Last week it was reported that researchers from the University of Malta have presented their findings regarding a new test that will facilitate treatment for breast cancer. The description of their work is a textbook case of what good scientific research should look like: cooperation with prestigious international institutions with established track records in the field, partnership with the private sector with prospects and backing by the parent institution.

It was not an isolated story of its kind. But it came in the very same week that Joseph Muscat lost his cool on realising that opposition to the 'university' at Żonqor is too broad to resort to his time-honoured tactic of trying to buy off everyone with well-paying, phantom jobs. The American University of Malta proposal spelled no kind of magic and only the staunch party faithful were mesmerised.

Pluralism and liberalisation

"There are people who have an interest in tertiary education remaining a closed shop by the few, for the few," he hissed at a meeting in Marsascala a fortnight ago. Someone without the faintest idea of our political history might have been tempted to think that pluralism and liberalisation were ingrained in Labour's policies.

A few decades earlier and a speech like that delivered by a Labour leader in that shrill tone would have resulted in Party 'heavies' setting off for tal-Qroqq to set things straight. Physically straight.

But times change and the Party that once decried Independence as a 'farce' because parts of the coastline were out-of-bounds for non-military people, is now ready to give away so much land for the 'American University of Malta', a misnomer if ever there was one.

The American (University) dream

I pity Marsascala Local Council, whose members voted for the project, gushing with praise at the educational opportunities and the spill-over effect this project is expected to have. Just in case nobody has yet told those councillors, at least the majority in favour, young people from Marsascala - as anywhere else in Malta - have been successfully studying at our University for a long time, especially since the institution flung its doors wide open in 1988.

Graduates have since been using their degrees to land themselves good jobs (whether you define that in terms of money, satisfaction or social value) in Malta and abroad. The University of Malta and its graduates have long faced competition from other degree-awarding institutions, both here and elsewhere, and they have fared well. They will face none from the "university" in Żonqor. Firstly, because it will be a "gated development" - separate from the rest through a wall of fees. As we have been told, it sees its clientele as moneyed candidates from the Middle East, hardly the kind of people to go to downtown Marsascala to stock up on their Du Mauriers, in case anyone is thinking of benefits to local business.

Downgrading Malta's tertiary education

Secondly, because quality education hardly looks like the main concern of the realtors behind the project. They may boast that they have bought the curriculum from the De Paul University in Chicago - heck, money can buy you anything - but before even the foundation stone has been laid, the first move by the Maltese government was to amend the law so that it will be possible to accredit universities with lower standards on the grounds of an undefined and ambiguous "national interest".

You can sell anything under the guise of "the national interest", hoping that critics and sceptics will keep mum in a show of sham patriotism. Sadly for Joseph Muscat, that con has grown a little bit too old now from overuse.

Zonqor: like a virgin touched for the very first time

Another of Muscat's old tricks - trying to make some sort of tenuous comparison between what he does and what past Nationalist governments did - also seems to have reached expiry date. This week, government MPs Silvio Parnis and Anthony Agius Decelis very helpfully posed Parliamentary Questions to Muscat on how many applications for development Outside Development Zones (ODZ) had been approved since 1995. This gave the Prime Minister the opportunity to grandstand and announce that there had been more than 12,500. So why is the Nationalist Opposition making a fuss over just this one?

What the Muscat did not say is that nobody in his right mind would consider most of those applications detrimental to the general good, including the environment. They include rural developments - from the laying of pipes to the digging of cisterns and the building of stores - which, apart from being nowhere close in size to this project, ensured that agricultural land could continue to be worked. Successful applications also include a sewage treatment plant, thanks to which the Labour government can boast abroad that Malta has the cleanest swimming water in the EU while itself having done zilch to take the honour.

That's part of the legacy the Nationalist government left behind. Labour's government will include a residential complex for the rich of the Middle East, as there is no social purpose in its use to justify this ODZ application. Zonqor is just like a virgin, touched for the very first time. This piece of virgin land will be capriciously ruined.

Clyde Puli is the PN spokesman for Citizens' Rights, Civil Rights, Equality, Social Dialogue, Consumers' Rights, Internet Rights, Communications, Broadcasting and Audio-Visual Policy