I recently had the good fortune of visiting Canada, and the natural beauty of this country and the friendliness of its inhabitants overwhelmed me. The unspoiled vastness of the region known as The Rocky Mountains is truly awesome. I ended my Canadian sojourn with a few days in Vancouver and Victoria, the capital of British Columbia.
As luck would have it, I was there on July 1, Canada Day. What I witnessed on that day brought home to me the sad fact that my country does not have one day when we can all come together and feel proud to be Maltese. The few times we wave our flag is at the beginning of an international football match (only until such time as we are not on the losing end) or perhaps when we obtain a good placing at the Eurovision Song Contest!
I have often been told this stems from the fact that we have been dominated by colonial powers for so much of our history. Canada is, by comparison, a new nation and yet I saw people of many different ethnic origins, proudly waving the Canadian national flag.
Most people wore clothing emblazoned with the national emblem, the maple leaf. Mixing with this crowd, I was asked where I came from and what I did on my national day.
I was ashamed to say that we did not have a Malta Day but instead we have the ridiculous situation of five national feast days! People just grinned and in order not to offend me quipped that perhaps we were lucky in that we have five days of celebrations rather than one!
Isn't it a shame that a tiny country like ours that has a population that is ethnically homogenous, speaks the same language and in the major part practises the same religion, does not have one day that we can all call Malta Day?
Just for the record, the National Holidays and other Public Holidays Act enacted in 1975, sets out the following days as National Holidays: 21st September as Independence Day, 13th December as Republic Day, 31st March as Freedom Day, 8th September as Victory Day and 7th June as Sette Giugno.
Cannot our political leaders rise above confrontational politics and in a spirit of true statesmanship propose a date that all Maltese can assimilate with?
I am not really interested in which day is selected although I suppose that the last two of the above list are probably the least politically contentious. The objective should simply be the establishment of one date when all Maltese can feel proud of our small nation.
The absence of a national day is a blemish on our country and should be removed without further delay. That we have been unable to consensually select this day proves how divided we remain on such fundamental issues.
We are so quick to point out that our history goes back 6,000 years so surely it should not be a monumental task to find a suitable date!
Might I suggest that our head of state, Prof. Guido de Marco chairs a commission representative of all interested parties to recommend a Malta Day for approval by parliament.