Conscience on speed

The good councillors of Attard have every reason to be satisfied with themselves, according to their book. Irresponsible motorists are speeding helter-skelter through Notary Zarb Street once again, after the council nonchalantly decided to blind the speed camera installed in that hot spot at its own request a year ago. Now, all the council has to do is to wait with the rest of us for a bad accident to happen in that short stretch of road where three people have already lost there lives, among countless other traffic accidents.

When that happens, the councillors will be pleased with themselves for the prescience they have shown to cover their behinds while leaving countless full human bodies exposed to the danger they have helped to accentuate. I'm told that, after the criticism raised when they blinded the speed camera some weeks ago, the Attard councillors sought legal advice from at least two lawyers. Could they be held responsible for any accident that might occur, was their concern.

They probably sighed with relief when they were advised that, no, those who caused the accident would be held responsible for the outcome. That might even have emboldened council members to suggest to the ADT, our transport authority, to remove the blinded speed camera and deploy it elsewhere.

Legal advice and responsibility lie in one category of consideration; moral responsibility lives in more sensitive quarters. I very firmly believe that the present Attard councillors will have a moral responsibility in any traffic accident in Notary Zarb Street resulting from over-speeding, now that the deterrent of the speed camera is no more, thanks to them.

The mere fact that they sought legal advice about the implications of blinding the speed camera betrays their ill-at-ease conscience. Some consideration won over their concern for legally clean hands. It could not really have been the fact that the council received only a small fraction of the fines imposed on those whom the camera caught overspeeding. Even consciences for sale command a better price than that miserable count, especially since by the council's own appraisal, the number of those caught overspeeding gradually declined under the watchful eye of the speed camera.

It is not difficult to understand why that fall-off in offences came about, despite the fact that the speed limit could have been set at a more correct level. Notary Zarb Street is a short stretch of road. A speed camera in its middle does have a strong effect, unlike a single speed camera in, say, a bypass (example: the Qormi-Attard bypass, where various drivers overspeed once they are safely away from the camera's watchful but short sight).

That is a fact which makes the decision of the Attard council beggar further belief. But the council does not care, especially once legal advice has covered the personal interest of each of the councillors, who come from all the three political parties which put up candidates in the locality. This final factor amazes me.

I am appalled that Labour, having doubled its representation on the council to two in the last local election, immediately went on to join the Nationalist majority in the camera-blinding decision. I am even more amazed that the newly elected Alternattiva Demokratika representative should also fling himself in the swim with the others. AD has the environment very close to its heart, so much so that it describes itself as the Green Party. That is a catchy term. Surely, it was never meant to suggest that the party's conscience is roused only when the natural environment is defiled or threatened.

Overspeeding, as every green lad and lass knows, impacts on the broader environment in various ways. It increases pollution through emissions. It adds to sound pollution. Above all, it dilutes and pollutes basic regard for human safety, and the safety of animals too for that matter.

How could the AD representative forget all that, so quickly after the joy of breaking through the electoral barrier in Attard, a Nationalist stronghold? I cannot believe that he believes that Attard residents elected him because they were confident he would become a party to an increase in road hazard in the locality.

When the speed camera was set up in Notary Zarb Street over a year ago the previous Attard council did not lean on the ADT to be strict in setting the speed limit. Rather the opposite, in fact. Picture this:

The speed limit coming down the open inter-town Rabat Road towards Attard is 60 km per hour. It goes down to 50 kph close to Mount Carmel Hospital. It then goes down further to the 35 kph urban limit as one gets nearer Attard.

That notwithstanding, the speed camera trigger for those then entering Notary Zarb Street was set at 50 kph. That, effectively, reads 55 kph, because the camera includes a dose of careless generosity. I am told that the ADT had wanted the limit to be set at 45 kph (effective 50 kph). But the old Attard council would have none of that. So, an anomaly was accentuated - 60 kph in open road... to 50 kph... to 35 kph in the approach to the urban part... back to 50 kph smack through an urban centre.

Nevertheless, the speed camera with that (high-ish) limit still persuaded most of the thousands of motorists who use Notary Zarb Street to slow down. The residents breathed a small sigh of relief. But, others who simply hate to abide by the law and stick to legal limits apparently lobbied the new local council.

Amazingly, the council acted, as a first step, to have the camera's limit surreptitiously raised to 60 kph - meaning that the same limit which applies to the open Rabat Road was applied to an urban Attard through road. Not content with that, the council proceeded to have the camera blinded.

The council cannot claim that it came up with a popular decision. In recent months various letters have appeared in the press against it, mostly well-argued and backed with facts and figures, including from the relevant local plan. Not only did the council persist in error, it chose not to offer any formal reply to cogently argue its defence. It chose the easy path of arrogant silence, though it did scramble for legal advice regarding its contingent responsibility.

If this is local democracy and official responsibility in disgraceful action and inaction, someone had better rewrite social and political theory.

Attard councillors are not the only ones who seem to believe that silence is golden. The five Members of Parliament who represent the town have yet to find voice or pen over the issue.

Likewise, other MPs who were not elected from the Attard constituency but now find that they have to take it into account because of the changes in the electoral boundaries, which are likely to prevail up to the looming general election.

The various MPs and candidates have started, and some are continuing, with house visits. These visits, I recall from my own days plodding the electoral trail, are not meant solely to show one's sweet face, magnificent talents and huge enthusiasm to the electorate.

People who extend to a candidate the privilege of entering and spending some time with them inside their home expect the supplicant for their vote to show awareness of and sensitivity to foreign and national issues, certainly. They also expect them to recall what position they took in regard to issues specific to the locality.

Sitting ministers might lament that an issue does not fall within their portfolio or sphere of influence. Backbench MPs might plead that they depend on ministerial action, and that when they themselves are in the Cabinet, ah! what a difference they shall make. Candidates who have yet to make it to the House of Representatives will tut-tut and broadly suggest that things will change if they get the vote and are elected, just you wait and see!

That's the way the game has been played since it was invented, and how it will remain. But politicians making house visits who are unable to demonstrate that they have lifted a little finger for the locality are usually wasting the time of the families who let them in.

They too had better take a refresher course in the basics of how representative democracy is meant to work.

Setting a date

The date of the next general election is preying on people's minds more than I, for one, used to imagine. A cousin of mine who lived the quietist of lives made the quietest of departures. As those of who mourned him began leaving the church, a man came up to me.

Is it true that general election will take place on March 9? It was an incongruous question, both of the hallowed place and occasion where it was made to me, and because of its nature.

Hardly the place to discuss that, I muttered. Outside the church, the man persisted, refusing to accept that I did not know.

My former constituent will have a laugh should he turn out to be right...