The first meeting of the Malta National Assembly took place in 1919. On the 25 th  of February, representatives from across Maltese public life gathered in Valletta for the first sitting of the Assemblea Nazzjonali. This was a turning-point moment in Malta’s push for self-government. It wasn’t a parliament, and it wasn’t elected by universal suffrage (the right of everyone to vote). But it mattered because it turned a growing, angry, post-war mood into an organised national d