When many non-governmental organisations recently held a national protest in favour of the environment, a Nationalist Party delegation courageously joined in.
It did seem like a coven of nuns in a brothel, or the other way around, but may have been acceptable as an expression of the desire within the party in government to contribute to taking care of the much-beleaguered environment. But a protest without an object is no protest at all, and the object of the protest was the party that has been in power almost continuously for the past 19 years, and the Nationalist Party could not be expected to protest against itself. Hence the amazement expressed by so many at the PN delegation in the protest.
Much more than joining in such a contradictory way in the protest, the party in government should have held an overdue self-examination. Its actions, and its inaction, over the years have led to the overhang of Malta’s huge environmental problems, that this government is only now, too late, targeting and doing something about, having allowed them to increase and multiply for so many years.
More, it has allowed a new consciousness regarding the environment to take hold of the country as a whole – everywhere, it seems, except within the government. There is now a huge constituency, which considers protecting the environment as being paramount in historic importance and which is fast coming to the conclusion that the present team in the administration is incapable of even understanding what is going wrong and what must be done.
Sooner or later, this new environmental consciousness will be necessarily translated into political power, along with the other current issues about which many people have strong opinions, and the present government will be very much the loser.
One may indeed argue that Labour may well be the side to benefit from this, although one hesitates to state so, given both Labour’s sorry track record of its handling of the environment and also the very weak proposals that seem to be the basis of the party’s electoral commitment.
More than people moving to change their political opinions, one senses many people coming to a generalised conclusion that this lot cannot understand the problem, cannot agree what needs to be done, and cannot be trusted to stop the current rate of deterioration in the quality of life. If there was one common cause that made so many people from all walks of life come together to protest – residents from Marsascala and Sliema, residents who have had it up to here with the over-development around them, people angry with Mepa, lovers of the countryside up in arms against the extension of the development zones, etc. etc., – it was both government inaction and government wrong action. The government can only blame itself for this, nobody else.
At the basis of it all, there is an underlying confusion: is the government there to regulate matters, including the environment, or is it also a player in the field? There are two specific cases which have in no small way helped the government to turn people against it: the Marsascala waste facility and the extension of the development zones. In both cases, the government, fatally, wore two hats – that of the regulator and also that of the proponent of the development. Did it need to do so? Not at all. It just needed to protect and defend the national interest, which lies in not allowing the environment to deteriorate and to protect and defend the health of the people and their well-being, which it had promised would improve by membership of the EU.
It is not the government’s business to extend the development scheme, even if one were to admit to removing anomalies. It is not its business to decide where a waste facility is to be sited: there should be rules and procedures for that sort of thing. The government should have seen and ensured that the people’s health is safeguarded and promoted.
Furthermore, this government, as against the 1992-1996 predecessor, has lost its pro-environment ardour. That government talked about the environment when this was not popular at all and exhibited a missionary zeal about it. Since then, environmental consciousness has increased and developed, (as has the degradation around us) and the government seems to have lost its zeal, for which it paid heavily in 1996.
The government cannot run with the hares and hunt with the hounds. It cannot be friends (and something more) with the developers, the speculators, the big construction lobby, and then act offended if people speak about ‘barunijiet’. If there is one way to salvation for the Nationalist Party, it is not through joining protests, but in going back to its roots and defending the people. Unless it has to be an election defeat and a stint on the Opposition benches that will do this.