It is very surprising to write an article against rampant over development in Sliema, “Falling buildings and fading façades”, which I did a couple of Sundays ago, and to find myself attacked by two women, Astrid and Helen, from, let’s call them for convenience or perhaps for pity’s sake, the against-rampant-over-development lobby?

We are after all, the three of us and many significant others, saying the same thing, that Sliema and its environs cannot sustain this rate of development. For some reason though, they took some of my light criticism of the hypocrisy of certain Greens personally, even though I never mentioned them by name or the organisation they campaign in. In fact I wasn’t even thinking about them when I wrote the article, so any reference to them, or the fact that they may, or may not, themselves live in flats where a townhouse once proudly stood was entirely incidental. I don’t know where they live nor do I care.

But I do care, and those of us who read newspapers, have a right to know when they throw stones at anyone who is only doing exactly what they chose to do, just 10 or 20 years later, that is demolish a house and live in a flat, or buy a flat where a townhouse once stood. And perhaps the general public cares too. Just like we don’t take to politicians harping on about morality and family life when they are lusting after their assistant, or, more commonly, simply treating their wives badly, or focusing on their egos to the detriment of their children, we similarly don’t take to the anti building lobby sitting in their flats (which they have made money out of too), harping on about anyone else buying a flat, without recognising they are part of the problem too, and need to become a little less holier than thou if they really want to be part of the solution. Unless of course they are just more into, like the politicians and contractors/developers they attack so unreservedly, the attention they are getting?

Will they all, as well as anyone writing and campaigning against the pulling down of townhouses to make way for flats, make a solemn declaration (as we ask ministers to do when they take on the post) not of their earnings but of whether they too speculated or speculate on property, whether they bought a flat instead of a townhouse, whether they pulled down a townhouse, and all the other new moral questions that are becoming more important to us today. If you claim to be Green or anti development you have to live by that mantra too or don’t you?

There are many, many Greens and genuine Green movements in Malta. We are all saying that development, while in parts necessary, has gotten out of hand. We are building way beyond demand. We have concentrated our building in certain areas and those areas are now dust bowls, city quarries, call them what you will? The Times has certainly given Astrid a lot of prominence (as well it should), but she hasn’t exactly captured the hearts and minds of anyone despite the vociferousness, despite the shrillness, despite the pointing fingers attitude, which is so endemic here. In fact the very low turnout at their events attests to this. And there is a reason for this. It’s not just laziness. It’s not that people don’t agree with their arguments. They do, at least in part. But people are not stupid at all, are aware of their nimbyism in all this, at least honest people are. You cannot, simply cannot happily sell your own house and live in one of the flats, pocket thousands and then go on a moral high horse and snobbishly attack the next generation who do, or those who do the same thing but belong to perhaps a different class to the puliti who made money out of redeveloping and pulling down Sliema in the past?

We definitely, and this we includes many puliti or Slimizi, made a mistake when we participated in pulling down Sliema in Mintoff’s time. Many many Nationalist voters joined in and pocketed the money. This has gone on for years with nobody complaining. Now there are admittedly too many large developments and Sliema residents are rightly unhappy and want their quality of life protected. They are right but most of them, and of those who complain, are living in the same flats that have become the modern Maltese bogeyman.

The attitude here is all about attack. The others are all bad and I am all-good.

I made two simple points, one which they attacked and the other they conveniently ignored. The first point, and naturally the one they ignored was this. Most of the people leading these protests live in cosy Sliema pads where a townhouse once stood. This point must have hurt but they should be a mite more temperate before they started throwing stones in their greenhouse. The second point was the need to attack less and come round the table more. Hardly rocket science.

The Sliema greenhouse is all our greenhouses. That was the point I was making. It is mainly Sliema now but when the developers have exhausted the demand there, no area is sacred. What is going on in Sliema is bad. Fort Cambridge looks scarily over the top. Pender Place is another wave of concrete ugliness. But it is just as appalling having too many storeys, or too large a development in Lija’s beautiful Transfiguration Avenue or building a block of flats in the back garden no less of a listed house in San Pawl Tat-Targa where that beautiful square and piazza lie.

So the Sliema battle is all our battles was the conclusion of my article. And perhaps it is worth saying again. We judge or we should judge others by what they do and not by what they say. We need less vitriol and less hardening of resolve, less settling into camps and less tearing each other to pieces.

Those tactics are reminiscent of the red/blue battles of yesteryear. And none of us want that back, whoever gets into government next time around. That sort of shrill confrontational approach that Labour thinks the Nationalists adopt in their regard via Net TV and Nationalists think Labour adopted via the Eileen Montesin of the past, should be all of our bogeymen, and not each other.

In the meantime, it is the clear responsibility of MEPA to recognise that its policy to concentrate so much development in Sliema was wrong, to recognise it is granting too many permits and to be as tough with the big as they evidently are with the small. Those will be big issues come election time, and not the shrieks of more in words than in deeds Greens

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