Any self-respecting government would make it a prime point of honour to be the one to keep the nation’s entrance, City Gate, in the most decent and honourable way possible.

In fact, no government for the past 50 years has been self-respecting, as can be seen from the perennial state of decrepitude that is City Gate of the past 50 years.

The Borg Olivier administration saddled us with a fascist-style entrance, instead of the old, narrow entrance, high and wide enough to permit the entrance or exit of King Carnival, and with niches and roundels that were left empty.

The Mintoff – Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici administrations bequeathed us hideous government apartments peeping over the top of the bastions, a bus terminus which collapsed due to faulty cement, a damaged fountain when they allowed a karozzin to be driven up to its top in a ‘patriotic’ musical show, and a sense of shabbiness and lawlessness all around, helped and abetted by the links between certain shady characters and some police officers.

The Fenech Adami administration did worse: it first promised and then it did not deliver. It got world-famous Enzo Piano to draw up a futuristic and impressively creative entrance to the capital city, then got scared when both the people and the architects rose up in revolt, forgot all the plaudits that the world has accorded any Piano creation and backtracked completely. Then it came up with another competition for the whole St James Cavalier, Royal Opera House and City Gate and Freedom Square complex, finished St James only, and kept postponing any further development in any direction. In the meantime, of course, City Gate was allowed to deteriorate even more, becoming shabbier by the day and looking more like the entrance to a souk. This was further helped by one of the Fenech Adami administration’s lesser brain waves: the change in the law so soon after it came to power which allowed buskers and ‘street artists’ to ply their trade. In a very short span of time, City Gate was full of assorted tattoo-artists and even a shoe-shine man which further contributed to the overall perception of Malta as a shabby, tatty, seedy country with a shabby, tatty idea of itself.

The Sant administration, which pulled up Republic Street exactly in those six months when Valletta was the capital city of culture in Europe, neglected then to extend the paving of Republic Street, even when this is, against all agreements, not regularly cleaned and washed and an ever-present danger to ankles, to Freedom Square and City Gate.

The Gonzi administration has so far emulated the worst of the Fenech Adami administration’s traits: it spoke of resuming work on the Opera House and was immediately bowled over by a mounting wave of public outcry when it tried to take over the opera house site to build a new House of Parliament. Then it must have realised the whole preposterousness of it all and shelved the idea. One has also to consider that with less than three years to go to the polls, any plan for the whole site or even part of it will not make it to planning permission stage by the coming election, let alone complete the whole project.

It is a very Nationalist trait to come up with grandiose plans, which then become either impossible to attain or else too costly to implement without caring to tackle issues at ground level and to bring about sensible and perceptible improvements for the public at large. Fed up with plans that never materialise, the people have given up and lost hope that things will get better, a dangerous fatalism has been allowed to creep in and one can see it in the faces and eyes of people as they enter or exit the city, the subdued anger that things have been allowed to get so bad, and the complete and total absence of any hope that things will improve, and an equally negative complete lack of pride in their country, their city and thus themselves.

This government has now announced plans to cut down on the enormous number of cars in Valletta ironically by allowing all cars, not just the V-plates, to enter Valletta and then imposing parking fees based on the time one spends in the city.

Whatever the merits or otherwise of these plans, there is simply no way anything is going to change unless the government, any government, tackles the problems at City Gate. It should be a matter of pride for any government to be the one to clean up the entrance to the city. This paper will continue to demand a thorough clean-up of City Gate not just as a task to be tackled in itself but also as a symbol and catalyst of what the government intends to do to Malta.

First and foremost task: the law must be obeyed and applied to one and all. City Gate has become, at all hours but especially after sundown, the place for all kinds of illegal activities: the place for drug selling, abusive practices, the rendezvous of illegal immigrants, the practice of prostitution, and all the various abuses committed by people who spend most time there, from bus drivers to taxi drivers, the vendors who have slowly encroached on public areas, and the various lower forms of life one finds there.

In the “good old days” when Malta was still a colony, there used to be a constant watch and supervision by Military Police. Today closed circuit television cameras and nightscopes as well as a permanent and visible police presence would do wonders. In recent weeks, a constant police presence has already produced some order as regards the street artists, even though the improvement achieved by their relocation to Freedom Square, now with their beach umbrellas to top it all, has been minimal. And yes, the law must be enforced: it is rather difficult to see how a shoe-shine man can be defined a street artist, assuming that all his permits are in order.

The law and order must however start at the very top. When the concession for the car park was being discussed, it was repeatedly stressed that the whole car park would be covered up and landscaped on top. Instead, it has been left just like one of those quarries one sees in the Maltese countryside: a gaping open space.

Then, cleanliness: the City Gate fountain is filthy, the fountain itself regurgitates dirty water, the lighting is non-existent, the attractive panels and lighting underneath the outer rim have vanished. Would it cost so much to give it a thorough clean-up, tile the surrounding pavement, remove the ramshackle rubbish bins standing like drunken sailors and put in some attractive features. Considering we are rebuilding all the road from the airport to the city, how come this central feature has once again been forgotten?

And lastly, comfort for the ordinary, browbeaten Maltese citizens. There are no benches where people can wait for their buses, no shelter from the sun or the rain. And the steps from the parking place in the ditch still reeks of urine and neglect, a shameful and humiliating way for the citizens of an EU member State to enter their capital city.