The government is becoming more marginalised on the Zonqor Point university project with each passing day, and those backing the project are becoming increasingly very few and far between. 

And in the process, with its seemingly unflinching stance, the government is alienating itself from the vast majority of the population, which is slowly but surely joining together in a single, unified voice against what in reality constitutes a giveaway of public land to a private business venture - a business venture in the educational field, but nevertheless a private business venture.

That is because, at the end of the day, the American University of Malta project is a pure business venture aimed at fee-paying and mostly foreign students.  And apart from a handful of scholarships that will apparently be handed out to Maltese students to follow courses at this new university and a handful of jobs, and with hefty tuition fees expected, we fail to see how this educational project stands to improve anyone’s quality of life – at least not so much as to justify this practical giveaway of such a large tract of virgin, public land.

What is truly mystifying most of the country is the government’s insistence on locating the university at that particular site, which it says was chosen by the Jordanian investors, and nowhere else. 

We are certain that no one in the country would object to the government attracting any quality educational institution to the country, nor would anyone object to the government even giving away the land for free, provided the right kind of land is chosen.

And the right land for the construction of university buildings is certainly not a 12 football pitch size of precious, undeveloped land in the smallest, most built up and moist densely populated country in the whole of Europe.

But while most of the population has woken up to this fact, the government continues to insist on this particular location despite the fact that practically the entire country, except for the government itself and Labour Party acolytes, have spoken out, some most vociferously, against it.

In the wake of the Archbishop’s statement last week condemning what he described as the “rape” of virgin land, the Church’s Interdiocesan Commission for the Environment yesterday weighed in with its own two cents’ worth.

In fact, the Church could not have put the whole Zonqor Point land giveaway debacle into better perspective when it stated yesterday that “the whole process in the proposed project has been opaque, very insensitive to the environment and its last impacts are not clear”.

To say that civil society at large is outraged would be an understatement.  And as such, it is strange that the government, as sensitive as it is to public opinion, is sticking to its guns on the site selection.  At the beginning of the great Zonqor debate, the Prime Minister had said that he would entertain an alternative site selection process but not much has been heard of that since.  It is hoped that this is still in the pipeline. 

From media reports yesterday, it seems that the government is now instead open to splitting the campus and in the process downsizing the Zonqor element from 90,000 square metres to 65,000 square metres.  This, if brought to fruition, is of little solace to those who have recoiled in horror at the prospect of yet more ODZ land being given away to private business.

Yes, great swathes of ODZ land had been given out by past administrations, deplorably so, but that certainly does not in any way justify this current proposal.

The government has also said that all environmental permitting applications and the like would be followed to the letter.  But with the Malta Environment and Planning Authority’s CEO having selected the site, it beggars belief that the same authority will be tasked with approving or rejecting the site.

The government appears to have crafted this project very carefully. It had put all the pieces in place before it began building the suspense and slowly leaking out details of what the project actually was, presumably having expected the country to have jumped for joy because a private investor had chosen Malta to build a private university.

But the one thing it appears to have not calculated was the public backlash against the project’s location.  Given the public’s response, the government should cut its losses and offer the Jordanian investors an altogether alternative site that is more palatable for public consumption.