What happened on Thursday was a reminder, if any were needed, that we are now living in the Age of Sandro and Silvio. It makes you weep to think that however much construction madness there may be all over the place, it is never enough. Some people will always come back for more and bigger helpings, and they will invariably get their way.

If this sounds despondent, it is. At a time like this, it’s hard not to feel that you’re going around in circles. It’s not easy to say anything that hasn’t already been said, a thousand times, uselessly. Like money, words and actions can suffer inflation and end up losing all or most of their value. By this analogy, anything we say about over-development in Malta is the Zimbabwean dollar, ca. 2008.

Still, if readers will take my $100 trillion banknote for a few minutes, there is actually something to say about why the planning process has completely failed us. The time has come I think for politicians in power to all but decommission the various experts and accept responsibility for big planning decisions. If this sounds mad, bear with me.

First, a caveat. I’m not about to suggest that it is the Prime Minister’s job to go through the stacks of applications for washroom extensions, garage ramps and suchlike. What I have in mind are mega-projects of the Pembroke kind – projects, that is, that propose to profoundly change the living conditions of thousands of people.

On Thursday, even as the experts and the public slugged it out in an overcrowded and stuffy school hall, the Prime Minister was in Salzburg, doing the handshake rounds at an EU meeting. That’s rightfully part of his brief, of course, but the point is that, on such an important occasion for the people who elected him, he was physically and symbolically distant. He was, as they say, away.

The only politicians around were Godfrey Farrugia and Jesmond Mugliett. The latter I’d say we had seen quite enough of, to put it politely. Born-again with a sturdier than ever brass neck, he told journalists that the project would create “interesting” urban spaces. The building itself would be of “exceptional quality”, an “iconic landmark” that would do great things for the environment in Pembroke. I wish I could say he surprised me.   

The planning process has been emptied of its real meaning by a smokescreen of experts and expertise

The Prime Minister was not alone in his absence. I’m not aware that any government ministers have had anything much to say about the project. Funnily enough, it seems that politicians have come to believe, and help us believe, that over-development just happens.

For example, Evarist Bartolo, who is not exactly the bluntest knife in the drawer, said the other day that we are “living in a pressure cooker”. True enough, but he seemed to have forgotten that it’s in large measure the government he’s part of that’s piling up the pressure.

This may seem unfair, precisely because Thursday’s approval and similar ones appear to have nothing to do with government. The people who voted for it were not government ministers but the board members of the Planning Authority. Their decision was not political. Rather, it was based on impact assessments, technical reports, and so on.  

People who were at the meeting and whose word I trust told me that they felt quite at a loss what to make of it. It was a sort of death by a thousand technical cuts. Many of the participants felt overwhelmed by the sheer bulk of expert data on matters like floor space ratios and shrimps of special scientific value. To the extent that, when the time came for them to speak, they felt like a footnote. They also felt that it was a mise en scène, because the real decision had already been taken elsewhere.

I know the feeling. That’s because, sadly, the present government does not have a monopoly on charades of this kind. Nor did it invent them. Several years ago I attended a public hearing on the Ħondoq ir-Rummien yacht marina. If my memory serves me well, it was held at the primary school in Qala. I do not doubt my memory as far as the form and content are concerned: I remember feeling I had stumbled on a comedy of the first order.

To paraphrase the environmentalist and author Paul Kingsnorth, we have torpedoed ourselves with facts and figures. The planning process – and I refer specifically to mega-projects here – has been emptied of its real meaning by a smokescreen of experts and expertise.

Meanwhile, the truth is elsewhere. On Thursday, it happened to be a couple of thousand miles away, in Salzburg. The Prime Minister may have been away, but he was there at the Pembroke hearing all along.

I’m not necessarily saying that the PA board members who voted in favour of the project are his stooges and rubber stamps. I am saying that the real planning decisions are made of a long-term political project that parades development and construction as the one and only Good News, and Sandro and Silvio as its bringers. The PA board members have no choice but to work within, and with, that Gospel truth.

A fairly cretinous man who spoke at Thursday’s meeting said as much. As he put it, we need such projects ‘għal uliedna, u ulied uliedna’ (‘for our children, and children’s children’). It’s the exact rhetoric peddled not by the experts and impact assessments, but by politicians.

Thus my suggestion that the least the Prime Minister could do is to jettison the Banquo’s ghost model (away, but very much there) and assume responsibility for major planning decisions. The thing with politicians is, they can be voted out. That’s infinitely more practical and exciting than sitting in a stuffy room listening to expert luminaries the likes of the reincarnated Jesmond Mugliett.

mafalzon@hotmail.com