Election time brought miracles with it. The Mepa Auditor rapped Mepa twice on the knuckles for taking bad decisions and the Prime Minister accepted his report. Maybe the Prime Minister caring about the natural environment and our open spaces before the election was a move to win the voters who are afraid of losing what little we have left of the natural environment. Maybe the case of Mistra and Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando is getting so big that the Nationalist Party appears to be clean in its dealings with the natural environment. Maybe Jeffrey will be the sacrificial lamb or scapegoat. Ok, ok, I can hear you saying: JPO is not exactly a lamb.

But anyhow, I hope that this interest in protecting our natural heritage is continued throughout the next five years. If we look at the past five years, we see that it was the environmentalists who tried to protect the natural environment not Mepa or the government.

So I hope the Prime Minister means what he says about Mepa. Caring about the environment is not only disposing wisely of waste, or rehabilitating what has been ruined, although this is highly important. It means first and foremost protecting what we have left.

I do not want to think that the picture on the electoral manifesto of the Nationalist Party is symbolic of what it will do in the next five years. The girl holds a crown of daisy flowers in her hands, a plant of a disturbed habitat. Please protect too what is still pristine.

Joe Portelli

NADUR