Much that is tiresome is being said about the rightness or wrongness of making Independence Day our one national day. All that is being said in its favour is sensible, logical and dispassionate – that it is the day Malta came into being as a state, and as such is the obvious choice. All that is being said against it is illogical, confused and emotive – that Malta was already a nation before it became a state, that we should choose Victory Day because it commemorates a decisive battle that stopped the Ottoman forces overrunning Christian Europe, that Independence Day is associated with the Nationalist Party and is thought of as a Nationalist (with a capital N) feast, that even though Malta was born as a state on 21 September 1964, il-hakma tal-barrani continued with British forces based here until 1979, so ‘Freedom Day’ is the real deal.

It is a variation on the same old theme of different groups of people wanting to get their own way, without actually stopping to ask themselves why it is so important to them that their will trumps the will of others. Leaving aside elections to Parliament, which really do have to be about people fighting so that what they say goes, the last time we saw bickering of this nature was with the choice of design for our euro coins. It became of paramount importance to have Christ on our coins to show the rest of Europe that we are Christian, or the temples, to attract tourism to the islands and to demonstrate that we are an ancient civilisation, when really we have no links at all with the people who built them because Maltese society is no more than 1,200 years old at a stretch (and what’s more, it was originally Muslim).

Otherwise eminently sensible people have suggested that we compromise on 8 September because that is the one day we can agree upon, seeing that it has not been tainted by the Labour Party or the Nationalist Party, neither of which was around in 1565 to fight off those damned Musulmani or to take sides for and against the Turks. But the result of a compromise is that no one is ever truly happy with it. Choosing Otto Settembre because the general feeling towards it is apathetic and it arouses no strong emotions either way is nothing short of a cop-out.

Come on, be honest. Exactly how excited do you get about Victory Day? Attempts have been made to make it more relevant to our lives by claiming that it also marks victory over the Nazis, when we all know that it doesn’t, because Victory in Europe Day is celebrated on 8 May and not 8 September. Yes, it’s hard to feel all stirred up about Independence Day or Freedom Day, but at least they mean something significant in the present, even if thousands – myself included – think it was nothing short of sick humour to name 31 March 1979 ‘freedom day’ because the last Royal Navy ship departed (when the lease ran out, and not because the government said so), given that the Maltese were anything but free in the closest thing you could have to an Iron Curtain country without actually being behind the Iron Curtain. But then the name was symptomatic of that very Iron Curtain way of thinking.

As for Victory Day, I don’t imagine there are many people who wake up on 8 September and say “Thank God and Our Lady that the Torok lost that battle in 1565 because otherwise I would be a Muslim today.” If anything, that is the strongest and most valid argument against choosing Victory Day as Malta’s national day. What it says, effectively, is “thank God we were not taken over by Islam”. It is an unpleasant and most unwise declaration in the more enlightened world we inhabit today, and a pointless one too. If Malta had been taken over by Islam in 1565, the people who lived here would not have clung tenaciously to their “Christian” identity, as did the Greeks and the majority of Bulgarians. There were too few of them, and they were too accustomed to surviving as best they could. They would have adapted to exigencies, rewriting their past and ending up more Muslim than Mohammed (at least, on paper). That is how Malta became a Christian society, one which has rejected entirely and refuses to remember its Muslim past. I rather suspect that the situation would have repeated itself in reverse.

Unfortunately, the waters of this particular discussion are being muddied by the Leader of the Opposition, with his childish and ill-bred refusal to respect protocol and good manners (but in a country where hamallagni rules, this sort of behaviour is bound to attract admiration). He turned up an hour late to the Independence Day commemoration, though fortunately he wasn’t wearing his much-touted ‘Father of Twins’ T-shirt to remind us all of his pressures on the home front.

Last year, he did the opposite, and butted his way in ahead of everyone else, laying his wreath before the President did. Or to quote last Tuesday’s edition of The Times: “Last year, Dr Muscat had disrupted the flow of the ceremony when he laid a wreath at the foot of the Independence monument before the President had done so. The flowers were then cleared so the President could place his wreath first. Yesterday, the Labour leader said these protocols, which had been laid down many years ago, no longer carried the same meaning and should also be the subject of national debate. Not to repeat last year’s mistake, he arrived around 20 minutes after the official ceremony had finished and President George Abela and Dr Gonzi, accompanied by their wives, had laid wreaths at the monument.”

Like everything else Muscat does, this was nothing more than a carefully engineered stunt. First he spoke about the need for unity in celebrating national days, and then he ensured that the television cameras (news crews had been briefed) would pick up footage of him climbing the steps alone, after the red carpet had been stripped away and all the guests had gone. The message was: “I want to play with them, I am willing to reach out, but they don’t want to play with me. I am the nice guy, but they are the baddies from the cobwebby past.”

He also used the opportunity to show how young and fit he is compared to the old prime minister of the past by putting all those gym work-outs to good advantage and sprinting up the steps when the venue and occasion called for a dignified pace. Perhaps he imagines that presidents and prime ministers the world over walk at a stately pace when laying wreaths because they have left their walking aids at home, and not because the occasion calls for solemnity rather than demonstrations of sprightliness.

Joe Grima, who hasn’t worn himself out yet swinging from side to side, though I notice that he isn’t the only one given the fact that it is human nature to fling oneself aboard the most modish bandwagon of the moment, even at the risk of losing one’s credibility, has posted this comment beneath the relevant online news story. “This call from Opposition leader Joseph Muscat,” Grima wrote, “shows the man’s maturity and dedication to national unity. Yesterday’s ceremony was an utter disgrace for a government that has used the solidarity card as its political platform over and over again, but falls flat on its face when expected to put its money where its mouth is. To see the President and the Prime Minister placing their wreaths, surrounded by all the trappings of power, red carpet, armed forces, cheering crowds and then to witness the arrival of the Leader of the Opposition climbing the unusually high steps on his own, alone, as if he represented no one but himself in this country, was a disgrace, a humiliating experience for all Maltese and a demonstration of naked power enveloping a Roi Soleil prime minister. Not only was the red carpet removed for Joseph Muscat and everyone simply deserted the area but also the stools that would have helped him reach the monument more comfortably were taken away. Joseph sprinted up the high steps and reached the monument in a second. My own feeling is that protocol aside, this whole achievement was well and accurately planned to develop the way it did. Shame!”

Yes, indeed – it was planned to ‘develop the way it did’, though not by the Prime Minister and the President, who were following established (not Maltese) protocol, but by the Leader of the Opposition. I rather suspect that both he and Joe Grima fully understand that the President represents the state, the Prime Minister represents the executive (the government) but the leader of the Opposition represents nothing and no one at state level. The representative of Parliament is the Speaker of the House. Once a leader of a political party becomes prime minister, he ceases to represent only those who voted for him, or his party, and becomes the representative of the state.

If Joseph Muscat doesn’t understand this, then he is ignorant. If he does understand it, as I suspect he does, then he is manipulating the ignorance of others to his own ends, and in this he is no different to his predecessor, who regarded the electorate as little more than ‘useful idiots’ and stepping-stones in the service of his ego.

www.daphnecaruanagalizia.com