Pre-election time is an exciting period for parties. A party considers its work for the outgoing legislature to have been completed and focuses on what it would like to spend the next one doing.

This is what the party in government has been doing with its plan for the regeneration of Grand Harbour.

However, the plan has been met by a sea of apathy, submerged in an ocean of doubts and undermined by snide remarks.

And also by misinformation. Yesterday’s leader in The Times is a case in point: although mainly positive, it ends by speaking of two plans – one by the government and the other by Labour. There is no such thing: there is no Labour plan. None has been published, though often promised. You cannot compare one plan to another for the simple reason that the alternative plan does not exist so far. All that there is has been a series of meetings and photo ops by the Labour leadership.

Whereas a plan entails making choices. Take, for instance, the two private ship repair concerns operating in Grand Harbour. It is one thing going to shake hands with them in full view of the media, and quite another to take a decision that could in effect circumscribe their potential development.

Besides, many have long complained that in Malta we get by on short-termism. But when a party in government tries to plan ahead for the long-term, it is criticised just the same by those who go for facile arguments and snide remarks.

One must however admit that this government carries the burden of general incredulity: in short, people do not believe it any longer. It has too often promised and then not delivered. It had promised for instance so much for Dock Number One in the pre-1996 election but nothing has been done so far. It promised a hospital but look how much time has elapsed and despite an official opening, it is still non-operational.

Let us look more closely at these and similar arguments.

The Dock Number One 1996 photomontage. One can argue that this was a private initiative by one sitting MP (then a minister, and also a candidate for the Second District at that time).

That was, indeed, 11 years ago. Since then, however, a lot has happened. Malta Drydocks moved out: prior to the demolition of the wall, it was an industrial site in the heart of Cospicua. No longer.

Since then, too, a bidder has been found and talks are ongoing with MEPA regarding the final configuration that will be given to the site. It is true, however, that nothing much visible has taken place, although this does not redeem the Cospicua local council from the blatant exercise in partisanship they engaged in over the past weeks, when they are fully involved in the future configuration of the Dock Number One area. And would they not have come out with guns blazing that the government plan was a jumble of re-heated plans had it included the Dock Number One regeneration in its Grand Harbour plan? It’s either that one can never win or else that some people want it both ways.

It is also true the present government promised two concrete regeneration plans in its slim 2003 election booklet: the Valletta waterfront and the Cottonera one. And, five years down the line, there they are: the Valletta waterfront has been fully restored and cruise liner passengers and Maltese alike can shop and dine in a very elegant venue. Ditto for the Cottonera waterfront – although there are some deliverables that have not been done.

So today when one visits, for instance, the Menqa, and sees all the dereliction there is there, then considers the photomontage of the same area in the government’s proposal, one could at least hope that a future government will be able to clean up this area too.

The proposals are still at this stage – indeed, proposals. They may look glossy on the page, but they still await the reality check. Just consider the proposal to reinstate the lift: that was a good idea, but then there were no takers for it, so till now at least it has failed the reality check.

One big reality check will be whether the government will find suitable private sector partners to do what the plan requires them to do: there will be big or small government finance, and expenditure in cleaning up, for instance, the power station area (for it is not simply a question of closing down the power station but also of rehabilitating the site) and the tank cleaning depot, but then private finance will be needed to turn the cleaned area into a profitable venture. Will that be found?

The government then clearly and premeditatedly took the decision not to include property development and speculation in the area, and even bearing in mind that property development in Malta is the name of the game, it sounds rather drastic to eliminate the inner reaches of Grand Harbour from the kind of development that has taken place in Hamburg, Marseilles and Manchester, not to mention London Docklands. A better mix should be found to have a more balanced approach.

But yes, the only plan submitted so far for the regeneration of Grand Harbour is more than acceptable. We need to fast-forward to its realization, whoever does it. And more. The Valletta entrance still awaits a government sure of itself to tackle all controversy and do something about that monument of national shame. Ditto St Elmo, and indeed the whole of Valletta.