Astrid Vella’s moan-machine is grinding up again as the government begins to relax controls on construction of major projects in rural areas and village and town cores. What can I say? It’s too late, Astrid. You, your appearances on Super One TV, your megaphone and your horde of tal-pepe Laburisti and switchers are one of the reasons the Labour Party was elected to government and is now in a position to do this.

You may have thought your demonstrations and protests over the last few years were anti-construction and pro-environment, but they were invariably interpreted as anti-government, anti-Gonzi and used by the Labour Party as such. You should have seen this coming: it was Labour, not the Nationalist Party, which was in bed with construction magnates. They weren’t getting into bed with Labour for the sheer fun of it, but because this was the means to the end they wanted.

With the ongoing changes at the Environment and Planning Authority and the separation of environment from planning, and especially given what I have seen of the new Outside Development Zone Policy Document, there is going to be much, much more for Mrs Vella to get cross and squeaky about – but yes, it’s too late. She has inadvertently helped make it possible for the real abusers to get into a position where they can change the regulations and move the goalposts to allow their financial backers, friends and consorts to do pretty much what they please.

Does Astrid Vella imagine that Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando – ‘Green politician of the year’ – is going to join her on some march of protest against the Mistra Heights development? That he’s going to fling himself about in a holy rage and bounce off walls because of what has been approved for construction on that prominent ridge? Michael Farrugia, the parliamentary secretary responsible for the Mepa, is one of his closest friends. His lady companion was maid of honour at Pullicino Orlando’s wedding last year. And beyond that, Mrs Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando was sales and marketing director for the Mistra Heights project when it was still in its embryonic, non-approved stage. So if she worked on promoting it, then presumably she can’t have anything against it.

I am in two minds as to whether Mrs Vella should save her breath, go and lie down, and spare us all the sound of her voice, or whether she should actually do the opposite, and squeak and protest even louder against the gross actions of this government on the basis of ‘mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa’. But I don’t think she is even capable of seeing it that latter way. There are people who go through life doing and saying things, curiously detached and impervious to the fact that what they do and say has consequences, both direct and indirect. They will never think themselves to blame for anything.

 

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I am glad that lawyers are speaking out against the Police Commissioner’s fallacious arguments in defending, before the court and the media, his decision to sequester Norman Vella’s phone and laptop. Besides his own lawyers, human rights specialist Therese Comodini Cachia and Karol Aquilina, so far Andrew Borg Cardona (lots of people tend to forget he’s a specialist in employment law before he is a newspaper columnist), Joe Giglio and Roberto Montalto, both specialists in criminal law, have given their considered and expert views on television and to the newspapers. The Police Commissioner, they said, was wrong.

People in Malta are primed to take any sort of abuse from police officers, regarding them as the ultimate authority, who are not themselves subject to the law of the land and to the rulings of supreme courts. Also, people’s very weak grasp of fundamental tenets and principles of democracy makes them fair game for police bullying and violations. If the police give an order, they think they have to obey it. I am under no such illusion myself and have gladly defied the police when I know their actions to be illegal. It is quite interesting watching them fall into perplexity because they don’t know what to do next.

When the police demand our phones, our laptops or anything else (but particularly those two, because they are very personal and loaded with data) in circumstances where we know that we have not committed a crime that warrants a prison sentence, then we should know we are under no obligation to hand them over, and we should refuse to do so. Exactly what are the police going to do in those circumstances – pin us down and wrest them off us? Imagine what headlines that would make, especially if we switch our phone on to record the experience. There is an urban legend that it is a crime not to obey police orders. Well, no, not if that order is in itself illegal. They can prosecute you for disobeying them, but it doesn’t mean they’re going to secure a conviction when the magistrate thinks otherwise. Of course, by defying them and refusing to comply you’ve landed yourself with a bit of a hassle in court, but giving in is worse.

The police habitually deal with people who don’t know the law, don’t know their rights, have absolutely no awareness of what civil liberties are, and most times can barely even read. In those circumstances they can get away with anything. When they lock themselves into confrontation with individuals of a different mindset – journalists or former journalists, for instance – the police have a problem and are often out of their depth, because this is where illegal bullying doesn’t wash or work. When these things happen, more people need to speak out – more lawyers, too. It is in the interest of nobody at all to allow the police to get away with abuse of any kind.

 

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