The impending St Helen project in Cospicua, which will see historic buildings demolished to make way for social housing, is Maltese politics in a nutshell, and why a third party presence in Parliament is so desperately needed.
One wonders how a project conceived under a Nationalist administration, with an approved planning permit for 56 residences (and no less than 120 garages!), is suddenly on the cards again, having met with raised eyebrows from the Labour’s Opposition benches first time round. Because now, instead of scrapping the project wholesale, the Labour government is forging ahead, oblivious to the fact that they faulted it when the Nationalists thought it rather good.
But perhaps it wasn’t so good after all, seeing that the project never saw the light of day. You could even argue that the Nationalist Party had the good sense not to follow its own thinking. And perhaps that was due in part to a number of valid questions and reservations raised by Labour MP Stefan Buontempo during a Parliamentary sitting in 2011.
Among other things, Buontempo had queried the height and number of these residential units and whether they would be in harmony with the existing character of the locality. More pertinent still, he wanted to know whether archaeological and geological research had been carried out in an area rich in historical remains (an underground Byzantine chapel, for instance); and whether a social impact assessment of pertinent issues relating to Cospicua’s urban environment had been executed.
This is an area where social housing has long been an issue, and where its challenging effects have been felt for many years. There are other concerns too: traffic management and parking in an area pre-dating motor traffic and crying out for pedestrianisation.
Fast forward a few years. Although there is every reason to believe that the only thing that has changed since 2011 is the government, it seems that Buontempo’s – and by extension the Labour Party’s – reservations have magically disappeared. The project, it seems, will be going ahead regardless.
How exactly does that happen, I wonder? How can you ever be a ‘listening’ government if you never tell people what is going on? How can you hear if you don’t want to listen?
Yes, I do believe that the time is ripe for a new party, whatever people say about wasted votes
All this would be farcical if it weren’t so tragic. This is the sort of thing I have absolutely no patience for and why I believe that Malta’s soul has slowly but surely been eroded by the gnawing worm of the two-party system of politics. And it’s also why Malta has come to resemble a permanently shabby and dusty construction site, and why traffic will only get worse; and why one day decent tourists will stop coming here.
The only hope of putting an end to the unchecked arrogance of the PL and PN monoliths is by creating a situation where either party will have no choice but to enter into a coalition with another party. Then, and only then, will there be some sort of democratic check on the excesses of the ‘one size fits all’ model of politics that we misguidedly endorse and enable.
You see, as things stand now, whether Labour or Nationalist are in power, there are many people who don’t feel they are being adequately represented by either, whose voices, ideas and ideologies remain unheard, unvalued and ignored. Consequently there is a huge squandering of individual talent – the John Vellas of Malta, for one. I just happened to read about him a few weeks ago (‘Cospicua man battles to save historic buildings’, Times of Malta, May 13), and he got me thinking.
The Cospicua case, like the demolitions and projected towers in Sliema, St Julian’s and St George’s Bay, and the Sunderland House demolition in St Paul’s Bay, raise many doubts, and not just about the wisdom of bringing more people into an area already recognised officially as crowded, and whose decayed infrastructure is even now barely coping. High-end or low-end, it doesn’t seem to matter very much.
Replacing those historic buildings in Cospicua with social housing is particularly distressing, because the area is still authentic and beginning only now to get back on its feet. It has been treated for too long as Vittoriosa’s ugly sister. But take a walk down the unvisited quaint alleys and once-noble streets of the Santa Teresa and Santa Margerita areas and you will begin to think differently.
Yes – think! I believe there are many thinking people from all walks of life – from the highest levels of academia at the University to free-thinking men and women of simple goodwill and common sense at the corner of every street – who know a great deal more about local, national, historical, cultural and environmental issues than any of our marauding politicians and their cronies.
Who is the PA to decide that Sunderland House does not have any historical or architectural features worth preserving?
It is extraordinary that these things are still being allowed to happen – that in the face of so much protest, politicians don’t pause to consider the implications.
Yes, I do believe that the time is ripe for a new party, whatever people say about wasted votes. So potent is the two-party system in Malta that we have been for too long scared into believing that there’s no point voting for a party that can’t possibly win an election. And that is why we’re left with a second-rate tit-for-tat system. Debate thereafter is stifled and alternative independent thinking ignored.
So in the next few weeks at the latest, Partit Demokratiku really must come up with some brilliantly innovative proposals. Rants, pious platitudes and feel-good soundbites will not cut it if they are to make any inroads.
It will not be easy to break the mould, let alone get timid people to vote positively and not tactically. They could do worse than address head-on the feeding-frenzy of development (masquerading as national ‘prosperity’) that is set to destroy our urban heritage.
michelaspiteri@gmail.com