From Mr J. Portelli

Let me narrate a story. The story begins...

Long, long ago on a little island far, far away, a happy people lived. The island is Nauru in the Western Pacific. The people had everything they needed: coconut trees for food and drink, magnificent trees for shade, and so on. The English captain who discovered it called it Pleasant Island.

Then, as in all stories, the evil one turned up. It was discovered that the island, with an area of just eight square miles, was rich in phosphate rock. For a century, millions of tons of phosphate rock were shipped away and the island was gutted so much that President Clodumur observed: “What was once a tropical paradise was changed to a jagged, uninhabitable desert of coral tombstones. Our sad history serves as a poignant example for the rest of the world of what happens when humans disregard the good earth that sustains us.” And unlike all fairy tales, the story does not end “and they lived happily ever after”. (From an article: Paradise Squandered by Dale Van Atta on page 130 in the British Reader’s Digest of June 1997)

We also are a small island nation, a jewel of natural beauty and rich habitats. When we advertise Malta or do a music video, we show these natural habitats. But evil, ignorance or short-sightedness is threatening our islands. We may end up like Nauru...

Some of the most beautiful natural habitats in Malta were ravaged during the Labour administration in the late 1970s and 1980s. And this sad story continued in Gozo during the Nationalist administration; blocks of flats perched on cliffs, the infamous race track – still an eyesore, the infringement in the only public garden in Gozo by the new progressive development on the site of The Duke of Edinburgh Hotel, and so on.

Don’t you hear the environment crying for help, its body black and blue from the kicks of this administration and red with blood from the blows of the previous one?

So let us defend it with all tools at our disposal and let us strike where it hurts most. Let us vote validly and wisely. Let’s rock the boat, if only for once, so that they listen.

Joe Portelli

NADUR