All through this summer, but especially on these hot days when people want to go to Ghadira Bay or to Gozo, passing through Mellieħa at most times of the day is an ordeal.

Queues begin at Xemxija, all the way up the hill, and continue down the main street of the town, maybe even after that.

The reason is well known – the untimely juxtaposing of two massive road works in close proximity. The Mellieħa Bypass is being redone, and so is the road from Għadira Bay to Ċirkewwa.

That these roads had to be redone is unquestioned: it is whether they should have been done concurrently that is a matter for discussion. Back in April, the local council had optimistically said that work on the bypass would be ready by June and here we are in August, the workers are out on shutdown and the bypass is far from ready. The other road is nearly ready but many ask why the parts that are ready are not open to traffic. And why is one lane a single one and the other a double one?

All that, however, is understandable and acceptable in the short term.

What is unacceptable is the complete failure of public policy occasioned by this necessary evil of roadwork.

Mellieħa has one main road, a steep hill, which is narrow in many parts. There are alternatives on either side but they lead to residential areas that cannot take the volume of traffic that pass through the village in summer.

To this one has to add local circumstances – the main street has parking slots all along it, and any attempts to remove them is strongly opposed by the local population, local shop owners and the local council acting as one.

Then there is Arriva. An Arriva bus (especially the bendy-buses most used on the route to Gozo) can barely pass a car coming downhill and a parked car. But two Arriva buses travelling in opposite direction cannot, especially at the top where an almost 90-degree turn continues uphill past the HSBC Bank and the PL club. In fact, this is where most accidents happen.

And that’s just it. Apart from normal traffic problems, apart from trucks unloading and parking in a way that obstructs traffic, apart from other snarl-ups, any slight accident blocks the traffic completely.

As can be seen on any morning and at many other times of the day, traffic is, at most times, at a standstill. Then there are the big construction trucks on their way to the North who also persist in driving down the main street, causing further mayhem. To be fair, there is no alternative way for them, but they contribute more and more to the traffic jams.

But alternatives exist, and they should have been used more. As I watch, cars, many with children inside fuming under the sun, wait to go downhill, and I wonder why the more ingenious of them do not go through the bypass, turn at the petrol station and down the admittedly narrow roads at the back of the church to emerge at the top of the hill going down to the bay and thus bypass all the traffic jams in the main street.

Of course, the local council could never advertise this alternative, as it would have meant turning the narrow streets at the back of the church into main streets.

But as I see so many drivers, especially in the afternoon, pass through the very narrow road that leads to Miżieb and thence to the Għajn Tuffieħa road and others going to Manikata, I realise that many Maltese drivers are nothing if not creative. Which is why I wonder why many of those stuck on the main road do not seek the alternatives the local council does not point out to them.

The local council is now banning all cars, except for registered Mellieħa residents, from going uphill from the Seabank roundabout and forcing them all on to the rough and incomplete bypass.

Even here, there is an alternative, which, I am told, passes through the Santa Marija Estate, but again the ever-vigilant council puts its wardens there to block access except for residents.

In other words, this is an ugly situation made worse by a council promoting very local priorities and hang all the rest. If you are a resident, and a registered one at that, you are privileged. But if you are a Gozitan and coming to Malta on business, or getting a flight, if you are a tourist or a Maltese holidaymaker on your way to the beach, you have no rights.

If you are a tourist in one of the many hotels in the North and want to visit Valletta, most that Arriva can provide you is a bus packed to the gills, which then takes an hour to pass through the main road.

There has been, in all this awful summer, no sense of fairness. No sense either of sharing the burden. No sense of getting everybody to suffer a bit so that everybody suffers a bit less. It is an example of selfishness on a grand scale, aided and encouraged by those who should know better. It is the failure of politics as one should understand it, as public policy, as a policy for the public, as searching for the greater good of a community. It is a textbook example of selfishness being promoted as a civic virtue and right.

And I ask, what’s the use of creating garden after garden, of coming up with entertainment after entertainment, if at the core of the ruling policy there is no sense of sharing the burden, which we all admit is a temporary one?

I also note one other element: the policy such as it is, enforced by local wardens. So the only way the citizens are treated is at the baton end of a warden. Many times, except for the wardens down at the Seabank roundabout, there is a complete absence of authority all through the main street. At one point, Transport Malta, the other culprit of this scene, put an official up at the HSBC bend to stop traffic going down until an Arriva bus climbs up. Then, suddenly, there was nobody at the bend, no TM officer. No reason has, to my knowledge ever been given.

There have been attempts at discussion but they became shouting matches. And since this is politics and since we are in a pre-election period, crucial votes can be lost if one is not perceived as defending the selfish interest of the majority and hang the rest.

That is why this summer is seeing the death of politics on this micro-scale, in this microcosm of Malta.

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