It’s that time of the year again, when our tiny island is in its annual grip of political campaigns in the run up to the local council elections, with the main political parties battling with each other to win control of particular localities. Many people have expressed their preoccupation with this state of affairs.

In the locality of Marsascala, several residents got together out of a sense of civic pride and utter disgust at the partisan atmosphere in the village, where the residents come second to party interests.

Grupp Indipendenti Marsaskala (Marsascala Independent Group) was formed out of a need to improve the current situation. We believe that we need to revive our locality in order that Marsascala moves forward, and not backwards. Our village is under various threats to our communal well-being, and our only interest is that of our locality.

Grupp Indipendenti Marsaskala pledges to bring back a sense of civic pride in our home town.

We propose to protect the environment from pollution and decay, to encourage various projects that will generate employment opportunities, to create a zoning policy in order to enable residents and entrepreneurs to live in harmony.

We aim to provide further training and educational schemes to those who wish to improve their abilities and will work for the creation of decent sports and leisure facilities, to meet the needs of the elderly and lonely people, to cooperate with all authorities to give our youth challenging and healthy alternatives to drugs and crime.

We will also ensure that any proposed projects such as marinas respect the needs of swimmers and large and small boat owners, to establish round the clock police supervision and to insist on the finalisation of the long promised civic centre project.

We will assist in traffic management schemes particularly in known bottle-neck areas and propose alternative routes, and work to create and improve car parks, including private/public schemes.

We also propose to form sub-committees for each area of Marsascala to identify closely the particular needs of the residents, to bring together foreign residents to enable them to feel a part of our community and to share their skills, to hold regular dialogue meetings with the public, to identify problems and to discuss ideas, needs and initiatives.

We also plan to focus on obtaining funds from local and foreign sources through various schemes to enable our community to benefit for the common good.

Grupp Indipendenti Marsaskala is offering four candidates with various skills who can contribute to our locality.

We believe that progress can only be registered if the local council works only in the interest of the Marsascala community, where decisions are only taken for the common good, where the councillors are answerable only to the people.

This time around, Marsascala residents have a choice, either to keep on with the status quo of partisan bickering, or go for those who only have the wish to serve the locality.

The group’s logo reflects the traditional orange and green colours of our village, it symbolises our commitment to our locality and unity which we believe is the only way forward.

A website www. gimarsaskala.com is in operation, with full information about past and forthcoming activities.

Marvic Attard Gialanze’, John Cole, Mariella Cutajar, Dr Josie Muscat