He was the prime minister's number two.

He is one of the most successful and respected politicians in modern history, and up until a week ago was preparing to slide out of the heat of local politics and pack his bags to Brussels in what was meant to be the culmination of an illustrious career in medicine and politics.

Now, to the surprise and shock of many, he is no longer the deputy prime minister, nor a minister, and has relinquished his EU post nomination.

This is Chris Fearne's journey.

Born on March 12, 1963, Fearne turned 61 this year.

A pediatric surgeon by profession, he was active within the Labour Party as a young man but steered clear of frontline politics to focus on his medical profession.

Mr Fearne’s Labour credentials date back to his youth when he was an active member of the Mintoff-era Labour youth movement Għaqda Żgħażagħ Soċjalisti.

During his 30-year medical career, he studied and worked in Malta and the UK, including at the renowned Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital in London. He also became a Fellow of The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.

Fearne was also the Clinical Chairman for Surgery at Mater Dei Hospital and lectured medicine students at the University of Malta.

Star candidate in Muscat's 2013 team

Fearne was first elected to public office as an MP following Labour’s 2013 electoral landslide victory.

He was one of the crop of new faces that the Muscat-led Opposition presented for the general election.

Fearne was elected as a fourth district MP and was promoted to parliamentary secretary for health one year into his political career.

He eventually took over the health ministry, after Konrad Mizzi was stripped of ministerial duties for his role in the Panama Papers scandal.

However, responsibility for the hospitals' concession to Vitals Global Healthcare was kept by Konrad Mizzi - the minister who negotiated the deal.

That changed in late 2019, when Mizzi was forced to resign from cabinet and oversight of the concession shifted to Fearne's ministry.

The Fearne-led ministry continued talks with Vitals' successor, Steward Health Care, to renegotiate the concession contract. But those talks fell apart last year when a court annulled the entire deal in a landmark judgment.

Meanwhile, in the summer of 2017 he entered the race for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party.

Although then-Equality Minister Helena Dalli was touted as the party leadership’s favourite, Fearne was elected Deputy Leader for Parliamentary Affairs having also beaten Finance Minister Edward Scicluna. Scicluna also stands accused over the hospitals' deal.

Almost prime minister

When Joseph Muscat resigned as prime minister in the wake of arrests over the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia in late 2019, Fearne seemed to be his natural successor in the eyes of most people.

Even when - somewhat surprisingly - young lawyer and one of Labour's then-freshest MPs Robert Abela threw his name in the hat, many were still convinced that the top job was Fearne's.

Fearne was already deputy prime minister then, which made his promotion seem all the more natural.

Furthermore, during the short but intense campaign, he was consistently polling ahead of Abela and several members of the cabinet had come out publicly expressing their support for him.

He was the clear frontrunner to take over as prime minister and Abela was the clear underdog.

The 'diabolical pact'

Abela’s campaign had started amid controversy when he said he did not want to be a part of any “diabolical pact”.

Though subsequently he had tried to play this incident down and had declined to comment about it, many had interpreted his remark as a dig at other leadership hopefuls such as Ian Borg and Miriam Dalli for allegedly succumbing to pressure not to throw their name in the hat, to leave Fearne running in a one-horse race.

Fearne was doing well even with Abela in the race.

Internal polls as close as two weeks before the vote showed he enjoyed a comfortable support of 65 per cent of the 10,000 eligible PL voters.

His backers back then were hopeful that he would be elected and clean up shop, ushering in higher political standards following the fallout from the assassination of Caruana Galizia.

Speaking to Times of Malta back then, some of them had said he was the ideal choice as he steered clear of political controversy since taking up political office and was a moderate politician with socialist views.

In November of that year he had told Times of Malta that the damage done to Malta’s reputation by those involved in the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia wass “almost irreparable”.

His dissenters meanwhile feared he would be too far a departure from Labour's winning electoral formula.

The tide turns

On that fateful night on January 11 of 2020, the tide turned in Abela's favour.

Most votes - 57.9% - went his way and he snatched the country's most powerful office from Fearne just three years after becoming an MP and with no former cabinet experience.

But he did retain Fearne as deputy prime minister and health minister.

A year and a half later, in an interview with Times of Malta, Joseph Muscat said that while he had not expressed an opinion on the race, his wife Michelle had backed Abela.

He said she had spoken with some people and expressed the fact that she supported Abela.

The assertion fuelled speculation that Muscat was behind the surprising turn of events and Fearne had reacted saying he would leave it to political historians to analyse what had happened in the race.

But Muscat insisted he did not intervene himself.

Hero again

It was not long after that election that the freshly defeated Fearne was called to rescue the country from a once-in-a-century deadly pandemic that was taking the world by storm and changing life as we knew it.

The virus was spreading mercilessly and uncontrollably throughout the continent and Fearne would often tell reporters it was a matter of time until Malta registered its first COVID-19 case.

Time proved him right on March 7 that year, when a 12-year-old Italian girl was found positive and the new prime minister and a panicked country turned to Fearne for hope and - most crucially - solutions.

Together with public health superintendent Charmaine Gauci and the health authorities, Fearne managed to avoid total lockdowns throughout the pandemic, shutting down most of the country only partially and for relatively short periods.

Malta was ranked one of the least strict EU countries for COVID measures in 2021, yet it managed to keep infection rates and hospital capacity under control while thousands of people were tested every day. And while the country enforced quarantines, the government provided wage supplements to thousands of workers who risked losing their jobs, businesses and livelihoods.

By November 2020 Fearn was elected to the board of the One Health Global Leaders Group, which advised international health organisations such as the WHO and the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation on disease resistance.

In September 2022, WHO's top Europe official praised Malta’s approach to managing and recruiting healthcare workers, saying it was an example to emulate.

“Chris Fearne, Malta’s deputy prime minister, has recently been doing very, very well and we can learn a lot from [him],” Hans Kluge had told an international conference.

By the end of 2022 Fearne had been appointed the vice-chair of the Global Leaders Group on Antimicrobial Resistance, and most significantly in May last year he was elected President of the 76th World Health Assembly of the World Health Organisation.

The assembly is the policy-making body of the organisation.

IVF and hospital waiting times

Fearne can also boast of drastically cutting down hospital appointment waiting lists, introducing a system of round-the-clock testing, constructing several clinics and health centres in Malta and Gozo and introducing new medicines to the government formulary.

He was also instrumental in drastically changing and introducing new IVF laws to allow more parents to have babies.

He had said that by September 2022, more than 434 babies were born through IVF and that Malta's laws in this sector were now on par with other modern European societies.

The latest IVF amendment allowed genetic testing prior to implantation to enable doctors to look out for certain conditions such as Huntingtons' Disease.

Abortion controversy

He was hardly as popular or successful, however, when it came to changing Malta's old, strict abortion laws later that year.

In November 2022, the government presented a bill in parliament which would have originally allowed terminations when a mother's health was in "grave jeopardy", without elaborating.

But the proposal attracted strong criticism from multiple quarters.

Some, such as the Opposition, Church and pro-life organisations, accused the government of trying to sneak abortion into law and argued that there was no need to change the law, because women were never left to die due to pregnancy complications.

Others, such as doctors' and nurses' associations, said the bill's vague wording would leave them legally exposed. 

The pro-choice camp was equally vocal on the issue, insisting the original amendment was a good step and the beginning of a much-needed reform that would start granting women their fundamental rights to safe and accessible abortions.

Meanwhile, President George Vella, who had warned on multiple occasions that he would rather resign than sign an abortion law, made it clear he was not happy with the bill's original wording.

Fearne and the government then froze the parliamentary process as they sought to revise the bill's wording, and after seven months that were riddled with controversy, the government announced the new wording that was eventually approved as law.

Vitals battle

Meanwhile, Fearne continued talks with Steward Healthcare in an attempt to renegotiate the hospitals' deal which had never ceased to be controversial.

He was doing this while the Nationalist Party was fighting a civil case in court - opened by former leader Adrian Delia - to have the concession annulled.

Fearne had previously admitted some things were done behind his back in the hospitals' deal and he had spoken about his frustration when he testified under oath in the case in 2021.

He had said Steward had been running parallel talks with Konrad Mizzi and Joseph Muscat’s office while also negotiating with the Health Ministry.

Vitals Global Healthcare (VGH) was originally supposed to invest over €200 million in the Gozo, St Luke’s and Karin Grech hospitals. However, the company had pulled out of the deal in December 2017.

In 2023, the court dealt the deal a final blow, annulling all contracts related to it on the basis that Vitals and Steward had failed to live up to contractual obligations and the deal was tainted by fraud.

In a dramatic turn of events, the government immediately pulled out of the contract with Steward Healthcare, took over the hospitals and embarked on a public and legal battle that is still ongoing, amid harsh criticism and a second, appeals judgment upholding the first judgment and adding that there was collusion by government officials.

January 2024 reshuffle

In last January's surprise cabinet reshuffle, Abela transferred the health portfolio to Jo Etienne Abela and announced Fearne will be Malta’s nominee as EU commissioner, succeeding Helena Dalli later this year.

Meanwhile, Fearne kept his post as deputy prime minister and took on the role of Minister for European Funds, Social Dialogue and Consumer Protection.

All of that changed last week when it was revealed that the controversial magisterial inquiry over the hospitals' deal was concluded and that Fearne,  Scicluna and others are facing charges of fraud, misappropriation and fraudulent gain in connection with the deal.

Abela defended Fearne, initially saying he would not fire him and would go ahead with his nomination for EU Commissioner, but on Friday, Fearne himself sent in his resignation letter.

Abela asked him to reconsider but again, Fearne told him he would stick to his decision.