Editorial

Today is the 38th anniversary of Malta's independence. A large number of people were not yet born when Malta become independent. They therefore have no immediate experience of what it was like, then, but most have seen the immense strides taken since 1964 to turn the island into a modern nation. This process continues, logically, in our bid to find our rightful place in the European Union.

In fact, it was soon after a Nationalist government was returned to power in 1966 that Malta entered into an association agreement with what was then called the European Economic Community. From the outset, the then prime minister, George Borg Olivier, had a clear vision of what that agreement had to lead to, but it had to be the Nationalists in government again to push his idea forward and seek membership of the European Union.

The Socialists under Mr Mintoff and new (?!) Labour under Alfred Sant have seriously impeded the island's march towards membership. When Sant's government froze the membership application, it was said that the island was not yet ready to take such a giant step. It was feared that the island would collapse without trace, economically. The fears were not without basis. No country is ever fully prepared for the next phase in its development.

In the case of Russia, for example, it was the cataclysmic events of 1917 that led to the Soviet Union. In Germany it was the dramatic unification of West and East Germany that led the country into the centre of international affairs. Unification has cost billions of dollars, so far, and seen the end of totalitarian control in a land impoverished by communism. In the United States it was tea and taxation without representation that finally saw off the British.

So it is with Malta as we prepare ourselves to take the next qualitative leap forward. In 1964, this was only a glimmer, if that, in the economic and political arena. The idea of greater integration with Europe has been a red rag to a bull for Dr Sant during the past decade. For his predecessor it was a nightmare of Frankenstein proportions. For Mr Mintoff, Europe was a continent made up of Cain and Abel, the latter being the countries behind the Iron Curtain, Cain the western, democratic geographical space. Today, Mr Mintoff's Abel has ceased to exist.

Anybody under 16 will not know a Malta where its airport was a heap, where its telecommunications system was a shambles, where its only source of energy was Marsa. Nobody under 16 will understand that colour television was unknown up to the mid-'80s. Everybody under 16 takes computers for granted. They were rarities before 1987.

In 1964, there was hardly a hotel of note on the island and the leisure industry, with all the demands it places on a country and rewards, was in its infancy.

Progress has come at a price. It always does. The bill includes the unawareness of successive governments to safeguard the environment and aspects of our heritage. There is an item on its own called hideous buildings and architecture and another entry, waste management. Environment and waste management now occupy centre stage.

We look back on these failings with regret, but we also look back on what has been achieved since 1964 with pride. It has not been an easy ride and there were times, during the '70s and early '80s under a socialist government, when even our democracy was threatened. That was overcome, too.