How green was my valley?

Way back in 2002, after years of negotiation, intense notarial research and some arm-twisting, my family sold 36 tumoli of land in Manikata to the tenant farmers for a paltry Lm1,000 a tumolo.

The land in question had been inherited from my great grandparents and various other ancestors and the 90c per tumolo that the tenant farmers paid the family per annum had to be divided among the 127 part-owners of this land which, as can be imagined, became more of a burden than the asset it should have been. The family sold the land at one-fifth of its then market value for art saqwi simply because we were lumped with it and reached a point that nobody wanted to take on the administration of it. We considered ourselves to be lucky to persuade the farmers to cough up just over 1,000 years of rent and breathed a sigh of relief when it was all over.

I am curious to know whether any of the land we sold for a peanut; just one, is included in the new development zones that were approved by Parliament last week. I wonder how many families may be kicking themselves for not holding on just a little bit longer for the privilege of building more flats, villas and maisonettes on their land. I wonder how many present owners of the land included in the development zones have held it for more than 20 years and how many of them have held it for more than 50 years. You see where I am heading aren't you?

The PN administration's popularity has sunk to an all time low. The class of people hit by this new development zone caboodle are mostly those from precisely the same class that election in and election out voted for the PN in the hope that they would 1) reform the rent laws, 2) redress the Holland and Sant depredations of the 1970s, 3) reimburse the National Bank shareholders etc etc. Of these the PN government has done nothing, always declaring insolvency whenever any agreement is imminent. This has been the state of affairs since 1987 give or take the MLP blip in the mid-1990s.

To say that I, and many people like me, are upset and disappointed by the PN performance this time round is an understatement. The environmental protests of which no notice was taken, apart from the Vote George get Lorry business, was the last straw that broke the proverbial camel's back and proves that, as I have always said, public opinion counts for nothing in this country.

This all means that both big parties have rendered themselves so liable to those who financially fuel them that they are powerless to act on behalf of the man in the street anymore. We Maltese have voted by default too many times. Only a couple of weeks ago a soon-to-be PN candidate admitted as much in an interview in MaltaToday!

What is the alternative? Go with the flow and vote for the party we have always voted mindlessly for in the hope of one day being awarded an Order of Merit in the Gieh ir-Repubblika scheme? Or should we take the plunge and neutralise the giants by inserting a brake? That would mean voting Green; AD would act as a brake in a hung Parliament or a coalition. Unless Alfred Sant decides to make pulling out of the EU a rallying cry in the next election, which I doubt, there is nothing the PN can put the fear of God in us about this time round. Therefore we can quite happily vote according to our conscience.

Now that we are full members of the EU, the NGOs and individuals who protested against the extensions of the development zones can refer the matter to the Brussels-based bureaucrats to put through their machine and eventually regurgitate some sort of ruling. Meanwhile will the plans for development go on as if nothing had happened, risking a hefty fine that will eventually be paid out of the proceeds of the sale of land? I doubt it. It will be paid up by all the taxes that burden our daily lives day in day out.

The ultimate insult was the Tourism Minister's declaration that the development zone extensions are compatible with tourism policy, as he declared, "objective and sustainable construction can assist tourism". No tourist worth his salt wishes to spend his holiday in a concrete jungle that resembles a dusty building site most of the year. One would imagine that the ones who do are, on an island beleaguered by continual heat waves, quite off their trolley! Francis Zammit Dimech, I hear, has been nominated to receive the highest award in our Order of Merit.

As 27 per cent of our landmass will be taken up in urban sprawl as opposed to the average seven per cent in Europe, we have only ourselves to blame for the ruination of our island, finally and irrevocably. Astrid Vella, Martin Galea, Martin Scicluna, Lino Bugeja and the rest of the gang of intrepid NGOs who managed to whip up a protest in which 1,000 persons, give or take a few, showed their acute disappointment about the PN policies are also to be nominated for a Gieh ir-Repubblika, the ultimate irony.

It used to be a favourite ploy of our colonial masters to "kick upstairs" anyone who did not toe the party line or got a bit too uppity for his own good. Hence, the plethora of nobiliary titles given by the Order of Malta and the various grades in the chivalric order of St Michael and St George originally instituted by the Brits for their colonials in Corfu I believe. A baronetcy or a knighthood was ultra-efficacious in shutting up anyone with a dissenting voice who could potentially upset the colonial applecart.

The MLP opposition has been lambasted as opportunist "humpty-dumpties" by no other than PN backbencher Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando in a very obvious PR exercise to neutralise the MP who was responsible for stopping the Mnajdra landfills from materialising a couple of years ago. It was a declaration that could have been made by any PN parliamentarian, however the choice of Dr Pullicino Orlando was calculated to dishearten the environmentalists from even imagining that this time this particularly brave MP would stick his neck out again. Dr Pullicino Orlando will also be nominated to receive the Order of Merit.

All this would mean that the President's Office would be working overtime in the next month or so to sort it all out by the September 8 when I believe the next batch of nominees are due. I wonder whether I will be included.

kzt@onvol.net