Maltese politician (1933?2022)
Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici
,
KUOM
(17 July 1933 – 5 November 2022) was a Maltese politician who served as
Prime Minister of Malta
from December 1984 to May 1987.
[1]
[2]
Biography
[
edit
]
Karmenu was born on 17 July 1933 at
Cospicua
to Lorenzo Mifsud Bonnici and Catherine Buttigieg,
[2]
in a family strongly anchored in the
Nationalist Party
. His brother Antoine was a Nationalist MP and Parliamentary Secretary while a cousin,
Ugo Mifsud Bonnici
, was a Nationalist MP, Minister and
President of Malta
. Karmenu had two sisters and three brothers, one of whom (Antoine) is a Nationalist member of Parliament and another was an Archpriest. He never married.
[2]
Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici studied at the Lyceum and graduated in Law at the
University of Malta
in 1954. He also later studied
taxation
and
industrial law
at the
University College of London
in 1967?68, and was afterwards a lecturer in Industrial and Fiscal Law at the University of Malta.
[2]
In the 1960s, at the height of the dispute between the
Maltese Church
and the Labour Party, he was an official of a number of lay organisations connected to the Church, including the Catholic Social Guild and the Young Christian Workers Movement (also as editorial board member of their
Il-Haddiem
newspaper),
[2]
and supported the "diocesan junta" of Church organisations opposing
Dom Mintoff
and his Party. He would later claim to be "a Nationalist by birth, but a Labourite through free choice and conviction".
[
citation needed
]
In 1969, he got a job as a local consultant of Malta's
General Workers' Union
, playing a role in the struggle of the trade union and the Labour party against the Nationalist government-proposed Industrial Relations Bill, which foresaw sanctions up to imprisonment for workers on strike.
[2]
[1]
He continued his engagement with the
Labour Party
throughout the 1970s.
Labour Party leader and Prime minister
[
edit
]
In May 1980,
Dom Mintoff
appointed Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici as deputy leader of the Labour Party, which was confirmed by the party conference. Mifsud Bonnici managed the party campaign for the
1981 elections
- the third and last victory of Mintoff's Labour.
[2]
In October 1981, Mintoff designated Mifsud Bonnici as his successor, again confirmed by the party conference. Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici was thus co-opted into Parliament in May 1983 upon the resignation of Paul Xuereb, and assigned the Ministry of Employment and Social Services,
[2]
without ever standing for election. This gained him the nickname of "Doctor Zero". Several commentators consider that Mintoff hand-picked Mifsud Bonnici to prevent the election of other, less amenable, internal rivals at the helm of the party.
[1]
In September 1983, Mifsud Bonnici was named Senior Deputy Prime Minister and assigned the Ministry of Education, a responsibility he held until 1986, during which period he was in charge of the introduction of free education for all, which had led to a deep dispute between the government and the Church.
[2]
On 22 December 1984, following Mintoff's resignation, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici was sworn in as Prime Minister, thus becoming the first Maltese Prime Minister since independence to be sworn in without actually standing for a general election. He also maintained the porfolios of Minister of Interior and of Education.
[2]
Mifsud Bonnici's tenure as Prime Minister was seen as a continuation of the
Dom Mintoff
years (he even retained the same Cabinet).
[
citation needed
]
Political violence
persisted, heightened and was made more intense by the fact that the
1987 elections
were approaching.
[
citation needed
]
Relations with the church deteriorated further on two fronts: the enactment of a Bill to seize church property without compensation, and attempts by the government to take control of church schools.
[
citation needed
]
In 1984, a demonstration by some workers of the
Malta Drydocks
, at which Mifsud Bonnici was present, climaxed when the offices of the Maltese Curia were ransacked after the demonstration had ended. He responded by calling the workers "the aristocracy of the working class".
[
citation needed
]
In 1985, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici was the lead negotiator in the hijacking of
EgyptAir Flight 648
in which 60 of the 92 passengers were killed.
[3]
[4]
Mifsud Bonnici narrowly lost the
1987 elections
[5]
and was made to carry most of the blame for the defeat - which might have had a role in the
heart attack
he suffered soon after.
[1]
He remained Leader of the Opposition until 1992 when,
following a second electoral defeat
, he resigned and was succeeded by
Alfred Sant
.
[1]
He held his seat until
the following election in 1996
.
[
citation needed
]
He did not contest any general elections thereafter.
Later years
[
edit
]
In 2003, during the
referendum campaign for the accession of Malta to the European Union
, Mifsud Bonnici with other labourites launched the Campaign for National Independence (CNI)
[6]
and later joined the Front Maltin Inqumu (Maltese Arise Front) to oppose Malta's
EU
membership. They proposed instead an alternative association agreement, or "partnership", reviving an earlier Mintoff vision of Malta as the "
Switzerland
of the
Mediterranean
".
[1]
Two years later he also opposed the ratification of the
European Constitution
, but his motion at the Labour Party's General Conference in 2005 was rejected.
[1]
Subsequently, he maintained a low profile within the party while retaining a role
[
citation needed
]
in the CNI.
Mifsud Bonnici died on 5 November 2022, at the age of 89.
[7]
Honours
[
edit
]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]