Monument to Malta’s republican independence
A wry smile stretches across my face when I read uninformed harangues such as those penned by Charles Gauci (April 6) wherein he cynically proposes the statue of Napoleon replacing Queen Victoria’s in Valletta. His colonial mentality – that is believing that foreigners should adorn our public spaces – reveals the inferiority as inculcated in certain Maltese minds during the past two centuries.
Like most papers, including Times of Malta, he must have missed the new president’s recent assessment of the British colonisation of Malta. Quoted in this free translation, Her Excellency held that “there was always a section of our people who retained heart pangs after the British power’s protection sought by the Maltese in 1800, transmuted into a colonial rule intent to serve the interests of the rulers.” The 34 colonial monuments in Valletta, including propaganda ones such as several royal large insignias and Queen Victoria in one square kilometre around the President’s Palace, manifest this poignant statement.
The scene on St George’s Square on April 4 when the new president took oath of office. The symbolically national ceremonies on the square were taking place under the aegis of the British royal insignia on the Main Guard. PHOTO: DOIAllow me to correct a point arising from insufficient research by your correspondent: General Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798 brought over the French Revolution’s 1794 pioneer abolishment of slavery, when on June 15 he succeeded to liberate scores of Maltese captives from Tunis, Tripoli and Algiers while locally freeing more than 2,000 Turkish and North African slaves.
This unfortunately could have worked against his troops in Mdina when in September of the same year, the peasants’ revolt, led by a Maltese canon of the Cathedral and the rector of St Joseph’s fraternity, massacred 60 Christian French soldiers, sliced open their bellies, cooking and eating their livers in public as a sign of domination.
In 2021 I corrected the same correspondent’s misinformation in this paper with this data: In 1802, Consul Bonaparte decided to re-establish slavery in certain Caribbean islands to restore public order.
These new orders affected St Domingue (Haiti), Guadeloupe and French Guyana. Haitians defended their island and became independent in 1804.
In lieu of Victoria in the public space of Republic Square in Valletta, I strongly recommend a monument to Malta’s long path to freedom and republican independence.
Compared to the scanty association of Victoria to Malta, ironically enough Bonaparte’s short stay in Malta, saw him enacting 160 civil orders dispensing ‘democratic’ reforms in education, health, administration (including the first local municipalities) and justice.
Some years ago, a monument to the Republic in another Valletta location was commissioned to Austin Camilleri, after a public contest, but bizarrely, it never materialised.
Charles Xuereb – Sliema