8th September, commonly known as Otto Settembre is truly our National Day. We of Viva Malta laid a wreath at the Great Siege Monument in Valletta to commemorate an epic siege, etched in European history, when a few hundred knights and 8,500 Maltese, vastly outnumbered, withstood the Muslim onslaught.

We laid our wreath 10 minutes after the official ceremony, when those two Socialist parties had the effrontery to commemorate that event. The two parties that have opened the doors to a silent invasion of our island, that send our people hundreds of miles out to sea to rescue Africans, all trying to enter illegally, and bring them ashore. Two parties that both pursue the infantile dream of burden sharing, that great magnet for illegal immigrants.

We of Viva Malta issued a statement distancing ourselves from this hypocrisy. We are the only movement interested in our country and people and who therefore refrain to dance to this melancholic dance of death – this hypocrisy permeating our politics.

After the ceremony, I walked to the Upper Barrakka to watch the gun salute re-enactment. Imagine my horror when I saw, just across the harbour, a huge advert for Vodaphone in brilliant red covering a sizeable part of the bastion stuck to the very walls of St Angelo where our forefathers fought a bloody battle on its ramparts 444 years ago. Have we lost our historical memory? Have we become so immune, so indifferent to our glorious history? Have we no shame? Has money so corrupted us? Shame on the authorities concerned who permitted this outrage.

Adriano Spiteri