Lawrence Gonzi
Lawrence Gonzi was prime minister of Malta from 2004 to 2013, the Nationalist who took over from Fenech Adami six weeks before the island joined the European Union. He governed the first nine years of membership, through the adoption of the euro on 1 January 2008, the Schengen frontier, the financial crisis, which the island's banks came through without a rescue. There was the Libyan war of 2011, when Malta refused Gaddafi's pilots' jets, took the evacuees from the oil fields, and would not let NATO use its airfields. The record was the euro. The deficit was brought under the Maastricht line and out again. There were the pensions reform that raised the age to sixty-five, the shipyards closed in 2010 after a century, and the divorce referendum of May 2011, which he opposed and which passed. He let his party vote freely and the law went through. There was the Smart City that never quite was. He won the 2008 election by fifteen hundred votes, a one-seat majority that his backbenchers spent the next five years testing. One of them, Franco Debono, brought the government down in December 2012 by voting against its budget. The election of March 2013 was lost to Muscat by thirty-six thousand votes, the worst Nationalist defeat. He resigned the leadership that night. He was born in Valletta, the grandson of an archbishop's brother. He read law and was president of the Catholic action movement and of the lay council. He entered parliament in 1988 and was speaker from 1988 to 1996, minister for social policy from 1998, and deputy prime minister from 1999. He was the safe pair of hands the party chose over John Dalli in 2004. He has practised law since and sat on the boards the island gives its former prime ministers. He has watched the party he left lose four elections in a row.
- Lived: 1953 CE – ?
- Nationality: Maltese
- Roles: prime minister, lawyer, politician
