I read with great interest and enjoyment Austin Bencini’s interesting and warm appreciation of the late Ċensu Tabone. He rightly described Dr Tabone as a fine statesman and among other things that proved this was Dr Tabone’s describing himself as President of Malta and not merely President of the Republic.

I thought that Dr Bencini would have taken a leaf from Dr Tabone’s book and not twice refer to him as “President of Maltese and Gozitans”. This is something which I personally find divisive and is common parlance, especially with politicians and much of the media. When referring to Malta as a state or a republic, Malta in the UN, in the Council of Europe, Malta as a member of the EU, Malta abroad whether in international sport events or some song festival, it means the whole archipelago and its people.

With all respect to Gozo and my many friends there, we are not a federation of two different races, speaking different languages and having a different historical experience. Dr Tabone, himself a Gozitan born and bred, rightly described himself as President of Malta. In neighbouring Italy, where regional differences are so much more distinct in some cases, one never hears the President or Prime Minister there addressing the Italian nation as “People of Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, etc”. In the UK the Queen and PM refer to the British people not the very distinct component groups which form the nation. Even in Switzerland, which is a federation with four distinct linguistic groups there is no such nonsense.