The Prime Minister's 'crystal-clear' declaration that Malta needs another two golf courses is a disappointing statement which flatly contradicts his earlier commitment to place the environment at the top of his government's agenda.
He claims that the advantages of having these golf courses outweigh the disadvantages, while in the same breath he carefully avoids mentioning any particular location as the appropriate site for one of these golf courses.
Yet the advantages and disadvantages can only be realistically assessed with reference to a specific proposal to construct a golf course in a named location. Otherwise he would be saying that it is okay to level Valletta to construct a golf course on Mount Sceberras!
By phrasing his opinion in this abstract and oracular manner, he bypasses any meaningful assessment of the real costs and benefits of actual proposals, puts immense political pressure on the hapless experts at MEPA who are somehow still expected to express objective and unbiased opinions on the merits of particular proposals and he also echoes Angelo Xuereb, who responded to an earlier article of mine objecting to his golf course proposal at Rabat by informing us that "the question is not whether we should build another golf course or courses, but where" (The Sunday Times, June 6).
In this context, it is important to observe that at no point did the University Chaplaincy Media Team take a stand against the construction of another golf course (or courses) in Malta. On the contrary, our stand has consistently been that the Rabat golf course proposed by Mr Xuereb should be rejected because it is a socially unjust project which contravenes the Church-State agreement.
Thus our stand has parallelled that of the Church's Environmental Commission, which recently issued a carefully studied report assessing the EIA prepared by the Rabat golf course developers and concluding that this proposal should be rejected on technical and environmental grounds. The Commission also made it very clear that its recommendations refer exclusively to the proposed golf course at Rabat.
None of the arguments recently supplied by Mr Xuereb (June 6) have persuaded us to change our mind. He devoted only three brief paragraphs of his reply to rebutting our interpretation of the Church-State agreement, which was my principal concern (The Sunday Times, May 23).
In these he claimed: (1) that our interpretation of the Church-State agreement was selective as other sections of the agreement permitted the proposed transfer of property, and (2) that this agreement would not be contravened were the Government to take the agricultural land from the farmers and give it to the developer, as hundreds of such transfers of former Church property had occurred in the past.
Neither of these arguments is correct. Section 2 (1) of the agreement, on which I focused in my article, is the principal section which regulates the manner in which the Government should use the property transferred to it by the Church. It should therefore be the major point of reference in these matters.
And if former Church property has been transferred for commercial or industrial uses in the past, this does not mean that the agreement permits the taking of a large area of prime agricultural land from farming families, destroying their livelihood, to give to a private developer to construct a socially dubious and environmentally hazardous golf course on it.
Since the rest of Mr Xuereb's response omitted any reference to the Church-State agreement, it is mostly out of point and I shall therefore restrict myself to pointing out various inconsistencies and non sequiturs.
Thus he observed that although various water sources are mentioned in his EIA, this "definitely does not mean that we shall be making use of all these sources of water". While this sounds reassuring, it does not really refute my central point that much of the water he would use would be diverted from the public water supply and that this would inevitably restrict the supply of water available to farmers and other consumers. This would actively frustrate the "promotion of the development of agriculture and of public utilities" envisaged in the agreement.
He went on to state that a third of the land covered by the proposal would continue to be worked by the farmers, as if this rendered more palatable the eviction of the farmers from the remaining two-thirds. Clearly, the conversion of two-thirds of this agricultural land into the golfing fairways and buffer zones cannot be considered to promote the development of agriculture.
Significantly Mr Xuereb was silent in response to my objection that the introduction of a new, highly invasive species of grass cannot be squared with the "promotion of the safeguarding of the environment" required by the agreement. However he tried to downplay other environmental impacts of his project, partly by alleging that there will not be any very noticeable aesthetic impact on the landscape and partly by observing that golf courses are, after all, made up of the same materials as agricultural land: "soil, vegetation and water". This is a bit like saying that diamonds and petrol are the same because they are both composed of carbon! Such specious arguments divert our attention away from the environmental damage that could result from such causes as the contamination of the water-courses.
The possible effects on the farmers are also downplayed. We are told that only a few of them are full-time farmers. None of these make their living exclusively from the land which would be transferred and they would in any case be financially compensated.
This is a myopic vision of farming, which ignores the fact that most Maltese farmers are currently part-timers, due to the fragmentation of landholdings caused by large families and our inheritance laws, as well as the tremendous reduction in arable land since the war. If only full-time farmers were to be deemed worthy of protection, then this would sound the final death-knell of the Maltese countryside.
Our agricultural know-how is largely transmitted through part-time farmers and many of these have managed to retain a sense of identity and knowledge of the rural domain which constitutes a precious national heritage. Money cannot adequately compensate them, or us, for the destruction of this heritage. Evicting these farmers would definitely not promote agriculture!
Mr Xuereb dedicates the final part of his article to explaining why he believes that a golf course would be in our national interest. As I have earlier observed, these arguments are beside the point as the stand taken by the University Chaplaincy Team concerned only the Church-State agreement and his golf course proposal in Rabat. Together with the Malta Jesuit Province, we remain convinced that this Rabat golf course proposal is unfair to the farmers and contravenes the letter and the spirit of the Church-State agreement.
We call upon the Maltese Church to endorse the excellent report on the matter recently produced by the Environmental Commission of the Diocesan Pastoral Council and we strongly urge the government authorities to take a decision firmly rejecting this proposal.