Better five national days

Interviewed by Lou Bondì a few weeks ago, President George Abela expressed the wish to see the number of national days reduced from five to one. Or, at most, two. For a country to have five national days was a painfully visible sign, he implied, of disunity and political immaturity.

... if we had to have one... National Day... there is only one rational choice: Independence Day- Ranier Fsadni

Agreed. However, if we are incapable of deciding on a National Day rationally, I would rather let the pain show. Better that than a choice of a single National Day which, while presenting itself as ultra-reasonable, would only enshrine unreason further.

For the fact is, if we had to have one, and only one, National Day, then there is only one rational choice: Independence Day. Without it, the other feasts would either not make the same sense or not have come about. It gave the Maltese state all the powers it needed to declare itself a republic and to negotiate the departure of the last foreign armed forces based here.

And it gives Maltese national history a climax towards which, retrospectively, September 8, 1565 and June 7, 1919 seem to work towards: by representing the national aspiration which September 21, 1964 fulfilled. (For those to whom it is mere fantasy to read history backwards this way, the point of choosing either of these two feasts as a National Day becomes even weaker.)

Independence Day as a single choice has its honest, well-meaning critics.

One objection is that we were not a republic from the start but retained the queen as head of state. Now, I’m as red-blooded a republican as anyone – quite capable, on a giddy day, of reading human history as a Darwinian manifesto for republicanism – but does anyone seriously believe that Australia and Canada, two countries whose head of state is the queen, are less independent than Malta?

In any case, to wish that independent Malta was a republic from the start is effectively to wish independence was not obtained in 1964 but later, much later. With a republic on the cards in 1964, the independence referendum would probably not have passed. Too many voters were fearful of a lurch towards authoritarianism if the link to the UK were completely severed. (Even 10 years later, Dom Mintoff was strongly inclined against putting the change to a republic to a referendum vote.)

A second objection against Independence Day is that it did not obtain de facto full independence. True enough. But can anyone seriously argue that we clinched full independence at any time since?

As the current economic crisis lays bare, no country in the world is fully independent. Indeed, as long as we continue to reward politicians for increasing our affluence, the prospects of full independence will remain distant because growth depends on greater economic integration with the rest of the world and that means more exposure and vulnerability to the wild actions of others.

Independence, national as much as personal, is always relative. The date of formal independence – like one’s 18th birthday – can be named and celebrated. De facto independence, like de facto emancipation, is an ongoing everyday achievement.

I do not wish to be misunderstood. The arguments are not meant as denigrations of December 13, 1974 or March 31, 1979. I may not subscribe to all the claims made for them but I have used up other columns to argue, for instance, that March 31, if interpreted as a nation’s repudiation of certain aspects of its past, is a feast worth celebrating.

Indeed, if it had to come down to choosing two feasts, I could happily live with March 31, representing a nation’s decision to turn a page, and September 21, representing a historic continuity of aspiration. But if it’s one, and only one, the case for the latter is open and shut.

There is, of course, a third objection to Independence Day: that to choose it as the single National Day would be to slight Labourites, to leave them out of the celebrations, since independence was achieved under a Nationalist Prime Minister. It would be to enshrine a two-tier polity in the liturgies of the state.

For this reason, some have urged the adoption of September 8 as one that would stick clear of party politics. But, surely, this suggestion, however well-intentioned, is perverse.

It is incongruous with 21st-century Malta. A National Day harking back to an event when Malta was not yet a nation. An event marking military victory as the badge of honour of a republic whose Constitution declares it enters no military alliance and is proactively committed to peace.

Our foreign ministers and diplomatic corps would host national receptions on a day defined by the defeat of a Muslim enemy but somehow sing hymns to Malta’s readiness to be a “bridge” between Europe and the southern Mediterranean.

Above all, the suggestion is based on a hideous assumption: that Independence Day belongs in a special way to Nationalist supporters and that Labourites have a smaller share of it. But independence was evidently won for all, so that any democratic political party of any political persuasion would be able to govern well.

I don’t have much hope that reason will prevail. But perhaps it is worth putting down in writing one assessment of the extent of our unreason.

ranierfsadni@europe.com