In a heartfelt plea, Joseph Muscat has urged Labour Party supporters to put aside “past nonsense” and join the Independence celebrations this week.
“The time has come to show that Independence Day belongs to all of us just like Republic Day and Freedom Day belong to everyone,” the Prime Minister told supporters in the Labour stronghold of Paola.
It was ironic that a Labour government had to organise the celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of Independence, Dr Muscat said to a silent audience gathered at the Paola Labour club.
“For many years we resisted, criticised and maybe tried to pit Independence against Freedom Day but this is past nonsense and everyone, including the other side, was guilty of this,” he said.
Independence, obtained on September 21, 1964, was for years labelled by Labour exponents as “a farce” because Britain kept its military base and retained strong influence on government decisions.
The Labour government of the 1970s had even stopped celebrating Independence as a national holiday, giving a higher profile to Republic Day and Freedom Day.
The controversy has long coloured the three national holidays with the hues of partisan politics. Nationalists regard Independence as their feast with former prime minister George Borg Olivier anointed as ‘the father of Independent Malta’, while Labourites hold the Republic and Freedom Day in high esteem with former prime minister Dom Mintoff hailed as ‘the father of free Malta’.
‘Independence Day belongs to us all’
Dr Muscat acknowledged that in a year when the country was celebrating significant national anniversaries, the real challenge for Labourites was to celebrate Independence.
“We have to show that Independence belongs to the whole country, that we are not anchored to the past but willing to look ahead… there should be only two colours fluttering and they should not be blue and red but white and red of the Maltese flag,” he said.
Dr Muscat’s conciliatory tone was welcomed by the Nationalist Party, which however urged the Prime Minister to put aside his slogan and “walk the talk”.
The PN urged Dr Muscat to find the political courage to put his words into action by reversing the “unilateral decision” to cancel local council elections, give back the public property seized “unashamedly” by the Labour Party over the years and reverse “discriminatory transfers” meted out to talented people whose only fault was that of not voting Labour. Referring to the unveiling of a statue to commemorate former president Guido de Marco last week, the Prime Minister spoke of internal criticism he received for giving importance to the ceremony held outside the law courts.
“Guido de Marco was a big adversary of the Labour Party [he was PN deputy leader] but he was also a statesman and people demand that national figures are held above partisan politics,” he said.
What is Malta celebrating this year?
• 50 years since obtaining Independence from Britain on September 21, 1964.
• 40 years since becoming a Republic on December 13, 1974, with a Maltese President replacing the Queen as head of state.
• 35 years since the departure of the last British forces from Malta when the island stopped being a military base on March 31, 1979.
• 10 years since Malta joined the EU on May 1, 2004.