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10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 20 OCTOBER 2024 PEOPLE CONTINUED FROM PAGE 13 As the contents page to Karmenu, Il-Verità, Xejn Anqas Mill-Verità im- mediately reveals, those who worked under him have a different story to tell: "sincere", "humane", a "Christian social- ist" and a "Samaritan", and a "defender of the defenceless". To wit, the critical reader might be immediately drawn to the less hagiographic of the 24 contribu- tions from former Labour party officials, thinkers, and learned colleagues from the other side of the divide. Publisher Joe Borg takes note of this cornucopia of adjectives: what to say of KMB and those who accuse him of hav- ing stewarded the violence of Labour thugs in the 1980s? Former Labour lead- er Alfred Sant has already insisted this unfair legacy ignores a nefarious role played by the freelancing Dom Mintoff; the philosopher Mark Montebello and public intellectual John Baldacchino be- lieve KMB was eternally sullied, unfairly, by the feedback loop of Labour and Na- tionalist violence; and Labour grandees say KMB was the antithesis of violence, accusing Eddie Fenech Adami of being egregiously dishonest in once dubbing him "the most corrupt leader" of all time. Two friends, two enemies Readers are instantly alerted to the adversarial relationship of two former friends: KMB and Fenech Adami, elected prime minister in 1987 at the end of the harrowing Mifsud Bonnici premiership. The human rights judge Giovanni Bonello, who clashed with fellow Ly- ceum alum Mifsud Bonnici head-on in the 1980s, remembers the two men from their law course days, laying out the non-hedonistic traits of these future prime ministers: both not entirely gre- garious types, no close friends, taciturn swots who did not smoke, drink, show interest in girls, indulge in frivolity, or care about sports (yet Ray Mangion's biography says KMB played defence for the Żgħażagħ Ħaddiema Nsara, and Joe Mifsud says KMB was a Torino support- er). They did not hang around with the other law students on Strada San Paolo – both EFA and KMB were at one time active together within the Secretariat for Catholic Action and the Malta Social Catholic Guild. But then, while EFA charted a com- mon political path for so many Chris- tian-democrats, at Damascus the abste- mious KMB betrothed himself to the proletariat. He became a Maltese Robe- spierre, Bonello declares of the flawed premier, "almost becoming Papa Doc" and then "a saintly idealist, prisoner of the populist cage." Knowing just about enough of KMB's lighter side from his salad days, by the 1980s the two men were at personal odds with each other. In 170 cases, Bonello challenged Labour's administrative and human rights violations; KMB personal- ly, a prime minister decked in his law- yer's toga, would defend his own laws. "He bizarrely claimed the Church was 'not a person' so, since the Constitution protected human rights, the government was entitled to seize its assets." Bonello accuses KMB of being just one step away from being a dictator, while he was styled an enemy of the work- ing-class. "For all of his gentle manners, the elegant culture he possessed, and his compassion, he was still an inspiration and a shield for gangsters, the corrupt, and the violent," Bonello says of KMB's mob-like entourage. "He was personally honest, incorrupti- ble, blind. I once told him, 'Karm, you would simply condemn me to death.' He solemnly replied, 'yes' – just as his po- litical intransigence condemned the 58 Egyptair passengers to death in 1985, the worst disaster of its kind, brought about by his fanaticism." You can almost perceive an earnest wispiness in that dispassionate 'yes', the same voice that would have described his former Catholic Action friend, Eddie Fenech Adami, as "a liar" in an interview with Georg Sapiano. In the early 90s, Sapiano, him of Na- tionalist stock, joined the law practice of the freshly resigned Labour leader; KMB was an old acquaintance of his father from the Central Bank. Sapiano discov- ered the gentler side of 'Robespierre', as well as his ascetic ways – he took no payment for his legal services because he was living off the State's pension. Years later Sapiano interviewed KMB, who could offer only a terse, uncompromis- ing one-word description for his for- mer political adversary. "It was the only moment of uncomfortable silence. As I write this now, 30 years later, I realise my question had been too personal and that I should have never asked it. Today I know what it feels like to lose a friend like that – I think I had put my finger on an open wound." In this intimate portrait of the unlike- liest of friendships, Sapiano points out KMB's refusal of a state funeral, a nat- ural corollary for someone who had ap- parently reneged on the prestige of his family name to "climb down the social ladder" and elevate those who were in the mire. Christian-socialist firebrand Many then can agree, as Mario Vella points out, that KMB had a Janus-like quality to him: gentle, humble, some- what shy, and generous, but then entire- ly paradoxical in the political persona of the future prime minister. His drift into socialism would have been somewhat enabled by the intellec- tualism of Fr Peter Serracino Inglott, also a friend and future confidant to Fenech Adami. PSI believed the ŻĦN's (Young Christian Workers) 'anti-com- munist' clash with Mintoff was ill-ad- vised and counter-productive. Both him and KMB sought to cultivate a different consciousness that attracted the work- ing-class to the ŻĦN, but this put them on a collision course with the influential cleric Prof. Renato Cirillo. PSI sought out the counsel of found- er Joseph Cardijn, the Belgian cardinal, who advised against factionalism inside ŻĦN. When in 1961 Cardijn was invited by Archbishop Michael Gonzi to address the Maltese, the Belgian prelate warned against the Church taking up battles with the working class. Cardijn was to become a reference point for the young KMB, who back then was still promul- gating the Catholic junta's damnation of Mintoffianism. Perhaps, Mario Vella writes, KMB met Dom Mintoff (second from right) designated Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici as his successor Eddie Fenech Adami (above) called Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici 'corrupt'; Mifsud Bonnici, in turn, said Fenech Adami was a liar