A revelation of cosmic proportions was made today: the Malta Developers Association Developers (aka contractors and speculators, in truth) has let it be known that they consider NGOs to be an obstacle to development.
Oh, wow, what news. It’s as if the Federation of Oxymoronic Conservationists (bird killers) had said that they consider Birdlife to be anti-hunting, the world should stop and take notice.
The snag is, of course, that we all are morally convinced (if Doctor Alfred Sant Soon To Be MEP can be morally convinced, then the rest of us can too) that the developers are owed a significant debt of gratitude by the Labour Party, and hence the government, so the extent to which the NGOs will be allowed to be obstacles to development is, how should one put it, debatable?
Yes, that’s a good word “debatable”, it implies that there is a chance that someone is going to listen to the NGOs if they make a noise.
It only implies that if you don’t have an Anglo-Saxon way of expressing yourself, of course, like our dear Prime Minister, who (self-)professes an English sense of humour. In fact, what the phrase as I’ve put it means is that the pro-environment NGOs, from Din l-Art Helwa down, are going to be steamrollered and concreted over, rather on the same lines that the Developers’ Association sees the countryside as being. This government isn’t going to make nice to any lobbyists, unless there are votes in it, and that ship has sailed now, safe haven achieved by Dr Muscat and his boys and girls. The assorted environmentalists who were so useful in making sure that anyone who had a grudge against the Nationalists in government had a pure motive for giving effect to it can now be left to their own devices.
History sure has a way repeating itself, doesn’t it? Back when we were blessed with a Labour Government in less marketing-oriented times, if you even dared protest that you didn’t have water in your taps, you took your life in your hands, today there’s no fear of physical retribution (unless you’re annoying a hunting thug) you’re just ignored and allowed to make your squeaky noises for nothing.
Not that Labour have any compunctions about evoking the less than salubrious moments of its past, if the need arises. On May Day, Muscat thought it would be a nifty wheeze to raise the spectre of the “Soldiers of Steel”, Mintoff’s stormtroopers, his enforcers. A marketing man to his very marrow, Muscat knows he’s going to get a majority of votes in the MEP elections, but if he doesn’t make it seem like a life-and-death struggle, he won’t be able to gloat when the tallies are made. So he goes all out to make it seem like an uphill struggle, with Labour being the underdogs (I actually managed to type that without rolling on the floor in paroxysms of mirth) and the whole thing looking like it’s touch and go for him.
Just to make certainty doubly sure, today, he announced a few more little sweeties to make sure the voters troop out and do their duty by the Party: minimum wage earners will get a “top up” courtesy of our taxes, though of course this will be portrayed by Labour’s Elfish Little Weasels as yet another example of the way Muscat’s heart bleeds for the little man, as if he personally had forked out the cash rather than you and I.
If you want a real measure of the man, consider what he thought was worth summoning the ladies and gentlemen of the press for a few days ago: a saving of two miserable euro cents on a litre of fuel, a stunt that even the Little Weasels found almost impossible to fathom. To my mind, it’s clear how Muscat thinks: chuck them a few peanuts, poor little monkeys, and they’ll roll over and wave their legs in the air for you.