Last Sunday you published three letters in connection with my second letter on the invalidity of the cession of Malta made to France by the Order of St John (The Sunday Times, October 24).
To reply to all three, I have to be as brief as possible. Starting with the contribution of Martin Testaferrata Moroni Viani; I first of all must clear the air. He condemned me for attempting “to muddle ‘his’ own patronymic and he wrote that perhaps, some day, I might deign to explain myself. This can only refer to what appeared under my name as the “Mr Galea” appellation.
May I say that I was even more irritated than he was. In the opening paragraph of my letter I had written his name in full. Further down, instead of repeating his full name, I wrote in a friendly spirit, “my colleague Martin” as we both belong to the same legal profession. To my surprise, his name was changed to “Mr Galea”.
Having said that, I am glad that Dr Martin disagrees with only a part of the Court of Appeal judgment of 1885 I had quoted. However, until that judgment is overturned by a court of law, I still stand firm with its dictum that, as a matter of principle, the civil acts of the French interlude of three months were null and void, and with the supporting opinions of Judge Paolo Debono and Prof. G. Degiorgio. Further on, however, I have to qualify this statement.
As to Mario Farrugia’s letter, he charged me with trying to belittle the crucial role of the British blockade when I replied to his letter of September 5. In my letter of October 3, I made no mention of the British and Portuguese navies or of the blockade.
The whole point was about the troops fighting on land, in regard to which Mr Farrugia had written that the Maltese fought alongside the British. Considering that only the Maltese had suffered casualties in land fighting, without the aid of foreign troops (as Captain Ball put it), I opted to say that the British fought alongside the Maltese, and not the other way round.
I wanted to put things in their correct perspective. If only 300 Maltese died in battle, the two-year siege deprived Malta of thousands of its sons.
Finally, I was happy to read Giovanni Bonello’s letter with its legal juxtaposition. Although Mr Farrugia dismissed the Court of Appeal judgment as “obscure”, Dr Bonello referred to it as an “important 1885 judgment” and he went to say that under customary international law that would have been “the correct legal position”, as the brief occupation, not sanctioned or recognised by the comity of nations, did bring about a nullity which could produce no juridical effects.
Dr Bonello, however, rightly came out with a new proposition. He wrote that since that judgment, international law has evolved and refined, and the so-called ‘Namibia Principle’ was enunciated by the International Court of Justice, and endorsed by the European Court of Human Rights.
Applying the Namibia Principle to Malta, Dr Bonello wrote that, although the occupation was illegal, French administrative acts, which were “beneficial to the inhabitants”, would today be considered valid.
In the light of the Namibia Principle, international law now makes an exception to the nullity of acts on the grounds of illegitimacy and an exception proves the rule. Even if this principle were to be propelled back to 1800, the abolition of slavery, for instance, would be considered as beneficial to the inhabitants of Malta, but would the wholesale confiscation of all the Order’s property in Malta, both immovable and movable (such as De Valette’s sword) have been considered beneficial to the Maltese?
Editor’s note: The reference to “Mr Galea” in Dr Ganado’s letter published on October 24 was the result of an oversight in the editing process. The error is regretted.