Le quatorze Juillet. Way back in 1789, an angry Parisian mob stormed the Bastille. The hundreds of political prisoners it was supposed to have held turned out to be only a rumour, and the feared backlash from loyalist forces never materialised. But the fortress had become the symbol of the monarchy’s absolutism and its fall was also the fall of the prevailing system of government. “Is it a revolt?” the King is supposed to have anxiously asked, on hearing the news. “No, sire”, was the answer, “it’s not a revolt, it’s a revolution.”
That revolution was to mark our democratic societies forever: their principles, their values, their institutions. No wonder it is referred to by many as simply ‘the revolution’. Sure, its protagonists themselves did not always live up to its lofty ideals. But that was always seen as a failing of the leaders, hardly of the ideals themselves, which have since remained unassailable, intellectually at least.
Representative democracy and the planning regime
One of those ideals is that of a representative legislature which debates with the serenity and respect required to ensure that laws are good and fair. That principle was very far from our government’s mind when it presented two Bills to amend the current environment and planning regime. When such important and sensitive legislation is involved and the government chooses a time when summer is already in full swing and tries to pass the Bills in record time, you know there is a sinister motive behind it all.
Things started off on a very bad footing when environmental NGOs were given less than 24 hours to go through the documentation and come up with their comments. Someone is in a mad rush – while conceding some time for environmental window-dressing. Parliamentary Secretary Michael Falzon even had the cheek to criticise the Opposition as “a direct affront to the environment and NGOs” after we voted against a clause in the Bill, proposed originally by Din l-Art Ħelwa and from which Falzon’s government removed two crucial words to suck out any meaningful substance.
Revolution in environmental affairs and the reinstitution of the ancien régime
We have come a long way from the time when a Minister responsible for the environment could dispense absolute power to take decisions with the arbitrariness of an absolutist French monarch. That form of environmental planning was metaphorically guillotined by the Nationalist government more than two decades ago.
Well, you know what? The King is dead, long live the King! Using the shortcomings of the planning process as a pretext, Labour has reinstituted the ancien régime lock, stock and barrel: the days when the ominous “people close to the Minister” would buy up land that was cheap due to it being outside development boundaries, would mysteriously secure development permits and would then sell their asset at a tidy profit. Not that this has not happened in the last two years, mind you, but now it will be made significantly easier.
Il-Farell: the bully of the Piano bridge
The Opposition called for a clause-by-clause vote on the Bill, with the debate running into the early hours of the morning. One who collapsed under the pressure was Labour MP Joe Farrugia also known as “il-Farell”. Probably irked at not having had an early night tucked in bed, he took umbrage at the Opposition’s way of opposing the government’s assault on the environment.
I chanced to meet him when I left the chamber to grab a breath of fresh air on the bridge that links Parliament’s chamber with the administration, during one of the 20 something voting intervals we had during that particular lengthy session. I had never spoken to the honourable member until then, nor heard his voice for all that matter. I had never heard him make an intervention in the House but on that day something seems to have loosened his tongue and, believe me when I say that what followed was no bridge-building exchange. His words were rude and shallow – even if fairly incoherent. His body language complemented his threatening tone. I was accompanied by two of my colleagues, Tonio Fenech and Tony Bezzina who, like me, were left dumbfounded. It was an unprovoked reaction and I had no other option but to report the matter to the Speaker.
When an MP whom I have not heard as much as clearing his throat in the chamber makes a threat, you take it seriously. In the Mintoffian era of politics, much graver incidents started with relatively less serious ones, like the one where late Nationalist MP George Bonello du Puis lost his front teeth when a minister crossed to the other side of the chamber and punched him in the face.
The Speaker rightly confronted the Hon. Joe Farrugia. He did not unequivocally deny he made the threat; he said it was “a joke”. It’s a good job for him that in life he stuck to selling bathroom ceramics, with parliamentary life an effortless side-hobby. Had he become a stand-up comedian, he would have made no one laugh and would have starved to death.
New Labour’s revolution going full circle: back to corruption and bullying
It’s been a few years now since we were promised “political tremors”. New Labour’s progressive revolution has now come full circle. It stands not only for corruption and scandals but also for the employment of bullying tactics. Labour’s leaders are neither Enlightenment philosophers nor revolutionary sans culottes but their tactics would at least have made both Dom Mintoff and Lorry Sant proud.
In the meantime, some quarters have described the Opposition’s filibuster as a waste of time as it achieved nothing. I disagree. The fall of the Bastille reminds us that symbolic victories matter. They are the ones that remain etched in the public mind and which, eventually, come to be points of reference. After all, tipping points, seen in hindsight, are often minor affairs with major consequences.
Mr Puli is the Opposition spokesman for Citizens’ Rights, Civil Rights, Equality, Social Dialogue, Consumers’ Rights, Internet Rights, Communications, Broadcasting and Audio-Visual Policy