Celebrating Independence Day

A holiday in the middle of the week is always welcome, for various reasons, not least of which is the one that allows me to lounge around doing precious little while pretending to be catching up on work. Conscientious considerations sometimes preclude extending the holiday when it is slap-bang in the middle of the week, two extra days off to bridge to the weekend being a bit much.

The latest mid-weeker, Independence Day, landed smack on Wednesday but I overcame what passes for my conscience and headed north, knowing that on Friday I was going to have to get myself back to the real world – and without a priority pass, too. Not really a major hardship, though, because with just a modicum of planning and foresight, it can be done and in time.

Independence Day is celebrated with due pomp and ceremony, by those who choose to turn up for the doings. For myself, I’m not entirely up for dressing up and sitting uncomfortably while the great and the good do their thing, so even were I to be invited, which thankfully hardly ever seems to be the case (and nor should it be), the number under the RSVP (RO) bit would come into play, even if that might make it seem I’m on some sort of industrial action because I’m feeling neglected, were the appropriate circumstances to obtain.

A news item I touched on while lounging around catching up with work (an oxymoron if I ever wrote one) illustrated an interesting facet of the national psyche. Labour have been whinging and whining about how the agreement reached between Eddie Fenech Adami and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici back in the day about how Independence Day should be celebrated should be changed, making the day into one where government and Opposition are given equal space.

This delusion Labour has that they are as relevant to the country as the government is one that should, quite properly, be exposed for what it is, a delusion. The opposition has a function, to be sure, but there are limits to it, and the limits fall short of it (the opposition) being given equal status whenever the fancy takes them. They’re not part of a coalition, they’re the ones who were told “no, sorry, not you” (yet again) by the electorate.

But there’s an even more cogent reason why Labour do not fit comfortably into the equation when Independence is in focus. Labour’s leaders over the years, from whom the thugs who so tarnished Labour, some say irreparably while certain individuals remain so close to the party, took their lead, classified Independence as a sham, a joke, something to be denigrated. Anyone who has even a cursory grasp of our history, and from his FaceBook page, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando is not one of these, for all that he is wheeled out for an opinion whenever one is wanted, knows that – at least up to a couple of minutes ago in historical terms – Independence Day was one of those days marked by violence against the people celebrating it.

Yes, yes, all Labour’s apologists can now lambaste me for resurrecting old sores, ignoring the fact that it is Labour itself that keeps harping back to the past every five minutes.

The thing is, though, that by throwing a hissy every time September 21 rolls around and they’re left out, Labour are betraying their own past, as they should on this occasion (and as they should on many others), because they’re making it clear that they want us to forget all about the way Dom Mintoff and Dr Mifsud Bonnici and the hangers-on saw the day. Perhaps before putting up a picture of Mr Mintoff and George Borg Olivier and trying to rewrite history, Dr Pullicino Orlando should have reflected on this just a bit and maybe made some enquiries about what really happened on past September 21s.

Labour are also making it ultra obvious that at some visceral level, one which they probably don’t even recognise, they know that two other “national days”, Republic Day and Freedom Day, are really not much cop at all. On the former, constitutionally nothing material changed and on the latter, all that happened was that a lease ran out and the tenants upped sticks and left, ironically to the lasting sadness of many Labourites.

Labour, we are told, want to be part and parcel of the Independence Day celebrations. Quite right too, so they should be, but first they’re going to have to put their hands on their hearts and examine their corporate consciences, an exercise that is not quite as difficult as it might seem. Only after certain uncomfortable realities are accepted and atoned for can Labour have any credentials to be treated as equal partners on Independence Day.

For various reasons, I watched Chelsea lose against what’s their names down south on Sunday, and I think a judicious veil should be drawn over that inauspicious event, lest I slip up and call Torres the sort of names I called him when he managed to miss a chance that my old granny, dead now these past 30 years, would have put away.

We compensated by going for a pizza with some good friends, and the male of the couple had the decency to shut up about the game, for all that he’s afflicted by a love for that bunch of louts. We went to Margo’s in Mistra, where the pizza is good, actually very good. You have to get past the preachy notice at the front door telling you why they don’t accept credit cards, which frankly is their problem, and the almost equally hyperbolic menus, and ignore the cheap and not so cheerful furniture and the cheap and downright miserable cutlery, but it’s made up for by the quality of the pizzas and friendliness of the service, even if my request for a glass full of ice had to be reprised when the bevvies were delivered.

I don’t usually go on at such lengths about a blinking pizzeria, as you know, but when the establishment sets itself up the way this one does, it does tend to ask for it.

imbocca@gmail.com

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