Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/326223
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 8 JUNE 2014 Opinion 16 H alfway through 2014, a commemorative year recalling several historical and political milestones of this nation state, little debate about national memory and identity has been forthcoming. There are valid reasons for this, the foremost one being the recent elections which seem to have drained the public's social engagement limit on issues concerning party duels, European aspirations and the political future of the island. That settled, 2015, with local elections looming in less than a year, will unfortunately consume any battery charge we may manage to accomplish before any other agenda is proposed. On a small island, thankfully spared from natural disasters and extraordinary societal upheavals, little else happens if not somehow attached to politics and tourism. Hence the popular support for elections and touristic engagement. At this time of year, most of Malta's national feasts are still to come. In March, special activities marked 35 years of Freedom Day with adequate celebration. A programme of organised activities is planned for Victory, Independence and Republic days, which fall between the end of summer and Christmas. The fifth national day, Sette Giugno, this year in its 95th year, is fading from public space with a routine commemoration secluded in a periphery garden after the monument lost its premier status from St George's Square in Valletta. Now our major historically significant square, embodying all national decisions taken in the magnificent palace that has been dominating it since the 16th century, is left vacant, bar artificial jets of water, to accommodate Carnival, markets and fairs of all sorts, fashion shows and legislators' decisions taken in parliament. Come September, when the national assembly sits in Piano's project, it will only be at the President's discretion to allow future victorious political leaders to use the impressive balcony. Once Parliament moves to the futuristic bravura the square, mostly the domain of tourists and the president's guards, will revert to 1814 complete with the colonizer's blazon and a declaration to confirm it. Malta's membership in the EU, ten years forward, is less acknowledged publicly than Europe's blessing to concede Malta to Britain two centuries ago. Vis-à-vis Malta's national identity, all this would appear less bizarre had the second most important square in our capital, appropriately called Republic Square, was not also dominated by the imperial colonial symbol of the 19th century. Charles Xuereb A 'sorry' identity? Malta's first parliament in 1921 opted for 8 September as the Island's 'public holiday'. These commemorative plaques still declare the legislators' intentions on Great Siege Road, outside the bastions of Valletta Our language, another feat of survival on its own steam, manifests some of our lost sites of memory PHOTOGRAPHY BY RAY ATTARD