I refer to the article by Publio Agius on the Floriana coat of arms (August 25). Some time after the local councils were set up, I drew the attention of the first Floriana local council to the fact that the coat-of-arms we were lumbered with from Castille was not that which our forefathers had embraced and cherished for decades and I had therefore asked the council, of which I was not yet a member, to insist that the original coat-of-arms of Floriana be reinstated.

I continued with my efforts throughout the second council and during the present one. During a discussion on the issue, this third council's deputy mayor, Mary Dimech, suggested the setting up of a commission to advise the council on the matter. The proposal was unanimously accepted by the council, although obviously it will be the council which will finally decide whether to accept its advice or not.

Having a debate on this matter is positive in itself as long as it is an honest, serious and genuine one based on our love for Floriana and not one which is the fruit of pique or other motives which can be construed as a subtle attempt to exert pressure on the commission before it completes its work.

Maybe it would in fact have been more wise had this debate been confined within the ambit of the commission so that it could decide with required seriousness and serenity once the same commission had invited all those who are interested in the matter to come forward and expound his views.

After the commission arrives at its conclusions, and before the council decides whether to accept its advice or not, it would then be time to have a full debate, if need be also in the media.

At this stage therefore I am not going into the merits of which is the correct coat-of-arms of Floriana but I am going to limit myself to commenting on a couple of arguments in Mr Agius's article, which are entirely fallacious.

First, however, I was happy to note that Mr Agius himself declared that "until the introduction of the local councils in 1993, few had questioned the previous coat-of-arms of this locality, which was made up of a red rampant lion on a white background'.

In fact Mr Agius was not one of those few. On the other hand, he was one of the most fervent promoters of the original coat-of-arms and one cannot understand his radical change of heart.

I can understand people who change their views, and rightly so, when they are faced by convincing arguments. However, if one analyses Mr Agius's reasoning today, the conclusion will be that this is not a case of someone who has converted to a new cause because he is faced with heretofore unknown truths, but a case of someone who is going through great pains, and clutching at straws, to find a justification for his conversion.

Mr Agius kicks off by saying that the debate of the coat-of-arms which Floriana "had until the advent of local councils, or the one it has had since, based on the coat-of-arms of Grand Master Fra Antonio Manoel de Vilhena..." Mr Agius immediately started off on the wrong foot, because he should at least have found it in himself to state unequivocally that the coat-of-arms which he so contemptuously dismissed as the "one it (Floriana) had until the advent of local councils" is also based on the coat-of-arms of Grand Master de Vilhena.

Mr Agius then arrives at a totally speculative conclusion when he argues that the original coat-of-arms has "only one element of a rampant lion" because "we know that since this coat-of-arms was introduced during the period when the residential community of Floriana was being formed, no one gave any importance to the change in the official coat-of-arms of the Grand Master after 1725, and so, this change was accepted unquestioned and was not challenged" .

Now Mr Agius did not proffer a shred of evidence as to how he arrived at this conclusion, but even if one were to accept this argument, this would have meant that the people of Floriana would have opted to deliver a slight right to the face of Grand Master de Vilhena himself in person since he continued to reign over these islands for a good 11 years after he had introduced this change to his own coat-of-arms.

This is unthinkable, and Mr Agius would do well to stick to facts instead of descending into the realm of speculation. This reasoning also almost suggests that the people of Floriana at the time were a bunch of cretins and this surely is a "grave injustice" to our forefathers.

Mr Agius unfortunately seemed to relish this fallacious argumentation and he proceeded to conclude with a couple of others. He stated "we would be doing a grave injustice to the greatest benefactor of Floriana, Grand Master de Vilhena, if we had to alter in any way the coat-of-arms which belonged to him and which had been passed on to us".

Now who is trying to alter Grand Master de Vilhena's coat-of-arms? Cannot Mr Agius honestly concede that his arguments are totally unfounded and would not it serve us all better if he refrains from confusing the whole issue?

What we are talking about here is the Floriana coat-of-arms, albeit based on Manoel de Vilhena's, but the issue here is not the coat-of-arms of our beloved benefactor. Should that be the case, then even Mr Agius is committing an injustice as even the present coat-of-arms of Floriana is a manifestly altered version of the Grand Master's and cannot be considered to be a faithful reproduction .

Using the same faulty yardstick, the people of Valletta are commiting a "grave injustice" with Grand Master La Valette's, the lion, when his coat-of-arms features another element, a winged animal, which is displayed with as much prominence as the lion.

Mr Agius must be aware of his faulty reasoning because to save face he came up with the argument that "after all, Floriana is still known as Borgo Vilhena, named after this Grand Master, and thus we are morally obliged to reproduce the full elements presented in this current coat-of-arms of Floriana".

Were we not morally obliged to include an element from the coat-of-arms of Pietro Paulo Floriani? And is it possible that he is not aware that it is common practice for cities all over the world to incorporate one or more elements of a monarch or any other person with close connections to their city, but not necessarily all of them?

Let us have a serious discussion. We would be committing a grave crime against our forefathers if someone tries to twist the facts of history to satisfy personal wishes.

Mr Holland is mayor of Floriana.