Richard Nixon practically invented it. Bill Clinton sexed it up for the 1990s. And now the government in conjunction with WasteServ brings stonewalling home to Malta.
The definition of stonewalling is "stalling or delaying, especially by refusing to answer questions or cooperate". It is what politicians or officials do when they don't want to answer your questions and can't shake you off their tail.
Stonewalling means fudging, talking in woolly generalities and giving answers which are much less illuminating than fluorescent pop socks. It is what every government minister or agency official who has had anything to do with the Scott Wilson Kirkpatrick report has been doing since its completion. The way they've pulled out every trick in the book to stop residents from having a copy of it makes it look like their life depended on it, not ours.
The report, which has become notorious by its unavailability (rather like some paper version of the reclusive Mina or Howard Hughes), was commissioned by the Nationalist government in 2002. Then Minister for Resources and Infrastructure Francis Zammit Dimech had called it an "x-ray" of the existing waste dumps and the tender worth nearly a quarter of a million liri was awarded to Scott Wilson Kirkpatrick company.
Dr Zammit Dimech had made a great deal of the fact that the company would identify Maghtab's impact on and potential risks to public health and the environment. With the usual hoop-la that accompanies these announcements he stated that preliminary reports would be compiled regularly to disclose progress and that the first report was scheduled for the end of June 2002.
This was all good news for residents of Maghtab and surrounding areas. For years they had endured the rank stench emanating from the dump. There were uncontrolled fires from the debris and the constant rumblings of trucks depositing waste. The discomfiture was an unavoidable fact, the potential risks to health another matter altogether. If you were living next to a killer you'd want to know. The residents of Maghtab did too. It is one thing having a jumble of old mattresses, broken cookers, eggshells and potato peelings round the corner. Toxic fumes, poisoning of the water table and deadly dioxins are another kettle of fish.
As the saying goes forewarned is forearmed. With access to properly accumulated scientific information about the dinosaur-sized dump next to them, the residents would be in a position to know whether they were living on a toxic time bomb and take appropriate measures to distance themselves from it. That information is contained in the Scott Wilson report (presently in the possession of WasteServ) - a copy of which has, and is still, being denied to the residents. The way the government and the various authorities have slammed shut the information door in their face is a sorry saga. It shows how politicians have stalled until the inevitable and how they don't give a toss about the much-touted European legislation and international conventions regarding freedom to environmental information.
For some years now, the Maghtab Residents' Association has been trying to get the authorities to state whether Maghtab is as grave a health hazard as they fear. They want a copy of the Scott Wilson report. Last year they wrote a letter to the Prime Minister. It remained unanswered. They've had countless meetings with the ministers involved. The ministers keep mum. They set up an appointment with Chris Ciantar of WasteServ. They indicated they were ready to comply with all his preconditions for the holding of this meeting - namely, not more than 15 residents and an instant get-out if things got rowdy. Dr Ciantar did not turn up.
If you thought there are laws to safeguard the residents' rights in this case, you're right. In 2002, Malta ratified the Aarhus Convention which lays down that public authorities are obliged to provide environmentally-related information to anyone who requests it. Time limits for disclosure are laid down. In some exceptional cases, the public authority may refuse to give out this information if, for example, the information is commercially sensitive.
However, the convention states that the requested information must always be disclosed if it relates to emissions into the environment (such as gas emissions from dumps). There is a European Union directive which states the same thing. Both the convention and the directive make it clear that refusal to access to information is the exception, not the rule.
Not in Malta, though. Despite the Nationalist government's trumpeting on about the protection provided by European legislation, it is doing its best to deny citizens of those same European rights. What we have is a watered- down version of the directive. Our law does not require release of environmental information in all cases if it relates to emissions. It allows the government to hide behind the "commercial sensitivity" excuse and stall and hide till legal action forces its hand.
Following the filing of a law suit by the Maghtab Residents' Association to obtain a copy of the Scott Wilson report, WasteServ have bombarded the media with a flurry of ridiculous excuses for not abiding by its legal and international obligations on time. Clutching at legal straws, Vince Magri, the chief executive officer of WasteServ, informed us that (a) the report could not have been released before because it forms part of a tender for the rehabilitation of Maghtab and that (b) the tender is Europe-wide and that the release of the report could put European contractors at a disadvantage.
Well, yes, that is what I would say, if I was trying to squirm out of it. First I'd invoke the "tender" word to give credibility to my "commercially sensitive" excuse. Then I'd somehow merge the report (which is a compilation of data as to the state of things) with tender specifications and claim that releasing one would be the same as releasing the other. And I'd promise that all would be revealed soon. Then I'd cross my fingers and pray that everybody is too distracted by carnival parades to pick my argument to pieces.
Because the facts are simple. The Scott Wilson report documents the terrible state of a national dump which has been left to fester for many years. It is a huge embarrassment for the government to disclose. It is an indictment of years of environmental neglect.
By linking the report with a tender, the government is tempering bad news with good (Have problem. Will solve. With EU funds to boot). By doing so, the protection afforded by the Aarhus Convention and the European directive has been neatly sidestepped. Anybody with an IQ higher than that of a plant can see that. The stonewalling has gone on for far too long.
Ditch the tender excuse. Release the Scott Wilson report now.