I am a great fan of telling it as it is and ‘what you see is what you get’ behaviour. I understand that a degree of civility is required for people to get along, but I cannot relate to people who interact with others under totally false pretences. I would think it is far simpler to let others know where they stand in your regard, rather than taking them for a ride.
In this respect, I cannot figure out why the Labour government keeps up the charade of pretending to listen to civil society and environmental NGOs. It is very clear – to me at least – that the government holds the environmental movement in utter contempt. The environmental sector is perceived to be a useless, non-money-making area championed by impossibly idealistic people who are not hard-nosed realists (like our Labour ministers).
The feeling I get is that the Prime Minister occasionally makes a nod towards the environmental movement, while he goes ahead with his agenda or road map – the one where environmental considerations do not feature at all. So we might get the odd twig-planting ceremony – but it is followed by the designation of great swathes of land for construction and speculation purposes.
And there may be an unsustainable project that Mepa turns down but it will be the swallow that doesn’t make the summer, with Mepa (which is essentially made up of government appointees) approving dozens of spectacularly unsuitable projects for every one it turns down. The emphasis is always on more construction and destruction of green areas.
And we may have a Minister for the Environment whose heart is in the right place, but it’s not as if the Prime Minister takes any notice of him.
At this point, we may just as well install Sandro Chetcuti or a Gaffarena as Minister for Perpetual Development. It would be an accurate reflection of reality and presumably we wouldn’t have to pay them.
Another move towards honesty would be doing away with these sham public consultation exercises which the government holds – the ones where trusting members of the public congregate under one of those plastic tents and waste their time making suggestions which will inevitably be ignored.
It is very clear – to me at least – that the government holds the environmental movement in utter contempt
Let us spare the costs of rigging up those plastic pagodas and simply recognise the fact that the approval for 99 per cent of ODZ projects is a fait accompli that Mepa will only rubberstamp development applications, that planning laws and policies are going to be amended solely for the benefit of the building lobby.
Late last Friday before last, the government published three Bills about the demerger of Mepa and environmental policy. The documents amounted to over 500 pages of text. However NGOs were not even given 24-hours’ notice of their opportunity to make submissions before the parliamentary debate had started. The debate will take place over the next weeks in the dog days of summer. The result will be an even more watered-down version of the controls (if there are any) on unfettered construction.
The whole exercise and the setting up of a new Resources Authority will be a futile exercise in the establishment of another toothless quango which will provide employment opportunities for government sycophants, and little else.
The whole going-through-the-motions thing could have been avoided by the simple expedient of changing the way that the decision-makers at Mepa are appointed. Eliminating political appointees would have gone some way towards instilling public confidence in the least trusted public entity in Malta. That’s the long and the short of it.
There is nothing overwhelmingly wrong with the structure of Mepa as it is – but the fact that the decision-makers are appointed by government lead observers to conclude that they reflect the government’s pro-development line.
Unless this aspect is addressed, we can have a thousand resource and environmental authorities and as many consultation exercises, but they will simply be more rounds of charades.
cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt