Independence and the Malta fault

Malta celebrates Independence Day like few others do. The event recalls a final break from the colonial power. Yet, what is celebrated is a perpetual rift within our nation. Over the weekend the Nationalist Party confirmed that yet again. Abiding Labour Party disdain for Independence Day rounds up the picture.

The island has been independent of the UK for 40 years, at liberty to set and navigate her own course. Achievements through those four decades included the manner in which innate capabilities of our people grew into a dynamic of broad initiative. For all of that time we have also been at each other's throats.

We have not become a tribe that lost its head. We grow more and more into two tribes that find sense elusive. The two large political parties do not operate within the confines of the continuous clash and contrast of ideas that are a necessary condition for a healthy democracy.

They are not opposed to each other in a competitive race for achievement according to their individual light. An athlete's ultimate merit is that he sees the merits of a worthy opponent. Our parties see one another as being worthy only of the other's scorn. Their one bond is enmity.

The PN leads occupation of power since Independence, with 22 years to the MLP's barely 18. In opposition, each party has practised total war. The government and the opposition rarely find any common ground. They have made perennial partisanship the endemic national tree. Thereby they compromise the interest of an island home to both tribes.

The framework of democracy has endured. There was some pause in the headlong rush towards deepening the rift along the Maltese political fault. To a drawing back from the brink to make constitutional changes that guarantee power to a party that gains the absolute majority of valid votes in a general election.

The framework, though, remains rickety in the parts that matter most for the future. In shaping attitudes. In planning essential action. The government and the opposition find no common position even on the growing phenomenon of boat people. One that combines essential humanity and respect for the plight of others, with a solid front against abuse or countries unwilling to deal with the situation at their source and other countries to which words come easy but that are prepared to offer no real supportive action.

The framework grows more dangerously shaky in its attitudinal aspect. According to the two-Maltese-tribes syndrome, the government is not a concept for the whole people. It is primarily for the tribe that wins the general election. Through the years that distorting concept of winner-takes-all is implemented crudely or with attempted subtlety. The point is that the tribe concept is projected and encouraged, making minds un-free.

We have been politically independent for two-score years. But we have not yet gained independence of the mind. We are not subservient to a foreign power. But too large a part of the national intellect is susceptible to internal division. One reason may be that, in 40 years of independence, there has been not a single national icon.

Who are our heroes, a young person reflected to me the other day. Who indeed? Things can change if the young nurture a process that may have already started. If they insist that, going forward, they do not want to be burdened by the baggage of mindless division. That they are happy and proud to be Maltese and not part of a Maltese tribe.

Thereby, they will not become of one mind, agreeing about everything. They will become of one independent Maltese mind, seeing things from Malta's - and not a tribal - perspective. They can use that independence to make their own political choices and not to have them handed down to them by tribal tradition, blind faith and prejudice.

They can make celebration of independence a national reality. They will be free in the best sense of the word.