Safeguarding independence – Evarist Bartolo

Next year, we will be celebrating 60 years since we became an independent sovereign state, 50 years since we became a republic with our own head of state for the first time and 45 years since we closed down foreign military, naval and air bases in Malta, committing ourselves to refrain from joining military alliances and not letting our country be used to attack others.

All these historical achievements have been indispensable to make us a viable state and, since independence, to gradually become a highly developed country according to the United Nations Human Development Index. We are ranked among the top countries in the world because our people live a long and healthy life, are educated and have a decent standard of living.

We have been able to develop our country since we started making our own decisions. When we were a colony for centuries and our foreign rulers used Malta only in their own interests, most of our people suffered hardship and a low standard of living.

Today, we can lose control of our destiny without being invaded militarily by any of those powers that still consider us to be in their sphere of influence and expect us to obey their orders, even if they go...