Malta as a country rose to the challenge admirably last February when it saw to the successful evacuation of thousands of expatriates from Libya when the violence had first erupted. And it is about to do so again as it prepares to serve as a major base for the transport of humanitarian aid to Libya.

And now that the conflict appears to be nearing its very bloody endgame, it is in this final stretch of the Libyan people’s quest for freedom, in their most desperate hour, that our help is needed most.

The Civil Protection Department is running a humanitarian supply drive at Shipwright Wharf in Marsa today. Basic foodstuffs, and in particular water, are desperately needed and we appeal to anyone who has anything whatsoever to give to do so and to do so today.

It is very doubtful when and if Malta will ever be called upon again to come to a neighbour’s assistance in such a way. These kinds of events do not usually occur in our backyard more than once in a lifetime. If we are to show our spirit of solidarity, it must be shown now. If we are to show our generosity and mettle as a nation, now is the time to do it.

The President, Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition today make an appeal to the population to give generously, and the Church has also communicated an appeal which is being repeated to congregations today.

Our appeal is simple: heed these appeals.

The Libyan people need supplies and they need them now. Not only have water supplies been cut off - after the supply system from Misurata to Tripoli was sabotaged, leaving up to four million people without water, but fuel and medical supplies are also desperately low, and people are dying just a few hundred kilometres to our south as a result. This is, quite literally, a matter of life and death and these are not appeals that anyone can morally afford to ignore.

Let us draw inspiration from the four Libyan and Maltese boys, as is also reported today, who collected funds from construction sites across Malta to purchase no less than 180,000 bottles of water, water which is now to be shipped to a parched Libya.

There are several relief efforts ongoing at the moment, some public and others private. And to denigrate the efforts of those who are getting these desperately-needed supplies into Libya is utterly deplorable.

Now whether these individuals are doing it for future personal gain or not is completely irrelevant at this point in time, although our distinct feeling on the particular case in question is that these criticisms are completely misplaced and are nothing short of shameful. The main point is that the supplies are getting there, they are making the difference between life and death, and between oppression and freedom. Now is no time for such pettiness.

Malta as a country is not responding to the Libyan people’s figurative hour of need for financial compensation nor for oil field concessions. It is doing so because it must. Because this is a modern, comparatively well-off country built on strong Christian foundations.

And to those who may share the view of a certain MP that feels Malta should hold back the Gaddafi assets it has frozen until such time that we see to the Maltese who ‘have lost everything’ in Libya or until we can be assured our drilling rights, our appeal is to find yourselves a common sense of decency and realism. On a geopolitical scale, it would be difficult to be any pettier or puerile than this when we are talking about the birth a new, and incidentally very rich, nation.

The government’s announcement that it will be requesting Parliament to strip Gaddafi of the honours that different administrations have bestowed upon the villain is laudable, but perhaps a bit too late. The country should not have waited until the dictator was all but hung, drawn and quartered before severing the final tie.

The message should have been crystal clear when two recipients handed their own honours back when they found they were to be included in the same club, and they were also quite rightly abhorred at the thought that the country having honoured a person capable of such villainy with its national honour.

At least it has been done, now that garden in Paola will have to be renamed from Gaddafi Gardens to a more appropriate name, perhaps something in symbolic commemoration of the Libyan revolution. We do not think we should have to wait for the expansion of the MCAST campus to have this blemish removed.

The Civil Protection Department is receiving donations of water, flour, baby food, tinned milk, sugar, non-pork tinned food, and basic sanitary supplies, all of which is being sent on to Libya.

Bottled water, however, is at the top of the list of essential supplies.

Yesterday’s turnout at Marsa was disappointingly poor, we hope for much better today. Get yourselves down to Shipwright Wharf in Marsa today and bring whatever you can. Nothing you can carry will go to waste in desperate Libya.