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 27 August 1962 to 1 June 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. After Mintoff's re-election in 1976, the general