A billboard on the way to Gozo proclaims: ‘Making Malta great’. This billboard is an excellent call for reflection and action but it is in the wrong place. It should have perhaps been placed on the way to Mnajdra and Ħaġar Qim to extol the virtues of these islands’ inhabitants 5,000 long years ago, when they were building our unique temples in a venture that would be difficult even with today’s technologies.

If not in the picturesque village of Qrendi, this billboard should perhaps have been placed on the way to Tarxien or Xagħra, in Gozo, next to Ġgantija.

Why not at Valletta’s entrance? The Knights of St John bequeathed us our walled capital and, in 2012, we made it a fitting cultural capital of Europe for 2018 after a long 25-year-long renewal programme from tip to toe; from the new Parliament House to St John’s Co-Cathedral, from Palace Square to Fort St Elmo’s regeneration, using EU funds.

If not Valletta, this billboard would not go amiss on the way to the Gozo citadel, lately restored. EU funds, we were told, would only be €2.3 million, turning out to be €2,500 million of excellent investment in making Malta a truly European and modern nation with an infrastructure to match.

In my career as a publisher, I have depicted an abundance of what makes Malta great and what can make it even greater: the churches at the core of our quaint villages, our majestic Grand Harbour, the restoration projects embarked upon by the government and the private sector, the chapels dotting our countryside, the vineyards and farmland that manage (barely) to keep speculation at bay, the cleanest bays in Europe thanks to new wastewater treatment plants, our garigue, which indigenous species call home, the grand old houses taken care of by generation after generation of their proud owners.

Going by the latest bout of scandals, an excellent idea for a new billboard is ‘Making Malta stink’

But as we debate ever higher buildings and the pillage of virgin land, as public discourse is repeatedly dominated by corrupt scandal after corrupt scandal, as our environment institutions are divided and diminished, this is a very apt time for an appreciation of what we have inherited from our ancestors and what we are going to hand down to future generations.

The past was not without its mistakes but two wrongs cannot be allowed to make a right; they’re only doubly wrong.

Will the billboard declaring ‘Making Malta great’ be in its rightful place next to the huge towers we will soon have in all kinds of areas? Some were surreptitiously added to accommodate obvious interests. The weakening of our planning and environment public institutions is certainly not making Malta great, though, of course, the towers to be built will be huge.

I will have to mention my home town, Sliema, where a once elegant town is becoming a tower jungle and a traffic nightmare. Other zones of Malta will not be spared in the slippery slope of increasing heights.

Are we making Malta great in Żonqor? The billboard there would only be able to speak of pure speculation on the pretext of a college bestowed the description of ‘university’ after a change in the law lowering our tertiary education standards. Universities do not need views and berthing places for boats; only the logic of speculation does. And how long will it be before the Jordanian speculator asks for more storeys?

Perhaps we’re making Malta great by licensing all kinds of building illegalities against a payment to the government. The signal is now obvious: build illegally now, get approval later; the payment will only be peanuts compared to the increase in value.

One can write a treatise on the harm such a policy does to the environment and to our built-up areas but it is also a fundamental unfairness towards those who abide by the rules only to see others’ illegalities approved through institutionalised corruption: paying the State a ‘tip’ to approve what was and still is clearly illegal.

Going by the latest bout of scandals – medical visas are now all the rage – an excellent idea for a new billboard is ‘Making Malta stink’. Will the ‘Making Malta great’ billboard ring true next to Café Premier, in Old Mint Street of Gaffarena fame, in the midst of Australia Hall gifted to Labour, next to government departments (not just ministries) employing hundreds of people in positions of trust, close to Identity Malta and visa scams, at the new power station to supply electricity at an inflated price for all of 18 years, by our embassies abroad staffed by the cream of positions of trust and, in one case, by a convicted criminal, in Azerbaijan, Panama City, next to Castile, or at the police headquarters where ‘See no evil’ is the order of the day?

Making Malta great? It takes much more than a billboard.

eddiea@onvol.net

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