The planned City Gate project (2)

Though unfortunately it appears that our government has firmly decided to build a parliament (plus a couple of vague cultural centres) on the Royal Opera House site, I feel I should still try to appeal to the Prime Minister and his advisers to rethink their decision.

Moving Parliament from the Palace is, we are told, meant to make the Palace more accessible to tourists and to make it possible to move the Armoury of the Knights of St John back to its historic setting. Should this consideration, based solely on what the tourists are thought to need, weigh so much more heavily than what our citizens need and many of them want?

This will mean, of course, that Malta will have given up, perhaps forever, the enrichment of its capital city with what it had for nearly 100 years, a largish theatre fully equipped to house elaborate performances of opera, operetta and musicals.

Most people know that the theatres now available in Valletta - the Manoel, the theatre at the Mediterranean Conference Centre, the round theatre at St James Cavalier and the studio theatre known as the MITP - are either largely unsuitable or completely unsuitable for the kind of production our parents and grandparents took for granted and were able to enjoy again and again every season.

I know we are unlikely to be able to mount, say, two or three large productions each month from October till May, but our increasingly skilful theatre people and daring administrators and musicians plus visiting productions would prevent a new theatre from being dark for weeks on end. The new theatre would also be available, of course, for smaller productions.

Our government should also consider that making Parliament occupy Malta's prime site might create the suspicion, surely unjustified, that parliamentarians are a pampered and privileged lot who just want the best for themselves.

If they want to move house, and it is probable that their present housing has become inadequate, why don't they build themselves a large building outside Valletta, or wait a few years until Fort St Elmo has been restored and becomes fit to house our legislators?

Is it too much to hope that the PM will allow a full-scale debate, with both party leaders allowing a free vote, about where Parliament should move in the coming years?