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Malta – 25th Anniversary of Independence
1989 Silver 2 Liri 30mm (17.00 grams) 0.925 Silver (0.5056 oz ASW)
Reference: KM# 88
INDIPENDENZA 1964 XXV ANNIVERSARY 1911 1980 Lm2 GIORGIO BORG OLIVIER, Bust of Giorgio Borg Olivier facing right.
REPUBBLIKA TA’ MALTA 1989, Crowned coat-of-arms shield within sprigs.
You are bidding on the exact item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of Authenticity.
 Giorgio Borg Olivier (Maltese: Ġorġ Borg Olivier) (5 July 1911 – 29 October 1980) was a Maltese statesman and leading politician. He twice served as Prime Minister of Malta (from 1950-55, and from 1962-71) as the Leader of the Nationalist Party. He was also Leader of the Opposition between 1955-58, and again between 1971-77.
Borg Olivier was elected as one of the three Nationalist members of the Council of Government in 1939. In May 1940, when the leader of the Nationalist party, Enrico Mizzi, was first interned by the British and deported, Borg Olivier became interim leader. After his return, Mizzi made Borg Olivier his deputy. Rising to office as a protégé of Mizzi and Sir Ugo P. Mifsud, Borg Olivier believed in the economic and social development of Malta as a viable independent state and in the necessity of a mixed economy. During his premiership, he pursued corporatist policies to develop the tourism industry and construction as the engine of growth. Under his leadership, average living standards rose steadily as Malta began to decouple from a fortress economy purely dependent on the British military establishment.
Near the end of his rule as prime minister, his government was rocked by various political and personal scandals, which seemed to symbolise the moral decay of the Maltese political establishment. Resigning from Leader of the Nationalist Party in 1977, Borg Olivier retained his parliamentary seat until his death in 1980. He was succeeded as leader of the party by Eddie Fenech Adami.
Independent Malta
In March 1965, he became Minister of Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in addition to his duties as Prime Minister and Minister of Economic Planning and Finance. In the General Elections held in March 1966, the Nationalist Party was again returned to power with Borg Olivier as Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. On 14 June 1968, Borg Olivier was decorated with the Grand Cross of Merit of the Order of Malta by the Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta.
Borg Olivier’s family affairs, which were somewhat disturbed, soon fell under public scrutiny. The marital relationship of the Borg Olivier couple began to be used by all his political opponents as a source of criticism. These scandals were part of the political rhetoric of the 1960s. The Maltese church’s teachings still played a cardinal role in local politics. Borg Olivier had jumped on the Church’s bandwagon, grasping a substantial political advantage from the Church’s excommunication of the Maltese Labour Party.
Borg Olivier did not agree with the Church’s position, yet he still capitalised on the situation and gave sterling support to the Church’s authorities. The introduction of Labour newspapers in public hospitals was banned, a decision later revoked by the courts, while excommunicated citizens were forbidden from being buried in their family graves in public cemeteries. The abuse of Maltese children who had been sent to Australia on the initiative of the Maltese church was another scandal which rocked the country.
Opposition Leadership
As the 1960s came to a close, an economy reeling from over-reliance on construction and labour troubles at the Dockyards endangered Borg Olivier’s administration. Above all, the common belief was that Borg Olivier and his cabinet had no initiative, preferring to react rather than to act.
In the 1971 election campaign, the Labour Party claimed that the government was lazy and out of touch, especially compared with the aggressive and determined Mintoff. However, the Borg Olivier Cabinet was incredibly active meeting, in all, 766 times from August 27, 1962 to June 1, 1971, just before the elections which were to unseat it; the cabinet met even on Boxing Day, sometimes morning and evening, and even on the feast day of St Paul’s Shipwreck. This effort did Borg Olivier no good; Mintoff and Labour regained power.
Having led the Nationalists to defeat in the 1971 election and also the next election five years later, Borg Olivier incurred increasing censure within as well as outside his own party. His approach seemed lightweight and passive compared with Mintoff’s vehement rule. Borġ Olivier opposed, but without success, the growing tendency of Mintoff’s most extreme supporters to resort to violence as a political weapon.
Among Borg Olivier’s fellow party members, a younger generation had emerged by this time which considered him physically and politically incapable of winning back popular support from Mintoff. His growing tendency to procrastinate rather than to take tough decisions attracted particular criticism.
During January 1974, eighteen Nationalist parliamentarians signed a declaration of no confidence in Borġ Olivier’s leadership. Three others who could not attend signed later. Out of 27 MPs, only five supported the party leader. These five MPs were Paulo Borg Olivier (George’s brother), Albert Borg Olivier de Puget (George’s nephew), Alfred Bonnici (who had been appointed speaker in the previous parliament by George), J. Cassar Galea (an old friend of Borġ Olivier) and Alexander Cachia Zammit (a former minister in Borg Olivier’s cabinet). Borg Olivier could still count on the support of his relatives in the party, as well as on those politicians who, like Cachia Zammit, had been members of his 1962-1971 cabinets and were still in the legislature. For a while, that backing was enough to enable Borg Olivier to retain the party leadership. Yet when Borg Olivier loyalists proved incapable of opposing Mintoff’s proposal to change Malta from a constitutional monarchy to a republic (with a parliamentary majority of two-thirds, but without the referendum which Borg Olivier wanted), his position was fatally weakened.
 Malta, officially known as the Republic of Malta (Maltese: Repubblika ta’ Malta), is a Southern European island country consisting of an archipelago in the Mediterranean Sea. It lies 80 km (50 mi) south of Italy, 284 km (176 mi) east of Tunisia, and 333 km (207 mi) north of Libya. With a population of about 475,000 over an area of 316 km2 (122 sq mi), Malta is the world’s tenth smallest and fifth most densely-populated country. Its capital is Valletta, which is the smallest national capital in the European Union by area at 0.8 km.2 The official languages are Maltese and English, with Maltese officially recognised as the national language and the only Semitic language in the European Union.
 Malta has been inhabited since approximately 5900 BC. Its location in the centre of the Mediterranean has historically given it great strategic importance as a naval base, with a succession of powers having contested and ruled the islands, including the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Greeks, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Sicilians, Spanish, Knights of St. John, French, and British. Most of these foreign influences have left some sort of mark on the country’s ancient culture.
 Malta became a British colony in 1815, serving as a way station for ships and the headquarters for the British Mediterranean Fleet. It played an important role in the Allied war effort during the Second World War, and was subsequently awarded the George Cross for its bravery in the face of an Axis siege, and the George Cross appears on Malta’s national flag. The British Parliament passed the Malta Independence Act in 1964, giving Malta independence from the United Kingdom as the State of Malta, with Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state and queen. The country became a republic in 1974. It has been a member state of the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations since independence, and joined the European Union in 2004; it became part of the eurozone monetary union in 2008.
Malta has a long Christian legacy and its Archdiocese is claimed to be an apostolic see because Paul the Apostle was shipwrecked on “Melita”, according to Acts of the Apostles, which is now widely taken to be Malta. While Catholicism is the official religion in Malta, Article 40 of the Constitution states that “all persons in Malta shall have full freedom of conscience and enjoy the free exercise of their respective mode of religious worship.”
Malta is a popular tourist destination with its warm climate, numerous recreational areas, and architectural and historical monuments, including three UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Hypogeum of Ħal-Saflieni, Valletta, and seven megalithic temples which are some of the oldest free-standing structures in the world.
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