Considering the situation in Malta in 2008 on a long-term basis, it becomes evident that, after the historically important step of joining the European Union, Malta’s biggest issue now is tackling its environmental problems.

This country has neglected its environment for far too long and the results are now painfully visible for all to see. We are assisting today at the massive uglification of Malta on a grand scale due to over-development, due to lax controls, due to wholesale neglect to tackle the most important issues that impact on the health and well being of our citizens. We cannot say we inherited a beautiful island, for much damage had already been done, but we surely are leaving our children an island in a far worse shape. A whole host of problems have remained unsolved. Our political leaders have collectively shown themselves to be without the political will to tackle the problems as they grew more and more complex and impinged on each other, making things much worse. Our political class emerges from all this as singularly inept, time-serving, riddled with short-termism. It is a measure of how much they have failed that one of the reasons which they, shamelessly, gave us for joining the EU was precisely so that the EU would give us the force, the courage, the discipline to tackle the structured problems we had allowed ourselves to accumulate.

To discuss all our environmental problems would take up far more space than this leader could possibly have. Let us try and be brief and mention them as concisely as possible.

The most obvious and long time in coming problem undoubtedly is the over-development of the island. This has been going on for decades and all post-war governments allowed it to become so huge. In the relatively short space of 60 years, more construction has taken place than at any other time in our history. Villages and towns disappeared and were subsumed into one huge conurbation. The construction industry is today one of the main industries on the island, with ramifications and spillovers that go far beyond those of the other industries, tourism included.

Yet, this is a tiny island, a country with the highest population density after Hong Kong, where precisely because it is limited, space creates an economic reason all on its own. Hence the continuous building, the pulling down of houses and village cores and the erection of apartment blocks that get higher and higher, and are now beginning to spawn high-rises. And, as more and more climb on the bandwagon, more units are being created than are filled, even in these days of families splitting up.

We have allowed the economics of construction to rampage ahead, based mostly on the fact that property prices appreciate immensely and that investing in property is the surest way to maximise one’s finances. More than from industry, more than from services, what really drives our economy ahead is based on property prices increasing. And that is itself based on the fact that Malta is such a small island; hence property is very limited.

There has simply been no discussion nationwide on this over-development and, worse, come election time, the two main parties, as we shall see, compete who can offer more and more building opportunities.

Since this is a discussion on election issues, one must perforce analyse the way the government now seeking re-election tackled or did not tackle the situation. It must be said that, as far as the construction industry is concerned, it did next to nothing to stop and think about the consequences of the current over-development. It can also be said it even gave in to the development lobby and, by extending the development areas boundaries, it fed the tiger with even more meat.

Worse, by not tackling the issue logically and structurally, it allowed whole areas, such as Sliema, Paceville and Tigne, to become so over-developed that it is hard to see how the quality of life there is not already far worse than in the past, and will worsen as more and more developments come on stream.

Even worse, no real and structural attempt has been made to try and address the traffic problem all this over-building has created, together with the shifts it has created in population patterns. The lovely roads that have been built are all in the north, relatively under-populated areas, while the south is all in a mess. Malta’s high road is a narrow two-lane artery that becomes single-lane at crucial nodes. Hence, added to the stress of living on top of each other, further stress is being added: long waits at roundabouts and crossroads, and further use of the car. And as for parking anywhere…

One other big environmental issue facing the country is the haphazard, one may also say, criminal way in which the country’s waste was not being tackled. From Maghtab which, 30 or 40 years ago was meant to be a stopgap solution after the Luqa landfill was closed (Malta’s highest mountain, say those who get to know about it, is the collected rubbish of the Maltese), to the drainage being allowed to flow untreated into the sea just a few hundred metres from the shore, to a waste-treatment facility that has been causing problems ever since it was set up.

And then, just to list the problems without really analysing them: Malta’s total dependence on imported fossil fuel; its total neglect of things it should have in abundance such as solar power, wind power, wave power; the lack of political willpower to really tackle waste separation at source (do you remember how it was hurriedly introduced in the dying days of the 1992-1996 PN administration, forgotten for long years after, and only taken up, and still partially, by the current administration?).

When it joined the EU, this country was promised a quality improvement. Look around you and consider your own quality of life. Has it really improved? Or has it deteriorated?

To be fair, it can be argued the government did try and do away with the most glaring of them all. It closed down Maghtab as a waste landfill and started its long-term rehabilitation. Waste is better managed today at the new landfills and the famous Maghtab stench has been, it seems, brought under control. The government did build one liquid waste treatment plant (against many objections) and is building others. As for the Sant’Antnin waste treatment plant, the government is guilty of acting high-handed on this issue and maybe also about not really considering its relocation. But it is important that Malta has the three waste treatment plants it needs as soon as possible and that these are built in line with the latest technology to emit no stench.

But where this government went horribly wrong was in allowing the over-development that for long years has turned Sliema and its environs into a nightmare, and, in general, by allowing the over-development that has taken place all over Malta. Then there is the whole issue of MEPA. One exemplary enforced resignation cannot blot out what went on before and perhaps is still going on, at least according to people’s perceptions. Two big proposed developments that were given the go-ahead and then reversed will not remove from people’s minds the suspicion that, once the election is over, these developments will creep back.

Even so, it is also fair to point out that when many, especially but not only developers, complain about MEPA it is because they want more and more applications to be processed rapidly and approved, rather than the other way round.

The PN electoral manifesto has not yet been published, but what can this government tell the people whose quality of life has been negatively affected by the massive over-development that has been allowed with no concern to the overall picture? Just sorry? What can compensate for a quality of life that has gone up the spout?

As for Labour, it makes 17 points but again this is not much better. It is silent about construction and speaks only of more transparency at MEPA and quicker processing of applications. Nothing to show the extremely important place that bringing a quality improvement in the surrounding environment should have in national life, or that an environmental conscience has crept in Labour’s top echelons, some of whom were in office when the environmental rot set in.

Nor is there, on one side or the other, any tinge of regret at what Malta has been allowed to become.

Oh, and then, of course, there’s the hunting issue.

Labour makes the more sympathetic noises while the PN tries to keep its head down, for vote reasons, leaving little space for those who in their hearts cannot stand this bloody, killing “sport” to vote for either big party. And for this, and other environmental reasons, only Alternattiva can really and truly say it is the real environment-friendly party in the country, though it then tempers its appeal by insisting more on getting a foot inside Parliament’s door, rather than say what would it do with its new-found power to promote a more environmentally friendly country.

How can Dr Gonzi speak of Vision 2015 when he does not come clean, admit the ugliness that is now Malta, and commit a future PN government to really, really make a drastic improvement to the people’s quality of life? Malta had it to become a Monaco, a Dubai, a Singapore. Instead it has become a byword for the tatty, the tawdry, and it’s getting worse, to boot. Its people deserve better. Much better.