When a rebel 82-year-old rebel hero brought down his own government

Mintoff u Sant Author: Josef Grech Publisher: JG Publisher Malta, 2013 Extent: 327pp

I lived through this and certain scenes remain fixed in my brain. Reading this book brought back many scenes from that terrible summer of 1998 when Dom Mintoff brought down the Sant government.

Some things the book brings back to mind: the interminable seven-hour speech by Dom Mintoff which had the whole country sitting by a radio and following what was happening in Parliament.

The book uses the parliamentary transcripts of the speeches in Parliament and you can still hear the stentorian voice of Dom mocking the Sant government, upbraiding PM Sant in person, going off, as was his wont, on a tangent, sometimes meandering, but always mesmerizing. The country followed his with bated breath. We today, who know the outcome, can perhaps not understand fully what the people of 1998 felt those days. The crisis had begun in Autumn 1997 with the presentation of the Budget which Dom pounced upon as being the product of a government that had lost its social conscience, or as he put it so graphically, tilef ilboxxla. Then the Vittoriosa waterfront issue came to dominate the country and Mintoff saw red. This was his own backyard, his childhood playground. So he wanted to know all and disagreed with most plans.

I remember clearly Dom’s press conference, if one can call it that, in the palace courtyard with Dom fixing the plans to the door of his office and pointing out at this or other feature. This does not feature in the book.

The book is clearly from Dom’s perspective and clearly antiSant. It contains the verbatim speeches in Parliament, a good enough record especially if one manages to factor in Dom’s voice. But it contains little more than that – some introductory chapters consisting mainly of electoral results, and some sort of explanation which at times gets confused in the chronology of events.

It does not contain interviews with the protagonists nor any attempt to analyse why this happened, why this 82-year-old patriarch decided (if he decided, it may have been a dare, a joke, gone bad) to bring down the government by the party he had symbolized for so many years.

The absence of some sort of analysis and/or documentation reminds us that time is running out and that unless someone takes it upon himself to interview the protagonists, many will have died. Dom has died, Lino Spiteri too, to mention two of the protagonists. But others, including Dr Sant, are still very much alive.

Some of the people who emerge as (some negative) protagonists on the last day of that legislature, from Joe Debono Grech, to Karmenu Vella, to Gorg Abela, are still around and should be open to being interviewed.