Enemies of the people

There was a time, not beyond human memory, when the opposition was branded an enemy of the people whenever it opened its mouth and particularly when it scored against the government. I remember it well. The opposition was Nationalist at the time.

Information was power. It still is but at the time the power practice was fully in-your-face. The only television station blared propaganda day and night and the Leader of the Opposition was banned from any kind of broadcasting. It was brutal, offensive and counterproductive. Austin Gatt, spearheading the PN backroom boys, had his arms full making a monkey of the government at every turn. It was no-holds-barred politics and everybody learned to play the game that way.

These days it is less brutal, less in-your-face, but little has changed other than the accidents. Dr Gatt is a government minister today but he still plays the game in the old way. His latest foray against his ancestral foes (where would he be without them?) was in defence of his latest holy grail, the Smart-City project. He accuses Labour of irresponsibility in spilling the beans. Having got hold of a pre-application feeler to Mepa by the developers, they have exploited it in precisely the style Dr Gatt would have done had he been in opposition. He whines hysterically that this is no way to treat investors. The opposition is opposing, they are enemies of the people.

Dom Mintoff's personal time warp gave us the 1950s in the 1970s. Dr Gatt gives us the 1970s and the 1980s in the third millennium. Which opposition could fail to publish a proposal to transform the employment project of the century into a real estate coup of epochal proportions? Should Super One and Co. have kept the lid on the idea of building 260 villas and a hotel in what was only very recently touted as the workplace of 5,000 people? Enemies of the investment?

What sort of ninny investors are we hanging about with if they cannot face this sort of flak? If they are shocked at having had their secrets aired, perhaps they should look to Dr Gatt as the cause. Less than 12 months ago he popped SmartCity out of a hat on the eve of the local council elections. Superb tactician that he is, he gave the opposition Hobson's choice: either to go with the flow or oppose and commit political suicide on the eve of elections taken to be popularity polls by the two parties in Parliament. They went with the flow.

The master employment coup of the century was not even discussed. The opposition fended off the political swipe by meeting the investors and making the project its own. It had little choice. Austin Gatt & Co. made out that the 5,000 SmartCity jobs were not only already in the bag but feeding families and providing tax revenue. He wanted merit for providing jobs in the next 10 years in every way as if they were already registered in official statistics. It was political propaganda old-style, dressed in neo-liberalism instead of the neo-Stalinist discourse of the past. With the opposition outSmarted, it easily became propaganda overkill.

Today he is attempting to keep the initiative and maintain the rout of the opposition on the SmartCity issue by accusing them of being enemies of the people and of investment. Somehow he squirmed out of mentioning the 260 villas and the hotel that have appeared in the IT heaven proposed for Ricasoli.

He did slam Labour for abandoning the South. He accused Labour of keeping it in a depressed state in order to keep a political hold on it. Funny that, it is precisely what the Alternattiva Demokratika video for the 1992 election had to say. We would not think of doing the same today simply because there has been a PN government in office almost without interruption since 1987. Only Dr Gatt appears not to have noticed.

If the South lies abandoned today, what exactly has the opposition got to do with it? Why not blame Alternattiva Demokratika? It would be just as nonsensical. This is paroxysmal Bundyism. Amazingly it is Labour's fault that the South is Mickey Mouse country par excellence and Dr Gatt is going to save it from the ruination inflicted upon it in the late neolithic or was it by Labour during its marathon in opposition? Hey, what happened to the last 19 years? Did some Walt Disney artist erase them?

What Dr Gatt would like is to have a tweedledee and tweedledum squabble with Labour. It is what he is good at, perhaps the only thing he knows how to do well. The last thing that he wants is to acknowledge the fact that there is an absolute majority regularly registered in the polls, that is neither Labour nor Nationalist, that is sick to death of this outdated political garbage. This is third millennium Malta not the 1970s and not the 1980s.

Of course SmartCity is welcome. No problem at all. It has to fit into Malta. It has to be part of our reality. It's not a matter of partisan politics, it is a matter of fact. SmartCity is possible if it can fit smoothly into the economic, social and legal framework. I believe that it can. I am confident that we can even make some adjustments to accommodate it. What we should not do and what we will not do is to behave in an unbusinesslike fashion.

We should not have our tongues hanging out like a red carpet because 5,000 jobs over the next decade have been mentioned. We should not hack through our planning laws with a machete to clear the way for SmartCity. Did these people really need a pre-application session with Mepa when the Local Plans have only recently become law and are available on the internet? We should not accuse our planners of being bureaucratic when they address the issue professionally. We should not stifle public debate of the issue and above all we should not make this a PN-MLP exclusive.

Making the SmartCity project a PN monopoly is probably the worst that can be done to it. Making it absolutely necessary to make every possible concession to the developers is extremely dangerous. They can either deliver in Malta or they can not. They can either work their miracle with our laws, skills, talent, politics, geographic limitations and all the rest of it or they can not. No serious investor can demand a wholesale abandonment of law and regulation. I am perfectly confident that the SmartCity investors do not expect as much and that they will be able to make a success of their project whichever party is in government. If they need to make the real estate coup of the century, paying off their investment in Maltacom from the profits, in order to be interested in Malta, perhaps we should have a closer look at them. If they are as deeply wounded as Dr Gatt makes out because we refuse to be starry-eyed business virgins, perhaps they are not quite sure that they can convince us that they have a good deal to offer.

They should know for a start that the whole population is fully aware of the long series of mega-projects that were supposed to kick-start the economy time and again and which have done nothing of the kind. We are more than a little jaded. They should know that they will have all the population behind them if they can stand up on their own two feet and make their own case instead of having Dr Gatt as their spokesman. It would help if SmartCity had a face and a name not associated with any political party and one that can convince us that we have a deal in the making that will ignore the political garbage and which will leave a substantial profit to investors and to the Maltese economy. The rest is daylight fireworks, a Maltese speciality we can all do without. They should also be fully aware that Malta is not for sale, no matter what Dr Gatt has been telling them.

Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party www.alternattiva.org.mt www.adgozo.com