It’s amazing what 70 years can do to a country, let alone a person.
I remember the 1953 coronation of the Queen. I was a small boy then, attending the primary school. I remember my father taking me to Valletta which was all decorated for the Coronation.
Malta then surpassed itself just a few years later when the Queen visited Malta as part of the World Tour. We Hamrun kids lined up the Santa Venera High Street and waved flags and were given a golden coloured medal for our pains.
Looking at those times today some things are plain incomprehensible. It wasn’t just the decorations in Valletta and the shops but also the national spirit. It wasn’t that Malta was not invited to the ceremony: it was, but the problem was with which group Malta was going to be lumped. George Borg Olivier refused to be grouped with the colonies and a national angst was generated including a bipartisan motion in Parliament and questions in the House of Commons.
Seventy years later, there is simply nothing similar. Not just in Malta but even in the UK where the decorations are mainly perfunctory.
The times have changed for all of us. Malta today is a sovereign state, a member of the United Nations (and recently chaired the Security Council), a member of the European Union and the Euro area.
In that same timespan Britain too joined the EU then got bored of it and left. Today it is poorer but happy to be on its own to enjoy the traditions such as were on show at the Coronation.
With regards to us, the Coronation and all it signifies relates solely to another country, a friendly country, but a former colonial overlord. With the UK we fought World War II but we were not all that happy in all those years of British rule. When the President left for the ceremony it was as if he had left on one of his visits to Maltese patients in the British hospitals. Nothing more.
It’s only the British who have all these traditions as were put on display during the Coronation with the quaint robes, strange honorific titles and the like. There are other kings in Europe but none have coronations.
Having said all this I have no doubt many will have watched the ceremony. We Maltese still love a parade and those my age still remember the troops rehearsing the Trooping of the Colour at the Floriana parade ground (Ix-Xaghra) before it saw its greatest hour when Malta became independent (and was later relegated and split up to a huge parking lot and a football ground).
The new king is no stranger to Malta, from his childhood when we remember him playing in the sea with his sister. I remember him visiting what was then called The Royal University of Malta when some joker plunged the hall in darkness and the prince was photographed fingering a naked statue of a goddess at the national museum.
But we Maltese today have other worries that trouble us. And that’s not just the money problems I described last week but also the arraignment of a group of Syrians on terrorism-related charges. Most of these were based in Hamrun, my hometown.
Readers know how many times I expressed worry about how this locality is changing for the worst with enforcement being a big joke. What’s more worrying is that the information that led to the arraignment seems to have come from a foreign security agency and not from our own.
Add to these the worries about corruption in high places, government offices staffed by people chosen for partisan loyalty rather than for competence and a culture of impunity about anyone remotely linked to the governing party and you readily see why so many people do not see any reason to join in the Coronation glee.
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