The business of the rewriting of history is growing and growing.
We have recently seen the celebration, if that is the word, of the 450th anniversary of the Great Siege of Malta watered down so as to appear almost a mistake.
The Maltese consul in Ankara, no less, has appeared on TVM’s L-Assedju to say there were good people on one side and on the other, and bad people on one side and on the other.
We have seen the commemoration become a coming together of disparate religions and civilisations, as if we were afraid of facing history and its lessons. Or as if we were afraid of waking up the lion of a clash of civilization.
So too we have had our Independence Day and we cannot say we seem to have learnt the lessons of these 51 years of being an independent state.
On the one hand, Independence Day does not seem to mean anything to the government which contented itself with going through the ritualistic motions that occur every year.
On the other hand, the Nationalist Party keeps harping it was the party under which administration Britain gave Independence to Malta and saddles each anniversary with the party’s take against Labour without opening up to the far wider vistas that history should offer.
Independence means to be free as a sovereign state, to be recognized as such.
It is not a question of having the paraphernalia of a State, of having our own President, our own Parliament, our own seat on the UN and at Brussels. Not even of having our language and our own history and identity as a nation.
Being independent means having the means to defend our independence at a time when there are so many threats around us.
Being independent means feeling secure. And let’s face it, no one of us is feeling secure these days.
We do not know who is coming in and going out of our country. We hear of huge amounts of people who for one reason or another have come to live here, some due to the freedom enjoyed by the EU Mobility of Persons principle, some through coming here as boat people, and consequently being forced to stay here by the Dublin regulations, and some because they have apparently obtained residence permits or even citizenship.
In none of these processes is there a public overview in that an independent or representative body supervises the entire process and ensures transparency.
It is also quite clear that there are quite a few who should not be here or who have been sent off but who somehow still stay here.
Being independent also means having the proper State security forces, whether police or army. We cannot say the Maltese citizen is happy with the security situation in our country. Time and again, when there were serious threats, these same security forces have not been able to do their job.
Many times, they claim they are too few and/or underequipped. There have been multiple issues in this regard, not the least with the many competing claims regarding superiority and promotions. But that is not all. There seems to be a huge deficit when it comes to the proper management of resources, the abysmal lack of training, and the penchant for gongs and promotions as opposed to doing what is required of them in the best manner.
We have seen huge promotions exercises which have made us the laughing-stock of similar forces in Europe and elsewhere which maybe papered over our general lack of preparedness whenever there is need to be prepared.
Only when we at least begin to address these security issues (and many more like them) can we say we are respecting our country’s independence.