Schizoid nation

Still need convincing that the Republic of Malta suffers from a rare form of schizophrenia that operates on an exclusively national level? If so, the views of its President on the subject of 'national days' should suffice: starting with the fact that Dr George Abela now favours having two such days, instead of the traditional (ahem) five.

An improvement? Oh, definitely. Two dates are infinitely easier to remember than five (especially for those who habitually only date one potential partner at a time). And besides: with Independence and the Republic, you can't really go wrong, can you? You certainly don't have to perform all sorts of mental acrobatics to try and conjure up some unlikely connection with the actual the history/identity of our nation... like we have to do each year on the occasion of, say, Sette Giugno (which can be summed up as: "Small, angry crowd goes ape-shit and causes some minor damage in Valletta and Marsa"), or even more so, Freedom Day ("Lease finally expires on dockyard facilities, and... Gee, what do you know? The tenants move out...")

And besides, the President is right on another level also. Malta should have two national days because - let's face it - Malta is really and truly two nations, and not one at all. And while he may not have expressed that view in as many words, it was undeniably the substance of what he actually said on the occasion of Republic Day... one of "the five" that will very shortly be condensed to two, if the President gets his way in the end.

Of course, Republic Day (December 13) will be one of the lucky survivors of this national holiday pogrom. The other survivor will obviously be Independence.

And please note that if I say 'of course' and 'obviously'... it is not necessarily for any reason that becomes self-evident in the context of an argument on the nature of 'national days'. No, they are 'obvious' for the simple reason that, like every thing else in this country - political TV stations, for instance; or even our contestants for the Eurovision schlong contest each year - the two are supposed to balance each other out. One is a Nationalist achievement, the other a Labour milestone. And primitive though it sounds, this was from the outset the only guiding principle that led our President to so cavalierly jettison the remaining three 'national days'... including the only one of the entire ensemble that actually deserves that title to begin with (after all, it only enjoyed the internationally recognized status of 'Malta Day' for 500 measly years...)

Nothing obvious about this one, I'm afraid. I refer to September 8 - or Il-Vitorja, as it is generally known locally - but... who cares, really? It only commemorates the victory of the Knights over the Turks in 1565. Nothing to do with us at all.

Yes, I know the battle took place here, that it is still known as the Siege of Malta (the 'Great' Siege of Malta, if you happen to also be Maltese - though of course if you happen to be a Turk it didn't happen at all). But this is irrelevant, because neither the Nationalist nor the Labour Party even existed at the time... still less had any active part to play in proceedings.

So to apply Dr Abela's logic: if neither PN nor PL can in any way be credited through the commemoration of a national event... why commemorate that event at all?

And oh look: 500 years later, the two parties now take turns to belittle and pooh-pooh the events of 1565, in order to aggrandise their own little political achievements so many centuries later: such as... oh, I don't know: turning Malta into a 'centre of excellence':  which must be another way of describing a giant betting shop, where you can not only gamble away all your life savings, but (if you're really lucky) you might win yourself a free slut from Eastern European to take home...

Worse still, they now pretend the Great Siege had nothing to do with Malta at all... that despite the overwhelming subliminal influence it still exerts on so many aspects of our daily life- for instance, the fact we still say 'Haqq ghat-Torok' whenever we stub our toe on a sharp rock, or when that free slut we won from the 'centre of excellence' suddenly starts talking (in Romanian, as a rule) about 'the patter of little Eastern European feet' - no, none of that is in any way important, or has had anything to do with establishing the national culture that we still call our own to this day.

And why not, I hear you all ask? Well, for the selfsame reason Dr Abela made so abundantly inescapable in his arbitrary choice of Malta's two 'national days'. What's important in this decision is not that we end up with a national commemoration that really does unite us for a change - and let's face it: there is precious little else that can lay claim to that role.

No, what's important is that the egos of our two grubby little political parties - you know, the ones that already control every available power node, and yet are always greedy for MORE - continue to be massaged by the population at large, as though the country somehow relies exclusively on these two recent additions for its own sense of national identity. And this, by the way, is the only dynamic that has ever interested the country's so-called official authorities... which is hardly surprising, seeing as the same authorities are themselves products of the same two parties that have infected literally everyone and ebverything with their greed and megalomania.

There is, however, a small snag. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given their internecine natures... there is simply nothing in our recent history that can be appropriated and devoured by both these gluttons simultaneously. For whatever one achieves, the other will defecate upon, and vice versa. This is in fact the reason we ended up with five (5) national days in the first place: because settling for only one 'national day' will invariably piss off either one, the other, or possibly even both of the country's two polar extremes.

Abela's solution? Simple. We should all just give up on even trying to find anything that unites us. Instead, we should willingly embrace that which divides us, and make a public declaration to the effect that: yes, we are such a hopelessly divided lot, that we couldn't even agree among ourselves on one national day.

And if (as unfortunately looks likely) the President is successful, and his proposal is indeed taken up... why, in one fell swoop we would have casually thrown away everything that might otherwise have united us, at least for one day of the year.... And instead glorify only those ugly aspects of our culture that entrench us into an eternal "Us versus Them" mentality that blows nobody any good.

That, I fear, is the sum total of the President's actual advice. Nationalists celebrate their own little 'national day' on 21 September... Labour celebrate their version on December 13: and never the twain shall meet.

Where does that leave the rest of us, I wonder? The ones who don't really give a toss about Labour, PN and all that? In the same place as the Great Siege, I would imagine. In the dustbin of Maltese history...