Pride Month? What Pride Month!? – Muscat’s Egrant legacy lives on

Every now and then people wonder why Pride Month in Malta is celebrated in September and not – in line with most of the other countries – from June to early July.

The answer to their question is rather simple.

In 2017, then prime minister Joseph Muscat called for a snap election in June to “let the people decide” whether they believe allegations that his wife Michelle owned a secret Panama company called ‘Egrant’ are true.

It had been Daphne Caruana Galizia who revealed in April 2017 that shares in Egrant Inc were held by Mossack Fonseca nominees for a “Mrs Michelle Muscat”.

However, the journalist later pointed out that an early election had already been planned anyway.

At that time, Allied Rainbow Communities (ARC), the NGO organising all official Malta Pride events, took the prudent decision to postpone all activities to September.

It is an open secret within the community that the prime reason for abandoning June as Pride Month in 2017 was the threat of a heated election campaign amid the fallout of the Panama Papers revelations.

Another reason for moving the celebrations to September was the organisers’ hope for “milder temperatures”, which often turned out to be not much different from June.

But ARC never brought back its Malta Pride in line with the international commemorations of the Stonewall Riots in New York City 1969 – the original reason why Pride Month is usually celebrated in June.

Instead, the organisation stuck to its September schedule, and rumour has it that the government and its tourism authority prefer it that way in an otherwise quiet month for LGBTIQ event travelling across Europe.

This focus on ‘official’ events in September has, over the years, led to the International LGBT Pride Day on 28 June being completely neglected in Malta.

Meanwhile, increasing political influence culminated in the takeover of Malta’s organisation of EuroPride in September 2023 by the interests of the Labour government.

For June 2024, Allied Rainbow Communities has not announced a single event that even remotely recognises the International LGBT Pride Day.

While the timing of Malta’s (and some other countries’) pride parades and their side events in fact doesn’t really matter – as long as there’s booze and danceable beats – we should at least acknowledge the existence of 28 June.

NEWZ.mt is recognising Pride Month as much as it will be recognising Malta’s Pride Week in September.

Happy Pride!

Cover Image: Department of Information