Do you fancy seeing a much larger-than-life Joseph Muscat on your commute every morning? Are you relishing the prospect of continuing to study Konrad Mizzi’s profile while stuck in traffic? Think you’ll miss the massive Keith Schembri visage on the now ubiquitous ‘Barra’ billboards?

Fear not. The Nationalist Party has provisionally won this round in the all-important battle of the billboards.

Earlier this month, the government published a legal notice stating that anybody who wanted to set up a billboard should pay a licence fee of €1,500 a year. Political parties are exempted from paying this fee for the three months prior to a general election.

You would think that it is quite a reasonable regulation. Why shouldn’t there be some standardised form of regulation for these huge, landscape-blotting struc­tures? Why shouldn’t there be an autho­rity to ensure that they are not placed in a position that may cause danger to others, or that they aren’t too obtrusive, or that they aren’t offensive or just bland? And why shouldn’t planning regulations be observed by all? And if private undertakings and businesses are to abide by the rules and pay the relevant licence fees, why should political parties not be required to do the same thing?

I would have thought that the above would be the logical conclusions of any party professing to want an improvement to the urban environment. Not for the PN though. It views the laying down of a licence fee as a terrible imposition, and having to conform to laws like everybody else as an unbearable gag on the right to the party’s freedom of expression.

We are told that the party will not give up the fight and will continue on its mission to litter the island with bill­boards, to the highest court of the land – possibly to infinity and beyond. And it is not keen to pay the necessary permit fee – deemed ‘prohibitive’ for the party.

The two main political parties claim to find regulation and enforcement unacceptable only when they are the ones having to obey the law

The odd thing about all this is that not so very long ago – in April a couple of years ago, the PN was getting very hot and bothered about the proliferation of billboards everywhere. Nationalist MP Anthony Bezzina had stood up in Parlia­ment and vociferously demanded to know what the (Labour) minister was doing to stop the proliferation of these billboards, why the necessary regulatory framework wasn’t in place and who was benefitting financially from them.

Now that something is being done to have these eyesores regulated the PN is claiming it is being discriminated against and unfairly picked upon, and that it shouldn’t have to abide by the rules like mere mortals. In other words, it should qualify for special treatment in the eyes of the law because it is a political party.

And as there is nothing new under the sun – especially in Maltese politics – in taking legal action demanding prefe­rential treatment, the PN is simply fol­low­ing in the steps of the Labour Party.

In 2010, the Labour Party had done exactly the same thing the Nationalist Party is doing now – contesting the removal and regulation of its dangerously placed and unregulated billboard by saying that the Planning Authority was denying the Labour Party of its right of free expression, and that removing the billboards would be a breach of the Constitution and the European convention. The Labour Party was successful in obtaining a stay of execution for its billboards then – as was the PN last week.

These incidents highlight the fact that in local politics the end result is always the same.

The two main political parties claim to find regulation and enforcement unacceptable only when they are the ones having to obey the law. It is only then that they find the strictures of the law as being too harsh and the imposition of fees too prohibitive. It’s as if they are the only two entities worthy of prefe­rential treatment – as if they enjoy a special standing in the eyes of the law.

The end result is detrimental to the country as we are lumped with unen­forceable laws, a jungle of disorderly and aesthetically questionable billboards and an uneven playing field tilted to favour the political parties over ordinary citi­zens. I don’t know whether that merits a sarcastic ‘Suċċess’ or a resounding ‘Barra’.

cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt