It is not pleasant to have take sides between two persons whom one holds in very high esteem. But I think that between Henry Frendo (Inventing A National Day, The Sunday Times, March 24,) and Kevin Aquilina (A New National Day, The Times, March 15), it is the latter who has the stronger argument.
Aquilina’s argument – the new National Day “should be the day on which the Second Republic is established, that is, the day when Malta is given by the Maltese people as law-giver a new Constitution tailor-made to suit the requirements of a small island state such as Malta, written by Maltese, voted for by Maltese MPs and Maltese people and drafted by none other than the Maltese population” – follows currently prevailing legal doctrine while coalescing the three stages of recent Maltese history, that is, Independence, Republic, and Sovereignty.
Though referred to as Freedom Day, March 31 is notionally Sovereignty Day
I am not downplaying Frendo’s argument that a diminished understanding of history can fudge the weighing of those three stages. On this, I am four-square behind him. But the implication in his letter that only two of the three post-war dates are important seems to me untenable. (“A national day requires a historical legitimacy in time and context. It cannot be an artifact, or an egocentric whim followed by an endorsement for Independence and Republic Days as the two national days.”)
Malta’s post-war history is, I claim, a triptych: Independence, Republic, Sovereignty.
Though referred to as Freedom Day, March 31 is notionally Sovereignty Day. Naturally, such a name would have been unacceptable to the then Labour Government for cultural-linguistic reasons and the importation of the Arabic word for sovereignty (sjieda) would not have been viable. Instead, ‘freedom’ seems to be semantically wide enough to embrace ‘sovereignty’.
‘Freedom’ possesses all the nuances that are related to the acquisition of sovereignty by former colonies because it is wider than a mere ‘absence of subjection to foreign domination’.
It encapsulates the termination of “practices of racial discrimination, economic exploitation, territorial dispossession and cultural subordination (which) were all central to the imperial project” (A. Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law, Cambridge University Press 2004, p. 7).
When used loosely, ‘freedom’ can apply both to the Allied liberation of France in 1944 and to Malta’s post-1979 effective control of all her territory. But in a stricter sense, it’s not the same kind of freedom. France had already been a sovereign State before the Nazi occupation. Malta acquired her complete sovereignty (i.e., de facto in addition to de jure) only in 1979.
Indeed Dom Mintoff’s insistence on ‘indipendenza farsa’ (a farce of an independence) was a popular way of expressing a complex political, legal and diplomatic argument, namely that in 1964 Malta acquired independence but not complete sovereignty (de jure but not de facto – “formal and real sovereignty”, Anghie, p. 199).
Territorial integrity is fundamental to sovereignty “in practice” (J. Mayall, Nationalism and International Society, Cambridge University Press 1990, p. 20). Indeed, the contemporary world order is not built on nationality. “It is built on the separate territorial state”, (Mayall, p. 123). A foreign military base would impinge on that territorial integrity.
Whereas it does not seem that Mintoff’s politics were essentially coherent or linear, it does seem that he had an overarching objective. Is it reasonable to presume that Sammut v. Strickland (decided in 1938) did not impress him? That case dealt with the way Britain had acquired Malta (1800-1813), the cession-conquest debate and the beginning of British ‘sovereignty’ over Malta.
It seems like the opening of a parenthesis. It would be reasonable to presume that, though not sure about the nitty-gritty, Mintoff was convinced it was his political mission to close it. Even the integration option (before becoming a step in the evolution of his political action in favour of independence) was part of the sovereignty parenthesis.
March 31, 1979 – the ‘appointment with destiny’ – seems the logical closing of the parenthesis opened in 1938. The sovereignty ceded by the Maltese to the British (whether legal fiction or not is immaterial) in 1802 was re-acquired in 1979. Mintoff’s Malta bears an uncanny resemblance to Article X of the Treaty of Amiens, 1802.
In 1995, during a public meeting held in a Marsaxlokk hall, Mintoff compared himself and his Government to that of the Grand Masters, criticising the Nationalists for lacking the same spirit that had motivated him. One of the hallmarks of the Knights’ foreign policy was neutrality.
March 31, 1979 and the 1987 constitutional amendment uphold the idea of the Maltese State “actively pursuing peace”. (Interestingly, this is a Judeo-Christian idea – 1 Peter 3:11; Romans 12:18; Hillel, Pirkei Avot 1:12.) This is an unusual idea for a State. As Prof. Mayall argues (p. 99), since “the state must be able to call on all the citizenry in the event of war, then public health, nutritional levels and so on, automatically become matters of national rather than merely private concern. And as the technology of modern warfare becomes more sophisticated, so the level of mass education also becomes a public matter...”
The 1987 amendment actually means that all those activities which any other State would carry out with an ultimately bellicose aim, the Maltese State will carry out in its quest for peace.
In 1989, a booklet was published called Din hi l-Istorja. Its core message is still valid today, and should be seriously analysed, particularly on the eve of the birth of the Second Republic.
Mark A. Sammut has authored and contributed to a number of books and reviews including Malta at the European Court of Human Rights 1987-2012.