That storm last week was quite a relief for those out for a bit of sanity in this country. There’s nothing like a good cyclone to remind us that Mother Nature is there to stay, no matter how much we try to destroy it down here.
An optimist would say that the campaign launched by Din l-Art Ħelwa, ‘Save the Countryside’, could not have been timed better. A realist would say that they are wasting time and money, as was the NGO’s open letter to Prime Minister Joseph Muscat a few days ago.
All six of Din l-Art Ħelwa’s serving and former presidents told the Prime Minister in the most cordial of ways to ensure that his legacy is not the rapid degradation of the built and rural environment. They also expressed concern at the fact that the government has no proper Strategic Plan for the Environment and Development.
In their Save the Countryside campaign, they want to inspire people to take action to conserve the Maltese countryside and the biodiversity it sustains.
Have these people just fallen off the moon? There is Labour in government and the sooner they realise that, the better.
Courteous, refined, diplomatic talk does not work with Labour. This is not a normal or a responsible government. It’s a free for all out there, so long as you give Labour your vote.
The proposal for three hotels on land outside the development zone, stretching all the way from Smart City to Marsascala, is just the latest assault on what is left of this country. The plan includes a promenade and a beach club, all on public land. This country is being ransacked.
It was the government’s privatisation unit that came up with the idea but the brains behind it, if that is what you call them, is the chairman of the Consultative Council for the South, Labour MP Silvio Parnis.
Until only a short time ago, Parnis was talking about the possibility of people “in the south” turning their homes into bed & breakfasts, a move he claimed would regenerate the economy.
But in between organising a ‘Trip to Lourdes with Silvio Parnis’, trips to Costa Brava and Barcelona and, for the less adventurous, a day to Comino or even a humble coffee morning at the Gondolier Hall in Tarxien, Parnis has found time to meet the Malta Developers Association.
There was no talk of B&Bs at that meeting but of the creation of “new fronts” to regenerate the south. Exactly what three hotels on generally pristine land do to regeneration is incomprehensible. The developers association’s president likes the idea, and that is enough to go by, at least by Labour’s standards. Din l-Art Ħelwa wants to believe there is responsible government with a strategic plan.
Labour’s sidekick, the General Workers’ Union newspaper l-Orizzont, had given a warning of this in September when it spoke of a multi-million tourist project in the north that would be “one of the biggest investments” ever.
Then somewhere hidden in that report was a reference to another big project for the south. Now either the newspaper got its geography wrong, or we are all in for another shock soon.
Parnis’s role as a chairman for the south is fallacious. There is no such thing as the south (it is not even geographically correct). There is just a huge Labour base in that working class Grand Harbour region that needs to be placated, included Parnis himself.
It is not the building of hotels, even of “iconic” buildings as suggested by the privatisation unit, that will get the so-called south out of the doldrums. Hotels will not bring jobs to the area if there is no trained and educated workforce; unless that is, Parnis is thinking of hotel chambermaids, in which case he should consult a colleague from the south, the esteemed Transport Minister Joe Mizzi. He knows all about employing cleaners.
The proposal of giving public land between Smart City and Marsascala on a 99-year emphyteutical grant in return for a “modest” cash injection, is tantamount to rape.
The proposal for three hotels on land outside development zone, stretching from Smart City to Marsascala, is just the latest assault on what is left of this country. This country is being ransacked
People who lived the Gold Years of Labour would recall that the idea of linking up Marsascala to Kalkara was already being bandied around back then. At that time we had Lorry Sant who could change the building schemes at will.
Labour in government is simply picking up where Sant left off in 1987. His ghost is back to haunt us.
We all know where this hotels idea is coming from. The Prime Minister is under the illusion that the sight of three hotels along our southern coast would be a sign of progress, that much has he been awed by the high-rise buildings in Dubai.
The privatisation unit even claims that an iconic building in Marsascala would “symbolise a truly romantic Mediterranean backdrop”.
There is nothing romantic about an iconic building on the edge of a former fishing village. The charm of the ‘south’, for want of a better word, is that people there are generally less refined, but more open, and having lived there most of my life, I would add, more honest.
In his babbling on Facebook, Parnis says the south has been denied the progress of the north because of neglectful Nationalist governments. The south is the industrial base of the island, and if anything, it suffers from too much development.
But like Muscat, Parnis thinks it is glitzy buildings that symbolise progress.
On this minuscule island, geography does not come into whether the population of a region progresses or not.
If someone from the south wants a job in a hotel, and has the qualifications, there are plenty of them up north. But he would need the qualifications, and that is probably where the problem lies – education.
To try to convince Labour’s hardcore that building hotels closer to home would make any difference to their lives is disingenuous. It would just create an illusion to make them feel, momentarily, that they are living among the Dubai stars Muscat has been promising them.
Labour is only fooling its people and it shall pay a heavy price for this because it has abandoned all principles, and that will bring the ruin of the party. Muscat’s globe-trotting to sell passports that don’t belong to him, or his wife’s colourful appearances, like to open a wedding fair, will not compensate for the betrayal of the working class Labour is supposed to represent.
In another open letter to the Prime Minister this weekend, a group of left-leaning individuals, including socialist stalwart Sammy Meilaq and former party leader Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, have appealed to Labour to change its course and return to its fundamental values and aims, most especially social justice. A special reference was made to Labour’s relationship with the construction industry.
For Muscat’s metamorphosed Labour, government is about power, not values. Anything else just gets in the way.
Successive Nationalist governments have created what should be autonomous regulatory bodies, but failed miserably in ensuring their independence.
This was the PN’s biggest failure in government: to create a culture that recognises the rule of law, and not a rule where laws are negotiable through patronage.
The shambles of what remains of the planning authority and the hotels proposal is a perfect example of how Labour can easily override those very public bodies that are meant to keep it in check.
PN leader Simon Busuttil’s strong stand against nepotism is his best stand to date, especially since it goes against the local colonial mentality that is happy with a nanny government that compromises on everything.
Now what the PN needs to do is come up with clear proposals on how they will eradicate this shameful cronyism and ensure that it never happens again. A smaller government and truly autonomous public agencies that are constantly scrutinised by, and answerable to, a parliamentary committee and not a minister, is the way ahead.
In the meantime we shall have to put up with the likes of Parnis and Muscat and their infantile projects of a Dubai in the Mediterranean and iconic buildings at Żonqor point.
People from Marsascala would tell you that Żonqor point is one hell of a fishing spot, at least it used to be in my childhood.
A nice day out fishing off those rugged rocks at Żonqor beats any iconic hotel anytime, because that is what being from the ‘south’ is all about.