Just conduct, no fudge

August is a slow month when it comes to news. I do not know whether this is because many are away on holiday, or the heat makes people apathetic.

For me, world and local news were overtaken by domestic happenings, which kept me busier than usual on the home front, in the last week.

But as things got back to normal, I found that the media are still regurgitating stuff, which suggests not much is going on - except for the raids on illegal fireworks factories. More on that later.

I had missed Peppi Azzopardi's pathetic article on the Mugliett saga, and although two other female columnists, have tackled his puerile arguments, I decided to put my oar in too.

The same argument, "justice not vendetta", though in a more sophisticated vein, by Ranier Fsadni, had appeared a few weeks earlier, which makes me think this was a Nationalist two-pronged affair, one aimed at the intelligentsia and the other at the Xarabank masses.

The gist of the articles by Messrs Fsadni and Azzopardi was to exonerate Mr Mugliett of any misconduct and lay emotional righteousness on the rest of us to show mercy to the people found guilty of corruption.

I had already responded to Mr Fsadni's article in "Sophistry will not do" on July 22. In The Times the next day, Mr Azzopardi went one step further and suggested we admire Mr Mugliett for his goodliness. He (Peppi) cannot be that naïve, can he?

Mr Fsadni fudged the issue by using sophistry and Mr Azzopardi just fudged away. However, I find Peppi's kind of fudging the most concerning. His kind of wishy-washy arguments are manna to many Maltese people who have nothing better to do than watch Xarabank every week.

Our state broadcasting is feeding the public pap rather than letting them think for themselves. Serious, debatable topics are reduced to emotional claptrap with no depth, in the same vein as Peppi's "justice not vendetta".

Justice means that those who cheat and exploit victims are punished. No one is asking for the hands of those found guilty of corruption to be chopped off, or that they are given a sentence not commensurate with the crime, nor that they be deprived of earning a livelihood for ever and ever Amen.

But justice demands that those found guilty of a crime are punished, regardless of their connections. That is not vendetta.

Last of the summer bangs?

I was really taken by surprise to read that the police have finally pulled their finger out and begun doing something about the unsafe and illegal manufacture of fireworks.

I had given up on the idea that anything was ever going to happen to improve the situation vis-à-vis that problem.

Especially when it was revealed that six years ago, the same year an anti-petards petition was presented to Parliament following a campaign launched in this column, the Cabinet had got involved in getting regulations that would have forced the closure of the St Helen's fireworks factory that exploded in Gharghur with five fatalities, two months ago, bypassed.

The Cabinet had 'regularised' the position of the factories through a memo that rendered the road next to the factories a "private road", reserved exclusively for "farmers, residents and fireworks factory employees".

As though making it a private road rendered the factories safe. Besides, the farmers, residents and factory 'employees' were still at high risk.

However, it is not just Cabinet ministers that have been grossly negligent on this issue. Opposition politicians have been just as blasé about the risks connected to fireworks.

I have spoken about the subject with prominent Opposition MPs, including Labour leader Alfred Sant, and none showed any real inclination to handle the issue.

Then of course we have the police, the Ombudsman and the Explosives Committee (a consultative body of professionals from the army, the police and the Civil Protection Department, entrusted with overseeing the regulation of fireworks).

OK, the police are finally doing something. But why this sudden activity? The police have ignored anything to do with fireworks regulations for ages.

The residents who live next to the last explosion have filed a judicial protest against the authorities, but have got no response. They are now taking legal action and they mean business.

According to a Times source, a confidential 2004 report identified two factories (the Briffa and St Helen factories, the former suffered an explosion in 2000 that caused partial explosions at the latter; both are situated 130 metres short of the legal safe distance from public roads and inhabited areas) among a group that were identified as unsafe. It had also proposed urgent measures to make fireworks production safer.

The Government has refused to release the report. So much for transparency.

However, even if the Explosives Committee were not consulted by Government when the decision was taken to "regularise" unsafe factories, as it is claimed, it still knew what was going on and any self-respecting member of that committee should have resigned years ago.

And an Ombudsman report issued last May dealing with the matter claimed that "the street in question is used as irregularly as possible", making the factories "legal".

I don't know about you, but that does not make a lot of sense to me.

What does "used as irregularly as possible" mean? People still live there. A woman who was driving past the St Helen factory when it exploded on June 27 was lucky to escape serious injury when the roof of her car was ripped off by flying debris.

And the factory backs on to an inhabited villa, built before the fireworks factories were located there, which was badly damaged by the blasts.

The Ombudsman also said that had the situation remained as it was, "the authorities responsible for licensing the fireworks factories would risk falling foul of the Explosives Ordinance."

The Explosives Ordinance provides for a 183-metre safety buffer from any inhabited place or street that is "used regularly". The factories are located less than 50 metres from the road that connects Naxxar with Ta' l-Ibrag.

That "used regularly" again. Surely, if a site is unsafe it remains so whether it us used regularly or not. The irregular user is still at risk.

That is obviously why the Om-budsman recommended that legislation be updated, but he should have been stronger in his report.

The Ombudsman was asked to look into the matter, in 2002 and 2006. In the 2002 report, the police, who are legally entrusted with issuing licences for the factories, said they were satisfied that they were "lawfully sited".

The residents' legal counsel, Stefan Camilleri, told The Times that the Explosives Ordinance places the onus on the Police Commissioner in saying that no licence shall be granted "unless the necessary precautions for protecting life and property have been taken".

Yet, the Office of the Prime Minister quoted the Ombudsman's report, saying both factories were "operating according to law".

Questions sent to the Home Affairs Ministry and to the head of the committee, Brigadier Carmel Vassallo, by Mark Micallef remained unanswered and were forwarded to the OPM.

The OPM said that the Ombudsman also recommended that the authorities consider a review of the existing legislation.

This indicates that things were not right. But of course the Cabinet knew this, because it sanctioned the bypassing of existing regulations to allow both the Briffa and St Helen's factories to continue with their unsafe operations since 2001.

It had the 2004 report to further point out the dangers. And it did nothing. The setting up of a new pyrotechnics commission last March, which is meant to make recommendations on how to improve on the safety of these factories, seems like just a lot of hot air.

Because that was what the Explosives Committee was supposed to be doing too, fruitlessly.

And everyone knew that the fireworks legislation was outdated and the current regulations were shamelessly flouted. I had been on countless broadcasting programmes in the past 10 years where these facts were pointed out.

The new commission's report is to be produced in November, after the festa season, ensuring that no votes are lost.

However, suddenly last week, the police got very diligent. On Tuesday afternoon they raided commercial premises in Cannon Road, Qormi, where they found a considerable amount of pyrotechnics including a sizable amount of petards being stored illegally.

In another raid in a field at Ta' Kandja, limits of Siggiewi, on Wednesday, a person was caught manufacturing fireworks illegally.

Then on Thursday the police raided a farm in Wied Qoton, Birzebbuga, and seized what they alleged were illegally manufactured fireworks.

And the Special Squad together with the Gozo district police yesterday also raided a fireworks factory in Gozo to establish if the material used in the factory was acquired according to regulations.

Why has the government suddenly changed tack? And does this latest flurry of activity mean things are going to change, or is it just window dressing? Time will no doubt tell.