Planning watershed

At L-Iklin last Sunday, the Greens reignited the planning boundary extension issue. Thousands of people across the country sat up and took notice. Environment Minister George Pullicino's destruction of more countryside may not happen after all.

They were reminded that the EU Commissioner for the Environment has not yet concluded his investigation of the absurd exercise through which the planning boundaries were extended overnight and without due process of law.

It so happened that the press conference followed shortly after the publication of two reports by the Mepa audit officer, one condemning Mepa's subservience to the government and its attempt to keep the reprimand a secret, while the other wrote off the process through which the local plans went from draft to law also making Mepa's version of consultation a meaningless sham.

So what will happen now? Mepa and its minister, Mr Pullicino, have already come out criticising the audit officer: they are right and he is wrong. Only people too blue for their own good will believe them. Mr Pullicino is still a minister and his extension of the development boundaries is still law but under heavy challenge.

The learned helplessness which leads too many of us to shrug and submit is a significant advantage to the minister. Even those who experienced his extravagant handling of the situation as bullying feel there is nothing they can do about it. When did anyone ever win in such a situation?

To very many there is not even the option of punishing him and his party at election time. To punish him means rewarding his arch rivals, the MLP, and they already know they will not go that far. They are prisoners of the situation and they know it.

History has changed all that. Malta's membership of the EU was sustained by thousands, specifically in the hope of creating a check on our governments, our sequential "dictatorships", unaccountable while in office and accountable only in reduced form at election time. If the EU does not defend itself against our government such hopes will be doubly betrayed. Not only will the illegal extension of the development boundaries cause the damage that is anticipated, the EU remedy will have evaporated also.

At this point in the process we are still unfamiliar with remedies available to ordinary citizens at EU institutions. We have little or no experience of them and know little about how effective they can be. What can Commissioner Stavros Dimas do and what will he do if he can do anything? He can reprimand the minister and threaten to fine Malta. He can fine Malta unless the extensions are not withdrawn.

He can expose the tame Strategic Environment Assessment (SEA) audit team as an intolerable sham. Mr Pullicino is altogether detached from EU reality if he imagines he can shut everybody up by certifying his illegality through a pathetic note issued by the SEA audit team. All EU directives would become meaningless if member state governments could avoid them that easily. The EU cannot afford to let Mr Pullicino get away with it.

Recourse can also be had to the European Parliament and to the European Court. The SEA Directive being law in Malta, recourse can also be had to the Maltese courts. It is sad that some victims of Minister Pullicino's exploit have little faith in Maltese courts.

Today they have every reason to be less subservient to the government than Mepa because their decisions come up for review before the European Court. EU membership works in mysterious ways.

In a recent decision of the European Court, Maltese law and precedent have been set on their heads with the grant of judicial standing to persons not having what was considered to be the necessary judicial interest to approach a court until then. The court ruled that once a directive gave rights to EU citizens the courts were bound to give remedies and not to dismiss the cases of NGOs that did not have anything to lose or gain from the matter at issue.

Sometime in the early 1990s Malta was promised an actio popolaris, the right for any citizen to file a lawsuit in defence of common causes without the need to show a personal interest in the case. It never turned up. Today we might have gained access to it by the backdoor. More mysterious workings of EU membership.

People in Safi and Bahar ic-Caghaq, Mellieha and Ta' Sannat, in Attard, Birzebbuga, Mosta, L-Iklin, Naxxar and a host of other localities may still be unsure of what the outcome will be but they are keen to make any legal attempt to reverse Minister Pullicino's illegality. They are getting organised and they will make their voices heard and with greater hope that their pleas will be heard. It is not only a Maltese government that is within earshot.

This is not about winning and losing. It is about fighting, fighting for one's rights and for the very basics, the rule of law. No matter what the odds may seem, one must fight or lose one's self respect. It may seem to be a planning issue but in fact it is a matter of democracy, of developing access to remedies our political situation grossly denies us. Success will have an impact on politics just as it has on our courts.

Being subject to review and reprimand means that some outrages will not be contemplated. Our politicians, who seem to become more and more arrogant the longer they retain power, may be reined in.

It is about democracy as opposed to the present oligopoly. No issue more clearly illustrates the other parties' submission to the construction industry and its related speculators. It was just obscenely obvious. Membership subscriptions do not cover skyrocketing election expenses nor subsidise the political media empires. More land had to go under brick. More countryside, regardless of the availability of more than double our possible requirement until 2020 as documented by Mepa itself.

The planning boundary extension is likely to become a watershed for Maltese governments. This is where they are told where they get off. It will add meaning to EU membership also for the most sceptical. It will give us less fear of an alternation in government and more freedom to choose who should govern and how. It can free us all.

Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party.

www.alternattiva.org.mt

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