The Sunday newspapers revealed that a deal had gone down between the major contenders for the post of Prime Minister and the Armier boathouse squatters. It sounds plausible. Some readers accepted the idea without pausing to doubt, justifying the promises made on the basis of the narrow margin which secured government for the PN and having regard to the fact that the MLP leader had made similar promises.

Alfred Sant was such a bogeyman for some PN supporters that they do not pause to catch their breath in justifying the sacrifice of prime government real estate in order to avert the catastrophe they dreaded. Who cares if it creates a precedent justifying the illegal occupation of public land? Who cares if it makes nonsense of the governability of the country? Squat for 20 or 30 years and the government will rebuild your shanty town and provide you with all mod cons and a secure lease. Not bad at all.

At the time that the Prime Minister was promising to sort out the matter for the squatters within six months of taking office, he was promising to take direct responsibility for development planning. It was a promise as ambiguous as Dr Sant's 1996 promise to do away with VAT. Those who wanted to believe that it was an admission of repentance, of permits issued where permits should not and a promise of a firm hand on the reins in future, believed just that. The Armier squatters may have been led to believe quite the opposite and the PM's action in promising to take direct responsibility for development planning must have meant something altogether different to them. What it really meant we have yet to find out.

We may never get to find out what other promises were made, what the toll of improbable permits will be for the 2008 election. While the Armier squatters represented a significant fraction of votes, other lobbies represent major segments of party funding. Perhaps this is what democracy is all about and I have had it wrong all along.

The Safi Lidl supermarket nears completion with a development permit which remains valid until it is challenged, at which point it will be discovered that, according to the Mepa audit office, the persons issuing it had no legal authority to do so. It is something like a marriage that can be annulled but which will stand until some party takes action to annul it.

We will soon be making our bargains at the Safi Lidl, which will become a national symbol of our quality of governance. Quizzed on the matter of voidable development permits both contenders for the post of Prime Minister waffled in almost precisely the same terms: it is a difficult legal matter to reverse the situation they both claimed. About as difficult as blowing the crown of seeds off a dandelion. No self-respecting government which has been officially presented with an illegal act perpetrated by persons nominally acting on its behalf but, in fact, acting without legal authority would countenance the result. Will the persons issued with a voidable permit have a right to damages? Yes, of course, unless it can be proved that they had a hand in producing the illegality themselves. Will the government have to fork out any money? Not a cent, since the government cannot be held responsible for the illegal and unauthorised actions of persons sitting on any board but acting on their own private initiative. Will the permits be withdrawn? Yes, if and when we have a self-respecting government.

Then there is the matter of promise 222, a PN manifesto promise to bring about a fair and just reform of the rent laws. Hmm, sounds good. Just like the promise to get rid of VAT. What it means exactly only God knows. Say "fair rent" to any controlled rent landlord and you will see him or her blanche: it is the expression used with full forensic irony in the present law to describe the pittance symbolising the present expropriation.

Promise 222 gives a small hint of what was intended. It includes the firm promise to exempt controlled rent income from income tax. Those earning in the region of €20 per year for their properties will surely rub their hands in delight. They must be waiting for the President's speech at the opening of Parliament with the highest of hopes.

And so it goes on: political parties, which are private entities, make deals in which the grant of title on government land is the quid pro quo.

Prime Ministerial contenders modestly acquiesce to the securing of permits which should never have been issued. And nobody in authority does anything at all to right a wrong that has been around for 60 years. More than that we can all blame Dr Sant for it. We can blame Dr Sant for anything, for everything, for the whole Mickey Mouse governance of the country.

Now that he is gone who will be blamed? The truth is that whether we like it or not this is the quality of governance we can have unless we begin to change the two-party political landscape. If the PN and the MLP changed roles, the Labour government would be in an identical bind beholden to party sponsors and threatened by minute lobbies and coerced into acting outrageously or outrageously paralysed. This is not a criticism of either of them. It is a description of their predicament, of our predicament.

Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - the Green party.

www.alternattiva.org.mt, www.adgozo.com