It took a young Italian couple to remind this country what a mess it is in. They got so desperate to get out that they stormed onto the airport apron to stop an aeroplane from leaving them behind. They ended up in court, of course, because this country is so law-abiding and justice so blind that they had to learn that we are all equal before the law. Some think otherwise.

As is normal in a banana republic like Azerbaijan, here in Malta there are those who win and those who lose, and yes, those who win a lot too. But like the traffic chaos that caused those Italians to miss their flight, the sense of injustice many feel is really just a perception, or so Parliamentary Secretary Michael Falzon wishes us to believe.

Falzon claims the Gaffarena saga left him unfazed. He said that at a State-funded event called ‘A government that listens’. The irony that he spoke of the waste of public funds by a department he is responsible for at a propaganda event likewise funded by taxpayers probably escapes him.

Falzon thinks there is nothing to the Gaffarena debacle because it is just the result of “envy and hatred” from people he helped in the past. What sort of help that was, he thankfully spared us. Some of us have sensitive stomachs.

Falzon and Labour are learning that political patronage cuts both ways. When you appease one, 20 others are vexed. That explains why Falzon last week promised that government will compensate anyone whose property was expropriated over the years, up to €50,000.

It was a damage control exercise, an escape clause for Labour MPs facing the wrath of Labour voters still awaiting a cushy job with the government because they think it is their right accrued after Labour corrupted our democratic electoral system.

Labour has corrupted democracy because it has no values. Now it must ransack the country to pay back the many electoral promises it made. The bill for that is rising, with debt increasing by half a billion euros after two glorious Labour years in government. Nevertheless, not all is lost. There is increasing awareness that government and its cronies are there to serve, and not to be served.

When the planning authority chief executive appeared in front of the House Environment Committee to answer why on earth the organisation he heads thinks that an ODZ site in Marsascala “merits further consideration” as a location of a pseudo-university, he was more than once re-minded that his salary came from taxpayer money.

Mepa CEO Johann Buttigieg put up a respectable show at that hearing, until Opposition leader Simon Busuttil walked in. Busuttil has given up the nice guy approach, has taken off the gloves. He gives no quarter to a government that has degenerated to 1980s levels, bar the political violence.

Buttigieg appeared stunned when Busuttil accused him of actually being the one to propose Żonqor Point.

“You are paid from people’s taxes,” Busuttil reminded the Mepa CEO.

Labour MP Marlene Farrugia was even more explicit when she too reminded Buttigieg of his duties: “Your responsibility is to the people, to those who pay your salary. Tell the government that ODZ is out of bounds.”

But paying taxes is clearly not enough to ensure that the supposedly independent public authorities would serve their true purpose of defending the common good, even in the face of an autocratic government.

Buttigieg got his terms of reference to identify a site for a sham university from the Office of the Prime Minister. He delivered as he was asked to do, nothing more, nothing less.

When asked what sort of autonomy Mepa had, considering it was there to protect the environment not propose its destruction, Buttigieg turned technical.

He said the directorate he headed was separate from the planning authority, which in its decisions agreed or disagreed with the directorate’s recommendations.

“The government allocates a budget to the authority to provide it with services, including the preparation of reports,” Buttigieg told the parliamentary committee in his defence.

That money, he should have been reminded, comes from taxpayers and not from the Prime Minister. But it would have been useless telling that to Buttigieg.

He is the product of the old school that is Labour. Mepa is a lost cause. It has betrayed the people it is paid to protect.

It will take much political courage and maturity to get the country out of this decadent rut. The Nationalist Party, which set up Mepa, has much to answer for because it never ensured its true autonomy. Mepa, with all the power it yields, became easy prey for Labour.

Good governance means empowerment of the individual, who asserts his rights and not begs for them

The country is now paying the price for that PN failure because there is no defence left from the Prime Minister’s megalomania and his infantile delusion that progress means big buildings, Dubai-style.

The Saturday protest in Valletta was impressive, not by the size of the crowd, but because it reflected a growing public consciousness that a government is there to serve and not to be served, that power is not absolute, even if boosted by a fickle 36,000-vote advantage that is receding.

The real issue here is not about the environment – it is about true democracy.

It is about the size of government, a government that is far too big and must be slashed down to a minimum.

It is about citizen’s rights, rights best served not by a liberal ideology that patronises and compartmentalises minorities like gays and hunters to reap their votes, but by conservative politics that protects individuals, whoever and whatever they are, from the excesses of government.

This can only be achieved through independent institutions that protect citizens from government excesses, because government, by nature, is a drain on our freedom and on our money.

Government is a necessary evil that must be restrained at every stage, most especially when you have the likes of Joseph Muscat who, as his predecessor Dom Mintoff, thinks the country is a fiefdom.

The one hope left is the increasingly assertive and confident PN leader who last Saturday on national radio, promised to publish a package of ‘good governance’ proposals.

Busuttil’s challenge is not to promise a better government than this Labour lot, that is easy, but to propose a leaner government to an electorate that is still plagued by colonial pestilence.

True good governance must exclude the patronage system institutionalised by Labour in the guise of customer care and which produces the likes of Gaffarena. Good governance means empowerment of the individual, who asserts his rights and not begs for them, and who wants to protect the environment not because of a sea view, but because he wants the best for his children.

To avoid a repetition of this Labour chaos and this nation-wide plundering, there is an urgent need for true autonomous institutions to protect individuals. Mepa’s CEO, unwittingly, showed the way.

He would not have answered that way and acted as a smokescreen to an oppressive government, had he owed his job to the parliamentary committee that sat before him. The heads of independent public institutions like Buttigieg should be appointed by, vetted, grilled and answerable to, a parliamentary committee and not to government.

It will empower and protect people like Buttigieg to say no to government. Buttigieg made a fairly good show at that parliamentary committee hearing, but he was the fall guy.

What a better performance he would have made had he been answerable to that same parliamentary committee to whom he would owe his loyalty, they being the people’s representatives.

In the meantime, until Labour remains in government, all is suspect. Given that Mepa is moribund, the starting point to any ‘common sense compromise’ that shall be offered on Żonqor Point by the Prime Minister should be... no, there will be no quarter.

The site selection is suspect, so everything is suspect. That is common sense.