In Greek mythology the Hydra was a fearsome monster that guarded the entrance to the underworld endowed with poisonous breath and many regenerating heads. The Hydra was killed by Hercules as one of his labours. One cannot but admire the way he did it, proving that there was more to him than just brawn. Hercules got his nephew to burn the stumps of each head as he struck them off making it impossible for them to re-grow. Rather clever that, wasn't it?

As the returning Prime Minister struggles with our own home-grown monster called Mepa he is reminding me less and less of Hercules and more and more of poor Laocoon being devoured, along with his sons, by the serpents sent by Poseidon.

What the Prime Minister really needs is more than just the brawn of Hercules to wrestle with this Hydra and win. The situation is now so dire that a Deus ex macchina is urgently wanted to extricate Lawrence Gonzi from being besmirched with more mire especially after it was revealed in another paper that there was a pre-electoral promise to the squatters of Armier to regularise their sprawling shanty town made by none other than the Prime Minister himself. Frankly, after the JPO business and the strange and eerie hiatus in which we are living, it appears that the monster who is strong with the weak and weak with the strong is choking not only the citizens of this country but also the Prime Minister and the Cabinet to boot as they are simply unable to shake off its all pervasive and poisonous breath.

This national building obsession we have stems from the mentality that each and every one of us should and must be a property owner as it is property and only property that is the one sure investment that has guaranteed steady capital growth since the boom of the 1960s. It was precisely this boom that set the ball rolling and transformed this island from one rather backward and deprived colony into a prosperous republic. In the last four decades the depredations on our urban and rural environment had far outweighed the cost of our being little Croesuses in our own idyllic microcosm. The cost has been and will continue to be horrific.

The realisation that we have practically ruined our environment did not deter the authorisation of the infamous ODZ extensions a couple of years ago, one of the most controversial and unwise moves the PN government ever made. This move, which could have been left well alone, got the proverbial excrement to hit the fan and engendered such a deep and ever-growing opprobrium for Mepa that the Prime Minister promised to adopt it under his own personal wing prior the election. So, the monster arrived in Auberge de Castille along with the totally unforeseen, utterly disconcerting and still unresolved JPO debacle. Just like the Hydra, the Mepa monster is re-growing its heads at the rate of knots as scandal after scandal and abuse after abuse hits the papers. I have said it before and I will say it again, I would not be in the Prime Minister's shoes for all the coffee in Brazil, especially now that we have been told that he was directly implicated in a pre-electoral promise to glorified squatters that goes totally against the grain.

So what hope is there if, from the most eminently successful plutocrat of a property developer to the little man with his two-roomed summer shanty in Armier, the rank and file of Malta is hell-bent on developing every square centimetre of land till the last blade of grass will exist only in some lucky bloke's roof-garden? With the government itself selling off its assets, what chance is there that the landscapes depicted in Nicholas de Piro's International Dictionary Of Artists Who Painted Malta will become but precious memories of a Malta that once was? As our piles of gold heap up in front of the great god Mammon we will, one day, sure as eggs are eggs, be forced to try and eat that gold just like Midas with the inevitable result that we will all die a long, painful and lingering death by starvation.

So, as we wait in watchful hope for the MLP to come to its senses and elect a leader who can change its ideology and image around completely, a vital development after having been clobbered electorally for the umpteenth time, we will, by the time the next election comes along, expect that the present Prime Minister will have effectively tamed the Mepa monster. It cannot be killed but it can only be controlled. Malta and his wife are sick and tired of it. The very word has become repugnant; its connotations are utterly odious!

The Prime Minister's situation is parallel to that of Odysseus sailing between Scylla and Charybdis: Should he clampdown on permits too harshly he would create an economic slowdown that would fuel resentment and send the developers both great and small scurrying into the arms of the opposition, if and when it is formed. Should he allow the abuses to proliferate then he will face the music played by the environmentalist lobby and the floaters next time around. Not a pleasant prospect.

Should the Prime Minister try to compromise he may have a chance to slow down the erosion of our country and gain the support of the environmental NGOs. However, I doubt whether the 2008 electoral hat-trick can be pulled off ever again.

Conversely, to gain and retain electoral support, the MLP will, in the next five years, have to compromise itself to the hilt and, if and when it comes to power; have to fulfill many an unwise and ill-judged electoral promise, which will make even more of a total Horlicks of the mess-up that already exists. What can Odysseus Gonzi do? What can the environmentalists do? What do the floaters do? To be honest I am stumped.

There is, sadly, not much hope for us at all.

kzt@onvol.net