The current battle in Qui-Si-Sana deserves an article all to itself, not least because it is a local issue with a national dimension.

It encapsulates the middle class disappointment with the PN, and with the middle class vote that is as central to its survival, as are the memories of those who sustained Labour actions in the eighties, or the vote of the shrinking but still very significant and numerous staunch Catholic vote.

These are in fact the three mainstays of PN power and their sustained survival in government. They have a good chunk of the educated middle class vote, they also have a good chunk of the most staunchly and conservative of the catholic vote, and significantly they also have the memory of bad times which keeps many people hanging in there with their PN vote, despite the reality that those were different times, with different struggles and issues, and they are unlikely to surface in the same way again.

So if you look at the area in question in this Qui- Si Sana struggle you see a widish pavement, a few trees, a not too up to date children’s playground and little else. But it is quiet. It is peaceful. It actually gives the blocks of flats and homes nearby the “Qui- Si-Sana feel”, although this will not be immediately obvious to anyone who does not live there or has connections in some way to the place, which I incidentally do not.

Basically, the area is going to be commercialised. The actual garden area may increase, but it will change totally as an area where outsiders will come to park, enjoy the gabbana culture, buy their packet of crisps, and hang out in the way we Maltese do. There are so already so many miles of area like this all over Malta, in Bugibba, in Qawra, in Marsascala, in much of Sliema already too, particularly that grotty area in front of the old Preluna Hotel, where if you sit on a bench there, you just see a whole underworld of people that you never associate with what once was genteel Sliema.

So the residents want Qui-Si-Sana to remain as it is. After all, there is no great public purpose at stake here. It is emphatically not an issue of improving a waste plant that already exists, as was the case in Marsascala. Residents want a bit of time to stand still there, and since there is no desperate need for another car park, another kiosk, another whatever ends up being developed there – they should be listened to.

And they should be listened to not because there is an election there. Not because the vast majority there are natural PN voters. They should be listened to because they are right.

You can understand though why government ministers who do work hard and have very little time for themselves, cannot understand the passion that this issue has created. Government ministers don’t look out of their windows or balconies peacefully at the quiet garden below them. The don’t stroll out for an early morning walk or breather. They lead, as they have to, totally different lives being whisked here there and everywhere in their blue saloons trying to sort out bigger issues and are genuinely baffled by how important this struggle is and other middle class issues that the middle class currently feel betrayed by.

I also don’t think its just a question of this being a government of developers as Harry Vassallo said in a newspaper last week. Its just this awkward sinking feeling in PN hearts that certain groups are listened to more than others, that people power in the PN has become very strait jacketed to a few. Hunters, for example, receive maximum accommodation. The issue of paraffin use was ignored even though this is widely used in PN middle class heartlands.

It’s this terrible thing all PN people are saying to each other right now. That their government is just concentrating on one group of PN people. That the listening government isn’t listening to middle class concerns on over development, institutionalised corruption and back slapping. And worse that it thinks it can always win because the alternative could be worse.

There are still many who think that, but they are lessening in number by the hour! Somehow, the PN is going to have to take positive and proactive action to show it is still a broad church, that it can look after the poplin with generous social security, but will also pander to the injustices raised by the middle classes. That it can keep its traditional values without rubbing extremism in the faces of the more liberal voter.

The PN is not like the MLP. It cannot just talk about the big “baddies” getting all the goodies, and mobilise the working class vote. The PN is a broad church and everyone has to feel part of the cake is there for them too. Everyone has to feel from the liberal to the staunchly Catholic, from the developer to the environmentalist, that fairness rules and that everyone has equal weight.

The redevelopment of Qui-Si-Sana should be shelved forthwith, both because it deserves to be, as well as being a very powerful signal that the PN is no longer going to take its middle class support for granted. It will be the first of many signals it needs to take to regain credibility, from eliminating privileged pension schemes for ministers, to abolishing the right of inheritance in private leases, from holding back on the tower block culture in a country of empty buildings, to preserving our crown jewels in Ta’ Cenc.

Qui-Si-Sana is a local struggle with national consequences – both symbolically and practically for anyone with eyes to see.