and go to the USA to obtain a higher degree in business management.
This second, and much larger, volume takes up the story with the author now studying at Boston University and subsequently working for a doctoral degree at the much more prestigious Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just across the river from Boston. He gives a clear account of his life as a student in Boston where he did very well, working hard at his studies and living a quiet life, without many friends.
It was during this period, in the spring of 1975, that I met him and went with him around the city for a few pleasant days. He seemed contented, I remember, and found time for non-academic reading – he was and clearly still remains – a great lover of books and classical music.
He also continued with his self-teaching of the Russian language, and at one point became a good enough reader of this language to enjoy novels like Gogol’s Oblomov and his favourite novel (mine too, I could add) Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina in the original text.
He had already decided on getting a higher degree in the management of state enterprises, obtained Mintoff’s consent to his doing consultancy work for Malta’s government, the results of which would go into his proposed dissertation, and impressed Harvard into not just accepting him as a doctoral student but also into giving him a fellowship that would cover all his university and living expenses.
In 1977, he returned to Malta where he was attached to one of Mintoff’s oddly named ministries, the Ministry of Parastatal and People’s Industries, where at first, he found himself viewed suspiciously. As he tried to make his way there, he found himself a small house in Sliema and started finding out what the new Malta he had found was like, with things getting a little sour for the Labour government faced with a new and more effective leader of the opposition, Eddie Fenech Adami, and his youngish team.
As Sant found himself a member of the Malta Development Corporation and advising regarding such new industries as a foundry, the political, not to mention the economic situation in the country went through a bad phase.
Much of this book (too much, perhaps) is dedicated to Sant’s work in Malta
The student-worker scheme for the University of Malta, which suddenly became the Old University, while the Polytechnic became the New University, and the doctors’ strike, during which many medical professionals sought new jobs overseas and were replaced by foreign doctors having no ability to speak in Maltese, created much tension and discontent in the country.
Sant’s account of the atmosphere not just in the country but also in the Labour Party is a balanced one and will be read with profit by students and authors interested in this turbulent period.
His many experiences, frequently at high levels in the work he was doing, proved to be very good, helping to make his doctoral dissertation for Harvard successful.
Much of this book (too much, perhaps) is dedicated to his work in Malta, with high-level business trips abroad, to his long and sometimes unrewarding work as a member of the Malta Development Corporation and in the management of state enterprises like Maltafond (a foundry) and Bortex, a clothing factory whose continued existence probably owes much to his insistence that it should have its own sales outlets.
Sant now had many friends, some of them previously known during his student years in Malta, most of them left-wingers and one of them a committed Communist at the time, Mario Vella, who until recently was Governor of the Central Bank of Malta, but this phase belongs to a distant past.
He was on excellent terms with Evarist Bartolo and his wife Gillian to whose house he was frequently invited. This was where he met Mary Darmanin, a very bright and quick-witted young academic who, like the rest of the group meeting at the Bartolos’, was left-wing.
She and Alfred got on very well, so well that they decided to buy a house in which they could cohabit and then to get married civilly in 1984. The birth of a child, Marta, in 1985 was a great event, and, to quote the author, “fatherhood triggered feelings of nurture and care I never felt before”.
His love for his daughter is symbolised by the charming photo showing father and still young daughter included in this volume. With Mary, however, something went wrong, and the spouses agreed amicably on a separation and a judicial civil annulment of the marriage.
During the mid-1980s, important things were happening in the political field, above all. Mintoff resigned as prime minister and was succeeded by Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici whose early days were blackened by an attack by Labour toughs on the Archbishop’s Curia in Floriana, which they ransacked.
By this time, Sant had not only joined the Labour Party but was actually its president. In the book, he shows not only his personal disapproval of the violent act but asserts that the new prime minister was strongly critical, in private at least, but the police did nothing to bring the culprits to book.
Sant by now had his Harvard doctorate, so he could give much of his attention to gaining influence in the Labour Party which, as chairman of the Party’s information section, he led towards strengthening public knowledge of what the party wanted to do.
He was one of the few people responsible for creating the party’s publishing house, named Sensiela Kotba Soċjalisti, one of whose very recent publications is Sant’s present book.
He also edited and wrote in serials like Tomorrow and Neo, both short-lived. His next great desire being to become a member of parliament, he contested the 1987 election which brought back the Nationalists to power after an absence of 16 years.
He was not elected but had a stroke of luck when one the elected Labour members suddenly died, Sant was co-opted to fill the empty seat, and five years later at the 1992 general election he was narrowly elected under his own steam. This election was the second running electoral defeat for Labour. Mifsud Bonnici resigned his leadership of the party, and Sant, whose standing in the party was now very high, was chosen to succeed him.
The book, however, ends with a picture of a Sant elated by his electoral success. His assumption of the leadership, which was to lead to his becoming Prime Minister in 1996, might well go into a third autobiographical book.
Sant is a compulsive author, though, unluckily for our theatre, he has stopped writing for the theatre since 1977 when he wrote one of his best plays, Qabel Tibda l-Inkjesta, subsequently performed at the Manoel, ably directed by Joe Friggieri.
He worked hard with people like Mario Azzopardi to see that people in the party would produce theatrical works that would enhance the party’s prestige, and he greatly encouraged the yearly production of rock operas, in the series of Ljieli Mediterranji, starting with the successful Bastilja in 1989 at the Argotti Gardens, Floriana.
Though much of his writing was now on political or economic themes, he went on writing fiction, such as his 1981 novel, Bejgħ u Xiri and his 1982 novel Silġ fuq Kemmuna.
This present large volume attests his love for longish books – many novels of our time in all literatures are also long – and in the period following this volume’s chosen period, he has also published novels and short stories, including the most commercial of his novels, George Bush f’Malta, but also a very interesting, and also long, historical novel La Bidu la Tmiem.