Independence Day 2018

While in 1994, the French historian Alain Blondy wrote that “nothing is more alien to the Maltese than the idea of State” (‘ Rien n’est plus étranger aux Maltais que l’idée de l’Etat’), in 2002 Professor Godfrey Baldacchino argued that Malta is a “nationless state”. Dr Carmel Vassallo replied, in 2003, that Malta might be a “nation ... whose state and economy have lost their viability and are living on borrowed time, a nation which risks becoming stateless”.

Many years have since passed, and, on the eve of Independence Day 2018, one wonders whether the points raised then are still valid today.

Nation

The idea of ‘nation’ is probably an invention of the 19th century, when even ‘traditions’ and ‘customs’ were invented to propagate the idea that the roots of nations run deep into the blood of the people and the soil of the territory. Why do I say “invention”? Just consider that, in late-18th century France for instance, not all the French spoke French and that the entire country was bespeckled with a huge number of systems and jurisdictions of customary law. Something had to be done to create a ‘national’ unity which went beyond mere political and administrative unity. Language and law proved to be useful tools, alongside myths and lore.

But Malta is a country robbed of her fair share of the 19th century. While European states were busy creating their national myths to give birth to the ‘nation’, we did not even have our own state and, despite the valiant efforts of our Romantic poets (which lingered on up to the 1960s), nobody created a real 19th-century-style nation for us.

And this probably made sense. The nations of the 19th century were the creations of economically viable states. These were economically liberal states that drew nourishment from their empires and colonies (as Domenico Losurdo argues in his Liberalism: A Counter-History, 2014). Malta’s economic viability was always a big question mark. If you read our history in this key, almost all of the decisions taken by the archipelago’s rulers were answers to the perennial question: can ‘Malta’ survive?

A nation that cannot survive ceases to be an independent nation and is engulfed by a bigger nation. One reason why Scotland entered the union with England was that Scotland’s Central American colonial experiment failed. One reason the Catalan ‘nation’ wants to leave Spain is that it produces more or less 20 per cent of Spain’s wealth, and can thus stand on its own two feet. A raw version of this struggle for survival is what drives the present administration, which has understood that the notion of ‘State’ is alien to the Maltese, and sold citizenship to ‘needy’ foreigners. It has decided that the environment is a lemon to be squeezed until the last drop, and unleashed what looks like unbridled development in order to provide housing for an ever-increasing influx of foreign workers meant to ensure economic survival. Deep down, this administration either does not believe that the EU can be the life vest that keeps Malta afloat or else does not want that to happen.

Whichever is the right interpretation, this is the vision that, on the eve of another Independence Day celebration, the Opposition needs to dissect, analyse, and – if it finds it to be inherently wrong – oppose and offer alternatives to.

Statehood

London’s Parliament Square has a number of statues of Britain’s important Prime Ministers of the 19th century and Winston Churchill. (And Gandhi, too.) We Maltese have the Mall in Floriana, with its beautiful garden and busts of our politicians of the early 20th century.

But the building of our House of Representatives is anonymous’. It could easily be taken for the headquarters of a multinational bank or of the secret services. There is no doubt that it is endowed with aesthetic qualities, and it could not be otherwise considering that its author – in this sense it is not anonymous – was compared to the ‘masters of his native land, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo’ in the motivation to the Pritzker Prize in 1998.

But it could be that Renzo Piano’s brief did not include ‘nationalist’ instructions, since – for reasons which are not altogether clear to me – the idea has been that the Prime Ministers should be remembered by erecting their monuments next to the OPM. Or else, perhaps Piano himself wanted to keep to the spirit of the times rather than the special needs of the Maltese, and thus omitted all references to the statesmen who created the Maltese State because we live in post-Nation-State times.

Whatever the reason is, the seat of the legislative organ of our State is almost faceless, if not even soulless. It fails to evoke any sense of State. Or perhaps it is crudely and tactlessly sincere. Perhaps there is no state to evoke.

Nation, state, society

Or perhaps the times really have changed and now we need to talk only of society. Perhaps the Nation, the State, and the Nation-State have sunk in the quicksand of time. The present administration – seemingly oblivious to the damage wrought to the already fragile Maltese State – wants to radically change Maltese society. It dons the social-democrat cassock, preaches cosmopolitanism and practises neoliberalism. And yet, many of its followers are not on the same page, being “ideologically” dazed and confused although visibly happy that their voting box heroes are in power. However, since the administration’s aim is to import thousands of foreigners, ultimately all neoliberal plans will be indirectly brought to fruition.

The importation of foreign quasi-slaves will transform the makeup of Malta’s population. Foreign workers will not adopt “Maltese culture” but will shift Maltese society to what is deemed mainstream European culture. The influx of workers rendered stateless, nationless or displaced by their need to migrate in order to find work, will push Maltese society to provide services that these workers demand as a matter of course. Unmarried migrant men will either find short-term mates among the locals or will resort to prostitutes, and these will have to work fulltime and within the parameters of the law if they want to satisfy the demand. Unmarried migrant women will need abortion-on-demand, particularly if they do not plan to stay in Malta for the rest of their lives. That there will be a demand for these services is not only obvious from the nature of things, it is also obvious from the fact that talk of legalised prostitution and abortion has been in the air for quite some time.

If these migrants eventually take up Maltese nationality, they will acquire the right to vote, and their vote will necessarily be according to their values, which will probably be at variance with our own ‘traditional’ values.

There are two big problems which need serious addressing:

Should we resist embracing ‘mainstream European values’, like legalised prostitution and abortion-on-demand, and if so, why?

How do you present a ‘traditionalist’ political discourse without committing the worst sin contemplated by the Neoliberal religion, namely political incorrectness? These are the questions the Opposition needs to answer, clearly and coherently, on the eve of Independence Day 2018.