A warped sense of fun

Antoine Vella (September 22) chooses to contradict my version of events describing the Mepa board meeting that threw out the Verdala golf course application with a 12-0 verdict. His deep disappointment at this result may have coloured his memory of events.

He has been consistent for many years in opposing the objectors. As president of Birdlife he produced the anomaly of an environmental NGO which was not only exceptional in opting out of the Front Kontra l-Golf Course but also in issuing statements in favour of the development. This being all Mr Vella's personal merit, it has caused no lasting friction between Birdlife and other environmental NGOs, particularly since his fading from view.

His defence of avifauna was not very evident at a dinner meeting for environment NGOs and EU Environment Commissioner Margot Walstrom. In my view he compromised Birdlife's position as a non-partisan NGO and came close to creating a major incident during the delicate EU negotiations on the hunting issue. I thought I noticed Mrs Walstrom wincing.

His performance at the Mepa board meeting in question was equally exciting. As a lecturer at the Agricultural College it was stunning to his audience to hear him state that there is no difference between the economic exploitation of agricultural land by farmers and by golf developers. It earned him the rebuke of none other than the representative of the Church Commission on the Environment who dedicated some of the three minutes' speaking time allowed to him to express his amazement at Mr Vella's declaration. It appears that this Agricultural College lecturer is unaware that Mepa itself makes the necessary distinctions and maintains a policy on golfing development safeguarding land of agricultural value from such exploitation. While farmers are now being exhorted to abide by a Code of Best Agricultural Practice no such code appears to bind their teachers.

In a previous public hearing on the Verdala golf course, Mr Vella also held the same outrageous views and delighted in the catcalls he produced. He probably thought it was "fun" also on that occasion. My understanding is that Mr Vella's sense of fun was disappointed at the recent Mepa hearing because his opponents' restraint was greater than his provocation.

He is welcome to deride his adversaries as "rowdy schoolboys". He may enjoy it as his consolation prize. He must be contradicted in his depiction of the Mepa proceedings as anything but orderly and with minimal interruptions. It was an occasion for laconic final verbal submissions in a five-year process producing hundreds of pages of submissions and analysis. To insist that the Verdala proposal was not given a fair hearing is a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts. It was heard for five years too many and received the verdict it deserved on day one.

How on earth anyone could have the audacity to propose to develop 600 tumoli of agricultural land he does not own before he has reached any arrangement with the tens of farmers that must necessarily be evicted and with the government that owns it continues to baffle me. How any developer can assume that any parcel of government land can be assigned to him before any tender process for its transfer has been initiated remains a deep mystery. How anybody at all can hope to overcome the hurdle of an international treaty prohibiting the transfer of the land in question for the declared purpose is beyond comprehension. How anyone could think of applying for development permit directly against Mepa stated policy on golf courses on prime agricultural land continues to baffle me. How any such developer could be given the time of day is a mystery.

That he should be invited to submit an EIA on such a project and take up five years of opposition efforts for 26 NGOs is an even deeper mystery That the proposal was unanimously rejected was probably inevitable. That he would find "allies" is no mystery at all.