Notary Mark Sammut (Independence, Republic, Sovereignty, April 13) attributed the following statement to me: “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.”
In my article, there was a full stop after “an egocentric whim”. The next sentence read thus: “Part of the appeal of Joseph Muscat’s ‘movement’ that won him the March 9 election lay in his overtures to consensus, including his commitment to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Malta’s independence.”
We cannot, as a people and a State, go on inventing ‘national’ days and ‘new’ republics
That Independence Day and Republic Day could or should be the national days was a recommendation made by the President. That was a bold unifying step as befits the moral leadership which a Head of State should embody and inspire. It may not be an ideal situation but two ‘national days’ would be better than five.
What this country has been crying out for is a national equilibrium inspired by a consensual ethic, which is based on a post-colonial understanding of its history. I have no doubt that this wish is shared both by Kevin Aquilina and Sammut. Let us put aside blind partisanship linked to the ‘with us or against us’ cult.
This is all the more evident and more simply stated now that the two protagonists of our country’s fairly smooth and on the whole successful path from colonialism to statehood – George Borg Olivier and Dom Mintoff – are safely dead and buried, representing a seminal epoch, inherited by today’s citizens. And let us think positively, without reinventing the wheel, or discarding a shared past.
These two markedly different personalities may still be popularly perceived as diabolically antagonistic.
The truth is that, in fact, they were both caught in a national-colonial dialectic and they actually entertained a noteworthy measure of respect for one another. Mintoff attended Borg Olivier’s funeral and if Borg Olivier were alive he would have attended Mintoff’s.
I have repeatedly dismissed as unhistorical and untrue the assumption that the attainment of independence in September 1964 was just a Nationalist Party feat or that, therefore, it should be the PN in government to commemorate its 50th anniversary next year.
Although Mintoff could not swallow the fact that he had not obtained independence himself and as he wanted it, Borg Olivier emphatically insisted that independence, after centuries of domination and subjection, was not for the Nationalists or the Labourites but for all Maltese forever. Without agreement in principle between the two main parties, Britain might well not have granted us independence at all as it did in 1964.
There were recurring misgivings about this turn of events at the highest British Cabinet levels, given also the changing scenarios in Cyprus, Libya and superpower stakes in the region.
From 1958 onwards, Mintoff was for independence certainly not any less than Borg Olivier was. In my earlier article, I had quoted Mintoff’s concluding words in the ‘Break with Britain’ resolution of December 30, 1957. Mintoff had rightly said “Malta kollha” (all Malta) because the leader of the Opposition, Borg Olivier, had seconded his motion and spoken in support of it at some length.
One should note, too, the nature of the discourse: “manliness” and “patriotism”, in spite of the “hardships” which this path – towards Malta’s independence from Britain - would entail.
The PN had opposed Integration, so it supported a move to independence – unanimity at last.
By force of circumstance, in a context too complex and convoluted to treat here (the other main protagonist having been Archbishop Michael Gonzi), it was Borg Olivier’s party, with 26 out of 50 seats in a five-party Parliament, that led our country to its independence. To quote India’s Nehru in 1947: “A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.”
The disagreement between the PN and the Malta Labour Party was not about getting independence but, rather, about certain principles, modalities and policy directions. Some of these principles were pretty basic civil and secular ones, in line with modernity, but which the powerful Maltese Church opposed, so belligerence on that score might have put paid to independence or changed the terms (vide the British sovereign bases retained indefinitely in Cyprus).
As the Independence Constitution, drafted by an eminent Maltese jurist, made provision for changes to it, within a decade such disagreements as had marked the independence negotiations had been ironed out and duly incorporated constitutionally in changes to the said Constitution.
This is why, in retrospect, the decade 1964-1974 may be seen essentially as a continuum, although, obviously, there could not have been 1974 without 1964, hence, its “centrality” (as Desmond Zammit Marmarà put it).
The 1964-1974 defence-finance agreements were intended to permit economic diversification and a smooth transition, which they more or less did. However, this is not to say that Malta was not an independent sovereign state before ‘freedom’ came in 1979. When, in 1967, for its own defence expenditure priorities, Britain wanted to hasten the rundown, threating the future of thousands of Maltese workers and the defence agreement, Malta stood firm and effectively told Britain where to get off – Operation Exit - until a compromise was reached. Borg Olivier’s resolute and patriotic parliamentary speeches to this effect on January 23 and 27, 1967 were greeted by prolonged applause all round.
If Malta were not sovereign, how on earth would Mintoff’s new Administration have been able to do what it did in and after June 1971?
Relinquishing a foreign territorial military presence may indeed be seen to symbolise the full and final acquisition of all title to the land, granted. But would it not be a self-evident contradiction to hold that such ‘sovereignty’ only arrived in March/April 1979, at the end of a defence agreement that had been renegotiated and extended by its own government? To say nothing of the fact that 1979 was not exactly a paradigm of ‘freedom’ either internally (October 15 etc.) or externally (Muammar Gaddafi etc.).
Hence, 1964 and 1974 would make more sense, at least for the time being. The President is right. And so is the Prime Minister, if I read him correctly.
Let us responsibly, not impulsively, revise and modify what may be required. Times do change. But we cannot, in all seriousness, as a people and a State, go on inventing ‘national’ days and ‘new’ republics until kingdom come. We need consciously to reconcile ourselves to our past, get out of the shadows holistically to reclaim our history and move on to other pursuits.
For its size and in spite of all limitations, Maltese society has proved to be resilient, vibrant and talented. As Mintoff might have said, the future beckons.
Henry Frendo is director of the Institute of Maltese Studies.