Stephen Calleja had a brilliant light-bulb idea with which to pursue his mission of trying to belittle critics of the City Gate project, which he wrote under the portentous title of “The meaning of public consultation” (TMIS, 11 April).

He enlisted a gimmick much beloved of politicians, which has been dubbed the “boo-boo approach”. The boo-boo gambit is the use of a usually banal statement, which nevertheless sounds magnificently profound in support of an argument aimed at fooling the unwary.

His supreme example of a boo-boo was this: “If the government takes a decision that is not consonant with your opinion, it does not mean that there was no public consultation”. Now this boo-boo may sound impressive but it is meaningless. It is a pathetic non sequitur, which is neither here nor there, in the first place, and it leaves wide open the question of whether there was (or was not) any public consultation about the City Gate Project.

This question of consultation is neither “tricky” nor “difficult” to grasp, as Mr Calleja would have us believe. On the contrary, it is an obvious and simple fact that there was no public consultation.

Now, sit down quietly and listen carefully, Mr Calleja. There was never any “period of time in which everyone was allowed to express his or her views”. The first noticeable hint that something big was imminent was an announcement in the press on 30 May that Renzo Piano’s detailed plans for the opera house site and a “parliament building” in Freedom Square was to be unveiled to the public on 27 June. Up until this time there had only been hints and vague writings on the wall and nobody had any idea as to exactly what the project was all about, so where was the consultation?

When the appointed time came, the project was presented as a fait accompli. The public was invited to an exhibition of an immensely detailed model, which was unveiled with much pomp and circumstance. It was already clear that the project was here to stay. After the significance of it all had sunk in, comments started to flow in – but by then it was too late to change anything.

So, Mr Calleja, your boo-boo is nothing more than a deliberate misrepresentation aimed at misleading the naïve reader. It sidesteps the actual situation, namely, that “everyone was allowed to express his or her views” only after being suddenly presented with Renzo Piano’s finished project. Contrary to what you maintain, critics are perfectly correct in saying that there was no consultation.

The people, who Mr Calleja arrogantly refers to as “400,000 architects that live in Malta as well as their cats and dogs”, expressed themselves on the project when it was too late. In the case of the open-air theatre, which has provoked the most controversy, the critics included most of Malta’s foremost artists and performers in addition to the numerous “architects and their cats and dogs”.

The true story is therefore not in the least as implied by Mr Calleja.

Finally, disagreeable comments such as “Astrid was counting her shares in what she says is a defunct construction company” are both irrelevant and in very bad taste. Such facetious comments are hardly worthy of a pimply teenage, nose-picking schoolboy, let alone an adult newspaper columnist.

G.G. Debono

SLIEMA