In his article Local council hullabaloo (TMID, 7 March) Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando claims to be proud of the PN’s “recent successes in the economic field”. Does he mean the budget economic growth projections for 2006 set at a miserable 1.1 per cent? What? The promise of 5,000 new jobs over the next 10 years is already an “economic success”? It sounds like propaganda.

In order to get at the Greens he tramples over his own party’s support isolating a significant portion of the majority it enjoys in Sliema and abandoning altogether its minority in Marsascala. His target is Green credibility and in order to dent it, Nationalists in the Sliema fortress and in the Marsascala outpost have become expendable.

Support for Josie Muscat in Marsascala will represent an absconding core of PN diehards humiliated by their party in their legitimate demand for something like proper consultation. They have no answer for their Labour neighbours who accuse the PN government of running a bulldozer over their objections to the siting of a recycling plant in their seaside tourism-oriented village.

On the national propaganda scale Greens have lost out by championing Marsascala residents regardless of their political affiliations. We have demanded proper consultation especially when the government itself takes on the role of developer. A site selection process naming five sites, four of which are too small to accommodate the proposed development, reduces PN credibility. Greens are in favour of recycling (need it be repeated?), we are in favour of waste-to-energy processes such a bio-gas, but we will not have them imposed on any population in a dictatorial manner.

Doing so denies core Green beliefs, and threatens all future environmental infrastructure projects. Had Marsascala residents been made to believe that every effort had been done to spare them, they would still have had a right to voice their objections but would have stood a better chance of resigning themselves to their fate, of accepting a burden for the country which they could not avoid.

Greens think long-term. Those who know the facts, residents on the spot, have watched the Greens face the music, we have championed their right to be heard against all odds, exposing ourselves to the very false charge of going against our beliefs. Without a candidate in Marsascala and with firm commitment to our stance, we have consolidated our credibility with all Marsascala residents. We have given them a voice without having a direct or immediate political interest in the matter. They will remember.

Our stance in Qui-si-Sana is precisely the same. What is outrageous is not only the PN plan to impose a commercial development on a prime residential area but the manner in which it is done. The car park is a propaganda excuse, the development includes a cafeteria, a restaurant, a bowling alley and a day care centre in an area that had been left peacefully alone for many decades. Parking provision may increase but the new demands for parking space created by the development actually reduce it. What will definitely be increased is the air pollution.

Once the PN makes up its mind there is no turning back. The decision is made and all objectors of whatever kind must be destroyed in the eyes of the public. With the local council elections looming the Prime Minister himself has been moved to write to every single petitioner pleading for a reprieve.

In public the record stands at accusations of middleclass nimbyism, of selfishness and disregard for the wider community interest. Qui-si-Sana residents and their kith and kin across the country do not suffer from short memories. No last minute missive from the Prime Minister telling them that they do not know what is best for them will erase what they have been exposed to in the last several months of doing battle with the PN propaganda machine.

Here is yet another group or residents that have had the scales fall from their eyes. They have experienced what consultation means when uttered by the PN in office. They know exactly what they, fellow Nationalists and their political adversaries have been through in Marsascala. It is a defining experience.

Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando should know. Only recently he was championing the residents of Qrendi, in their majority Labourites, in their fight to prevent the construction of a landfill in the immediate vicinity of Mnajdra Temples. The disaster was averted only by the chance opportunity of a change of leadership of the PN allowing a spectacular and glorious U-turn.

His attack on the Greens does him more harm than it does to anyone else. It seems a bit ridiculous: political overkill. Greens have been very modest. We are contesting local elections in Birkirkara, Lija, Sannat, Sliema and Zabbar, just five of the 23 localities going to the polls. It hardly justifies the energy displayed by the PN to distort political reality regarding Green commitment to have residents’ voices heard everywhere and anywhere.

The PN is likely to “lose” to Labour not to the Greens; how come so much newsprint and airtime is dedicated to shooting down the Greens? Greens do not participate in the frenzy to make local elections into some sort of absurd national poll. The local council hullabaloo is a PN-MLP affair.

Dr Vassallo is chairperson of Alternattiva Demokratika– The Green Party

www.alternattiva.org.mt, www.adgozo.com