Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1360420
14 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 11 APRIL 2021 NEWS "Fast-talking at the right moment, direct and assertive, Albert Mizzi could still be a good listener as like Valhmor Borg he chomped on some cigarillo or other." MATTHEW VELLA IN Alfred Sant's tell-all on the 1980s, the novelist's keen eye for detail generously embellishes the mundane world of a political era that few people had access to, or even read about in the staid press of yesteryear. The anecdotes come thick and fast from the former La- bour leader, who from the 1970s worked in the Mao- ist-sounding Ministry of Par- astatal and People's Industries – Mintoff's plan to centralise state enteprises geared at job creation and the production of consumer goods. In his sec- ond volume of 'Confessions of a Maltese European', Sant's memoir comes with astute his- torical analysis and a ruthless dissection of events and per- sonas: chief among them Dom Mintoff, the Labour patriarch who two decades later in 1998 would force Sant into calling an early election. In Malta's early days of eco- nomic development, Mintoff was busy keeping the industrial peace with the General Work- ers Union by his side, and with a corporatist model of friend- ships with the capitalist class to attract industry to Malta. The young Sant, a product of a new generation whose skills were honed in Brussels diplo- macy as well as at Harvard Uni- versity, could see the limits of Mintoff's 'management' style. An inside view came at two of Mintoff's lunches in his Deli- mara farmhouse, a place where Mintoff welcomed "a heterog- enous clutch of guests, from his buddy-buddies at different past-times, to close collabora- tors to sundry diplomats, dig- nitaries and businessmen." Sant recalls the uncomfort- able experience – guests at l-Għarix ate in a "long wide hall flooded with light"; Mintoff's invitees "did not mix well"; his habitués appeared to speak only when spoken to. "There seemed to be a liturgy followed regarding how to do things, with the PM presiding, partly making sure the big pot being prepared with stew was getting on well (but two other fellows at least were looking after it), partly indulging in chit chat with people around. Most of the (local) topics raised and discussed went over the top of my head." Also present at this Mintof- fian refection was Archbishop Joseph Mercieca, equally un- comfortable. "We exchanged inanities," Sant remembers. "The stew was rather watery, the wine was execrable. Seek- ing to bring him in the flow of conversation, the PM rag- ged the archbishop gently, to which the archbishop replied cautiously and as usual with him, nicely. He succeeded in deflecting the conversation to- wards somebody else." Sant noted the absence of Castille's inner circle at the two dinners he witnessed, what he says insiders mercilessly called 'the Gang of Four' – apt- ly styled for the purged faction Mintoff's watery stew, cheap plonk, and his Gang of Four Alfred Sant's political tell-all casts a ruthless eye on Dom Mintoff, a much-needed sober view of the man Labour loved before bringing down the house in 1998 The kitchen cabinet: Alfred Sant says Dom Mintoff's confidants were business magnates Albert Mizzi and George Cassar (left, bottom left), as well as Attorney General Henri Mizzi (bottom, right) Main picture, above: Bertie Mizzi's wisdom is solicited by Mintoff, standing next to his works minister Lorry Sant Young Alfred Sant: the second instalment of his memoirs, from 1975 to 1992, offers a new insight into the narrative of the 1980s which has too often been recounted from the viewpoint of its political victors