A man yesterday started the legal process he hopes will lead to a declaration that the residents' parking schemes in 19 localities are discriminatory.
Joseph Borg and his wife Maria Victoria filed a judicial protest in the First Hall of the Civil Court against Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, Transport Minister Austin Gatt and the Malta Transport Authority (ADT).
Through his lawyer Tonio Azzopardi, Mr Borg is calling on the court to declare that residents' parking schemes approved by the ADT, which came into force through a legal notice, discriminated between citizens who pay their road tax to the same authority.
He called on the authorities to withdraw the legal notice and any other regulation which discriminates between residents and non-residents.
Mr Borg originally began his legal battle against the scheme in 2001 when he contested a parking ticket in Pietà and obtained a court judgment saying these parking schemes were discriminatory.
In 2007, Judge Lino Farrugia Sacco had upheld Mr Borg's case and ruled that councils had no legal remit to implement such schemes on their own initiative.
To counter this, the ADT last month issued a legal notice with a full list of roads and localities where the residents' parking scheme was allowed.
But Mr Justice Farrugia Sacco had also ruled that the creation of reserved parking zones could be justified as a security measure, or on humanitarian grounds, but the law did not give councils the power to discriminate between residents and non-residents, especially in view of the fact people who paid the same road tax were entitled to the same rights.
On the strength of this judgement, confirmed at an appeals stage, Mr Borg filed the judicial protest as the first step before opening a fully-fledged court case on the issue.
"By distinguishing between residents and non-residents, the legal notice is discriminating between two groups of people who pay a single road tax to the same authority," Mr Borg insists in his judicial protest.
Mr Borg goes on to say that although his previous court case was against the Pietà council, the principle remained unchanged: that neither the councils nor the authority could give preferential treatment to residents of one locality over residents of another locality.
He said if the authorities did not withdraw the legal notice, he would pursue another court case calling on the court to declare the schemes "abusive and illegal".
In Sliema the scheme has turned out to be the most controversial and when introduced it would translate into 50 per cent of parking spaces being reserved for residents in all the town's 117 streets. The initiative was met with a chorus of disapproval, the first to complain being business owners and hoteliers.
In the latest development, Parliamentary Secretary Mario de Marco has taken an initiative to exempt tourists staying in Sliema hotels from the controversial parking scheme if they are driving a rented car.
Dr de Marco launched discussions with the ADT in an effort to exempt tourists driving hired cars from the residential parking rules.
"The idea behind the discussions is that a tourist residing in a Sliema hotel and making use of a rented vehicle should be considered as a Sliema resident for the duration of his stay in that hotel," he had said.
Mr Borg will be drawing up a petition to gain moral support from people over the court case and called on other citizens to join him.
mxuereb@timesofmalta.com