Protest and gratitude

The latest street protest about the state of the local environment makes me ponder. My mind goes back to a not so distant time when the local environment was literally in shambles.

When, for many years, the Triton Fountain was turned into a huge basin of garbage, waterless and seriously damaged after being trampled upon during a national festivity; when a huge grotesque mask ridiculed City Gate at every carnival; when floodlights facing the Great Siege monument were turned into stinky litter-bins and when a historical British Emblem in St George's Square was crudely encased and hidden away to please the foreigner.

Gone are the days when the Pinto Stores area was a scary, desolate zone after sunset and tons of coal were dropped and exposed permanently a few metres away along Marsa Quay; when Ta' Qali was a deserted landscape while Magħtab was quickly developing into a mountain of garbage.

It was a sad time when a public square was suffocated by a private monstrous commercial structure, a historical site turned into a stenching piggery and hunting was considered simply as a hobby as much as stamp collecting is. The shameful list is endless.

Those were times when restoration, conservation, recycling and rehabilitation were almost non-existent in the political vocabulary of the authorities at the time, while an overwhelming national lethargy towards the environment in all its aspects was sinking deep into the people's flesh.

But now all this has been progressively and consistently changing and solutions are there to be seen and felt by all who care to observe and consider.

On national environmental issues, as in all others, the people rightly deserve to be listened to by the government; but surely, on such matters, Nationalist governments deserve some genuine gratitude from the people.