Ready

This piece has been on ice long enough. But for minor updates and changes, I punched in my last full stop shortly after Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi declared that we needed two additional golf courses, one in Malta and the other in Gozo.

The PM's publicly expressed hopes were met by howls of outraged indignation. A decision on the Verdala application was then in the offing and, as is the norm with anti-golf environmentalists, the debate was conveniently moved from the principle to discussing a project that Mepa had allowed to simmer for much too long. AD and a host of other anti-golf lobbyists threw up their hands in horror and pointed fingers at Dr Gonzi.

AD cried "foul" and accused the PM of trying to influence Mepa. But then Greens of all tinges, from pale pea to dark bile, never blinked an eyelid when the party's articulate opinion writers flooded the media and tried to influence public opinion, Mepa officials and board.

It was only later that a leading AD activist had the decency to admit that AD was wrong and that Dr Gonzi had acted correctly. Although some Mepa operatives have often displayed an innate hostility to the very mention of "golf", by my reckoning Mepa board members are immune and rise above such pressures.

One cannot but wonder at the double standards employed by the anti-golf lobby. Their latest ploy, a full-page advert taken out by the Front Kontra l-Golf Course (FKGC), of which Alternattiva is a leading member, targeted the Mepa board directly and urged members "to do your duty". Can pressure be less direct? To which duty, other than to throw out the application, did the FKGC refer?

One shudders to think what AD and its FKGC allies would do had the Mepa board considered it their duty to approve rather than reject.

If the reported intolerance and arrogance at the Mepa meeting is anything to go by, just imagine the shenanigans, the outraged protestations of pressure and accusations of graft that would have been deluged on board members and anybody who as much as expressed an opinion in favour of the project. I have always supported the principle but the only comment I make about the Verdala saga is not whether Mepa was right or wrong but that the authority's head should hang in shame for letting a decade pass before reaching a decision.

Despite their recent waffling, AD is anti-golf through and through. One can find a bucketful of articles, statements and assorted writings to prove it. Malta's Greens consider golf "an outrageously bad idea that has occupied far more energies than it deserves for too long" and promise to fight on until "the golf obsession ends and not a moment before".

I have no quarrel with whoever pins his colours to the mast. Everybody has a right to an opinion and, despite any disagreement I may have, is far and away ahead of others who have perfected prevarication into a fine art. On the golf course issue the stark truth is that whoever is guilty of allowing the four-letter word through the portals of his mind and promotes the idea that Malta would attract more visitors by offering additional opportunities to indulge in their favourite pastime will find the Green Party firmly rooted on the other side of the divide.

Prospective course developers and the pro-golf lobby can expect to find more than that. They have to be ready and prepared for anything, fair or foul. I cannot prove that the mud thrown at me for promoting the policy was all Green Party inspired. Neither can I point a finger at them for obscene phone calls, a tell-tale anonymous letter and more.

Nor for a scurrilous leader in The Malta Independent that blithely, without the smallest shred of evidence or indeed truth, said that as Minister of Tourism I was a paid lobbyist for a consortium that had applied for the construction of a golf course. To say nothing of the innuendo, the cheap jibes and the insults in contributions to the English language press. Writing styles and content often give the game away and were often too revealing to dismiss suspicions out of hand.

Although the canard was duly demolished, the style of antagonism demonstrates an intolerant arrogance and an attitude that nobody bar the writers can be trusted, is more whiter than white, knows what he is talking about, and that the rest are uneducated idiots, misguided fools and even corrupt.

They are also aided and abetted by journalists who from within the environs of newspaper houses pursue a personal agenda. Gone is the time when editors made sure that their journalists toed the line.

Politicians past and present are fair game and editors previously considered a cut above the rest give journalists free rein and with relative impunity bandy about the names of their intended targets. What is even sadder is that instead of giving irresponsible journalists the order of the boot, editors give them shelter and allow them to hide their muddied fingers in the shade of their backside.

The extent to which the anti-golf lobby will stoop is limitless. Half-truths, quotes taken out of context and complete disregard for ethical standards are but the mildest form of the lobby's malpractices.

I have been hauled through the process and, were it not for the gentlemen who publicly bore me out and confirmed every word I wrote about my conduct as minister and my statement about a Mepa official's uncalled for comments, readers of The Times would still labour under the wrong impression propagated by AD's minions, the anti-golf lobby and by the untruths of a statement the Mepa PRO was hoodwinked into believing and subsequently issued. But that is past history.

Thanks to the Prime Minister's decisiveness, the principle that additional golf courses should be built is back on course.