Try as I can to find a good thing about the first few months of this government only makes me want to weep. I wish I could sincerely say that this government deserves our full praise and another vote of confidence, come the next election or the next MEP vote, but this government is not just poor, its vision is getting systematically poorer. The sad and awful thing is that because of this poor show by all the government ministers and entities, the whole of Malta and its people are going to suffer.
In fact let me make a correction: we are not going to suffer, we are suffering. In Marsascala we had a great initiative launched and sustained by the PN government: the Family Park. People came from all over the island, especially from the south, to spend some time there, relaxing and enjoying the open spaces.
One of the first actions of the new government, which promised so much and has delivered nothing, was close the park. The Minister responsible, Leo Brincat, blamed it all on a gas leak. In May it was reported that this was going to be checked and the problem resolved. Nothing has happened and, report after unsubstantiated report, the park is slowly being turned into a ghost town. Marsascala and its neighbouring districts have been down-graded by this government of broken promises and no vision.
If you speak to people in Marsascala as I do – and especially the people who run businesses there – they all say the same thing: while before business was booming, thanks to the visitors to the park, now everything is going downhill. How sad that something so good under the previous government has been abandoned – the poor suffering people suffer on in disgust. And the ones suffering, except for a few who were given prize jobs, are not just the PN diehards.
In Marsascala, the people deprived of a park are of various political backgrounds: PN, Labour, greens and also that rare breed who do not vote. The ones who voted in Labour, hoping for a new way of life, are now finding that the new way of life means being deprived of what they took for granted, of what the PN in government delivered all the time. The people who taught the PN a lesson are now repenting at leisure that they trusted Labour thinking they have changed, thinking they have now become savvy and knowledgeable.
The Marsascala Park debacle is just a small indicator of what this government is doing to our economy—stopping good revenue sources and good initiatives which were going to be managed by a public-private operation. As the PN said, in its most detailed and to-the-point statement, the minister responsible for the park thinks he is still sitting comfortably on the Opposition benches where – they thought – you just have to look sweet, criticise and ask for reports and more reports. Well, life is tougher on the government benches if you are a bunch of amateurs with no preparation.
The unfortunate thing for the whole of Malta is that the ministers and their appointees all feel they can still smile and drive around nonchalantly, oblivious to all the trouble they are causing. But the people who are being made to suffer because of inaction or the wrong actions of ministers know there is not very much to smile about.
Give us back our park – Marsascala and all the Maltese deserve it.