Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said this evening that the next big challenge facing Maltese society is to ensure that there is equality among all people.

Speaking at the foot of the Freedom Monument in a Labour Party event to mark March 31, Dr Muscat said Dom Mintoff's primary aim was not freedom, but equality for all.

It was for that reason that he first sought integration (with the UK) and when he was not assured parity, he sought freedom.

March 31, 1979 was a crucial step towards the ultimate goal of equality, following on other steps such as Independence and the Republic.

Much progress had been made towards equality, but total equality still did not exist. He doubted that it existed anywhere.

In Malta, more needed to be done for persons with disability and for equal treatment for men and women. Women had equal rights as men on paper, but the same was not true in real life.

There was also no proper equality for people with different sexual orientation and Malta also had too much racism, Dr Muscat said.

The freedom achieved by Dom Mintoff meant the Maltese were not anything less than any other people. But every day people needed to challenge what needed to be challenged for further equality.

Malta also needed to play a greater role in the world and especially in its region. The events in Paris, Brussels and in Lahore, Pakistan showed how the global system was paying a high price for international policies that had failed.

Terrorists should be condemned, but one needed to be make sure that current attitudes were not feeding young people into the hands of the terrorists. What was leading so many young people to kill themselves and others?

Part of the blame lay in the international system which, for years, had reacted with isolation and the creation of ghettos for people who came from the outside, even though inclusivity was preached. 

The big challenge for Malta was to ensure that what had developed in other countries would not grow here, where seeds had also been sown. The policy of thinking one was isolated and other people needed to be kept out or had to wait on a roundabout for work, was wrong.

Malta was in good time to realistically ensure that equality existed in this country even tough some people did not want to hear of it.

His message, Dr Muscat said, was that this country was changing. For the first time it was creating more jobs than the demand from its own people. All those who wanted to work were finding jobs, as were many foreigners here.

The challenge was not so much of wealth creation but of testing the country's maturity. The country needed to choose between being happy with what it had, or playing in a superior league. That involved a change of mentality and the way how people treated each other, in equality.

37 years after Freedom Day, he was inviting all the people to join in this test of maturity which went beyond partisan politics, Dr Muscat said.

He then kindled the flame of freedom on top of the monument which marks the closure of the British military base in Malta on March 31, 1979.