The most fitting way to describe Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici as a politician is as an unwilling servant of the Labour Party, a man whose premiership existed solely to honour the loyalty he owed to his close friend, Dom Mintoff. Whatever the Labour Party is trying to do with the commemorations of Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, it is doing anything but commemorating him. Even after his death, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici kept his role as the unwilling servant.
As written in the previous article linked above, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici’s commemorations are being used to primarily project and celebrate the cultural and social power of the Labour Party. Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici himself has not even been taken into account and no one has even bothered to discuss his beliefs and politics. Labour Party politicians made quick and short references to Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici’s “socialism” and supposedly the value of humility given that he lived as a poor man, but there was absolutely no discussion on Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici’s political beliefs.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici’s politics were part of the Marxist-Catholic tradition of Southern Italy (Franco Rodano, Azione Cattolica, Jesuits etc…). In the 1980s, his politics were anything that were convenient for Dom Mintoff. In the 1990s and early, 2000s his politics became a blend of anti-European politics, xenophobia, and traditional socialism: eventually, many of those who followed this kind of Euro-skeptic politics in the early 2000s became the new far-right. If Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici was alive today he would have been a far-right politician: pro-Russia, anti-EU, anti-immigration, “back to traditional national values”-kind of politician.
Dom Mintoff’s biographer, Mark Montebello, says that Dom Mintoff remained lucid and composed until the final years of his life but Mintoff’s behaviour in the 1990s was anything but normal. This was when Mintoff became a Euro-skeptic to protect his most valued concept of “neutrality” and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici tagged along. Only Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici could have served in that role after Dom Mintoff broke ranks with the Labour Party after being blamed for bringing down Alfred Sant’s government. Dom Mintoff’s behaviour was anything but normal and I am also pretty sure that having the Labour Party Leader calling him a traitor in front of the Dockyard Gates affected him profoundly. The fact that Dom Mintoff could never react to such a gross insult and desecration of his memory with political force, had left him scarred and agitated.
So when Mintoff, and his loud-speaking assistant, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, preached about Malta’s neutrality in the streets and town-squares of Malta prior to the EU referendum, Mintoff was speaking about a world he once owned and ruled that suddenly was collapsing all around him. Dom Mintoff and likewise, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici never kept up with the times. Instead, they indulged themselves with the nostalgic fantasies of a world that had long ceased existing: basking and loitering in the old memories of socialism.
Watch below Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici during the Public Broadcasting political leaders’ debate before the historic elections of 9th May 1987.
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