Rumour has it that the most unholy stink has been raised about a homemade poster held aloft in the FAA protest march in favour of a better environment, an amazing fuss. It seems to have outstripped the crystal clear message of the march: spare what is left of our environment. It even seems to have overshadowed the unmistakable attempt by the PN media to make the march their own protest against themselves. Only in Malta. Did Medialink record it for the EU?
I can confirm that the offending article of free expression was there. That much is a fact. I read it and gave it a wry smile: Vote George Get Lorry. Whoever thought that one up knows how to give the knife an excruciating twist. There is something of poetic horror about it. It is evidently untrue and at the same time says it all.
In the e-mail hysteria that followed, all sorts of rumours ran riot. One even purported to set a scene where the very highest government authority summoned the representative of one of the most venerable NGOs and threatened to rescind a secret pact in which a promise to protect a large part of the country as a nature reserve had been made. In exchange for what, exactly? It simply cannot be true. Could we have sunk so low?
No government politician could be so stupid. It would be a threat of political suicide. Not exactly terrifying. Imagine the flak that would erupt if it all came out in the open: an attempt at political blackmail in which the blackmailer would vaporise all claim to his own already minuscule environmental credentials if the Vote George Get Lorry charge was repeated in any NGO activity. One NGO chief was asked to apologise in the name of all NGOs because a private person had done his/her job as well as any of them. Bullying NGOs as if they have or should have any control over what gets raised in posters in any protest march? It can't be true. This is the EU, you know.
If anywhere deserves the protection of the law because of its ecological value, it cannot be made a matter of blackmail. It either deserves the protection or it does not. Not even a Prime Minister who claims to be pro-golf and pro-environment in the same breath can be so detached from legal and political reality. It must just be another of those urban legends that float about the ether.
One version has the Prime Minister hopping mad and screaming: "You must put an end to this. How can you do these things after we have done so much for you?" Put an end to freedom of expression? Done what, exactly? The government has barely begun to scratch the surface of what it is obliged to do under EU law.
What is true is that the poster was unfair. George Pullicino is nothing like Lorry Sant. In the bad old days everybody in authority, in government or in opposition, simply ignored the environment and everybody and anybody who tried to defend it. Nobody in politics claimed to be a champion of the environment. They were too busy getting at each other's throats to consider the irremediable damage being done.
These days they plead their former ignorance in unison, just as they all now lay claim to excellent eco-credentials miraculously acquired. Mr Sant had not spent years promising us the rule of law and the clockwork implementation of EU environmental law. Mr Sant was tried and acquitted on charges of corruption not for political hypocrisy. That poster was unfair.
The death sentence passed on yet another massive stretch of this tiny country has been dressed up as "rationalisation", even "the righting of wrongs". Even in my desperate exasperation, I cannot help laughing: George Pullicino in shining armour with the countryside as a dragon? How do you fight these people without becoming ridiculous along with them? Is an overnight increase of 2.4 per cent of the land available for development, necessary, reasonable? When there are over 98,000 unit spaces available still, well over 23,000 permanently vacant dwellings, unknown thousands more made available by the relaxation of height limitations, when our need until 2020 is less than 45,000 units? Rational?
In this Sicilian puppet theatre full of the sound and fury of bold knights doing battle with evil by spouting words at it, enter David Casa MEP. What splendid timing! His article in The Sunday Times boasting of his environmental record in the thick of the fight at the European Parliament begged for applause. Poor fellow.
It only served to remind many of us why we had voted to join the EU. It was not to send Mr Casa to the European Parliament for his greater glory but for us to acquire the safeguards afforded to EU citizens by the EU acquis. Those listed in the Environment Chapter in the endless accession negotiations were some of the most crucial. We voted to end the arbitrariness, the corruption and the wanton destruction driven by the greed of those who do not give two hoots about the environment as well as of those who only pay lip service to it.
In effect we voted for Mr Casa but still got Mr Pullicino. It is not a matter of the EU aquis taking its time to become real to us. It is a matter of the law saying one thing and the government snatching the next outrage out of a hat regardless. Who would have dreamt of extensions to the development boundaries as recently as two months ago? Would anybody have dreamt that the government would sidestep Mepa, its local plans, the Structure Plan Review as well the EU's own Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Directive, set its own criteria, ignore them with bliss, decide on consultation in just six weeks and prepare to turn the outrage into law before the summer recess? It would mean a deliberation of five days including a weekend. Nobody is going to read any of the objections filed at this rate. EU standard consultation? If we can swallow this, we can swallow anything.
This is above all a test for the EU in its relations with Malta, with the Maltese and the Gozitans. If the Environment Commissioner fails to drag our government over the coals in full public view over the proposed lightning extension of the development boundaries, he will have discredited the whole institution, the EU. If it does not deliver on Malta's eternal environmental issue, land use, can anybody expect it to deliver on anything at all?
The Maltese government is calling the EU's bluff; hoping nobody in Brussels will lift a finger during the summer recess; that nobody there can get excited over what the Maltese will be doing to one another and to their microscopic environment. Some may shrug and say votre salade but it is not. If the EU fails now, there is no point coming round afterwards with any attempt to bring its institutions close to the people. The EU will be dead to those who championed it and those who fought it will delight in the disaster.
Meanwhile we know just one thing for sure: we voted Mr Casa and are still stuck with Mr Pullicino. No, not Lorry Sant. Of course, not Lorry Sant.
Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party.
www.alternattiva.org.mt www.adgozo.com