Our capital city presents quite a number of issues that are difficult to tackle and mutually in conflict.

Time and again, various governments have tried their hands but the city, or to give it its Maltese name, il-belt (the town) steadfastly refuses to be constrained.

There are demographics to consider first.

Today’s Valletta is home to a smaller and smaller population, far below the huge numbers that existed between the war years. That was a time of high density but also of slum inner city conditions.

The problem is with which components of the society of Valletta do successive governments deal.

Today’s government was elected thanks also to commitments it made to sectors of the Valletta community. By Valletta community we do not necessarily mean Valletta residents but also people who work in Valletta. Thus this government seems to have made a pre-electoral commitment to the monti stall owners who were (and are) angry at being pushed further away from the centre of the city. The present government seems to have promised them a more lucrative position nearer the entrance to the city, thus arousing the ire of those who felt that juxtaposing the monti to Piano’s new parliament and opera house space is sacrilegious.

The present government is also dealing with the vexed issue of accessibility to the city. Valletta’s geographic position as a promontory is already a constraining factor. The preceding administration made access to Valletta even more problematic by making Republic Street a pedestrian precinct, and by removing the road over City Gate. Then the works at City Gate and the long walk it entailed have dissuaded many people from going to Valletta.

But that’s only half of the story. Over the past decades newer and more accessible commercial centres have sprouted all over Malta. Today, one does not need to go into Valletta at all as one used to do some years ago. The main town centres have an even better range of outlets and some provide far better parking.

The GRTU has now come out with a rather garbled statement on the government re-thinking about the controlled vehicular access (CVA) system: it says CVA in its present format is costing the country more than the fees it generates and yet the GRTU does not want any return to the old V-sticker system.

The Valletta business community must understand that with the change in demographics there is simply no way how Valletta can ever regain the primacy it enjoyed 50, 70 years ago when no other business centre existed. CVA is a case in point: when access to Valletta was liberalized by the previous government the idea was to encourage more and more people to enter Valletta and shop. But then so many people obtained exemptions from CVA, and others dumped the CVA charges on to their clients and the end result was that more and more cars ended up parked for a whole day, as they used to do before. Besides, one must also admit, residents’ parking and parking spaces for government offices gobbled up even more parking spaces.

Again, one must ask here who is a government to consult and deal with for the better future of the capital city: the monti owners, the shop owners, the residents or generically Malta whose capital city Valletta is its pride and honour.

Balance must be brought into the equation but perhaps Valletta stands to gain more if it continues to enhance its standing as the European Capital City of Culture than revert to small town politics. The past years have seen a huge improvement of the Valletta offer through restorations, upgradings, and improvements in general. Never in its turmoil-filled past has Valletta looked so beautiful.

The commercial outlets in Valletta must, to use a current expression, ‘wake up and smell the coffee’ – they cannot remain anchored to a business plan drawn up in the 1920s, nor continue to sell cheap underwear because that is what they have always been doing.

An upgraded Valletta needs an upgraded business community.