School's Out

Mintoff takes on an old enemy

In 13 years as Prime Minister of Malta's Labor government, Dom Mintoff has steered his rocky Mediterranean island-nation in an ever more Easterly direction. Once a firm friend of its former colonial master, Britain, and an important port of call for NATO warships, nonaligned Malta these days boasts such friends as the Soviet Union and North Korea. Mintoff, 68, severed defense ties with London in 1979, placed former NATO fuel-storage facilities at the service of Soviet ships, and, last March signed a threeyear, $260 million trade agreement with Moscow.

Now Mintoff is taking on his perennial enemy, the Roman Catholic Church. In May the Prime Minister decreed that private schools in Malta will not be allowed to charge tuition when classes begin early next month. The move will affect the country's 19 church-run secondary schools, which enroll 25% of high-school-age children. The church schools have been charging a relatively modest fee, $214 a student, set by law in 1972. Last month the government went further, closing eight leading Catholic academies and creating four state-run substitutes.

Mintoff defends the measures as being necessary to stamp out elitism. Senior Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici, Mintoff s probable successor, insists that the church can afford to fund its schools and that parents should be relieved of the burden of tuition. Asks Bonnici: "What is immoral in providing free education?"

Opponents, however, see the move as the latest government attempt to break the power of the church in Malta, whose population of 400,000 is predominantly Catholic. Last year the state seized church real estate and Mintoff banned visits by Archbishop Joseph Mercieca to public schools and prisons. The Prime Minister has also given students at state schools preference in admission to the island's only university and ended government grants to church schools.

None of those moves has touched off as much outrage as the tuition ban. Parents, clergymen and members of the opposition Nationalist Party have staged protest rallies and filed lawsuits to halt the closings. Opposition Leader Eddie Fenech Adami has vowed to send his children to unlicensed church schools. Archbishop Mercieca warns that if the tuition ban is allowed to stand, "education will surrender to indoctrination."

The Maltese have reason for worry. In his drive to turn Malta into a socialist state, Mintoff has grown increasingly authoritarian. He keeps the local press tightly reined and prohibits all coverage of Adami's Nationalist Party. Businessmen complain of rising government interference in their affairs. Though Malta apparently has no political prisoners, any citizen may be detained for 48 hours without charge. Says a leading Nationalist: "Mintoff doesn't treat us as the loyal opposition, but as the enemy."

Mintoffs assault on the church may be designed at least in part to distract attention from economic problems. The unemployment rate has been estimated at close to 20%, and tourism is down. Despite the huge trade deal with the Soviets, not a single ruble's worth of merchandise has been exchanged so far. "It's a very traditional pattern for the Soviets," said a State Department official. "Massive trade agreements, good publicity, then nobody pays attention to the follow-up."

The Vatican has broken off an attempt to mediate the tuition dispute. Maltese parents, defying a ban on private contributions to the schools, have raised $1.2 million, which will pay the bills until December. "If parents send their children back in October, we shall continue with our work," says Brother Martin Borg, headmaster of De la Salle College, whose former students include Mintoff. "Our doors will be open." -