So, after the American University of Malta turned out to be far from being American, it now turns out that neither will it be a university.

We’ll probably soon get to know that it will be a kindergarten or a childcare centre.

But, putting aside sarcasm, what happened and is happening on the Zonqor development is yet another of the many examples through which Labour has failed in all its pre-electoral pledges.

The government’s behaviour has been shameful and shameless on many counts, but this definitely takes the biscuit; at least for now, because I am sure there will be other occasions between now and the election that the Labour government will be deceitful.

Labour’s betrayals are multiple.

Labour promised to listen, but in spite of opposition from all quarters - except of course its friendly media and those developers making hay while the sun is shining – it completely ignored the protests and marched on unabated.

Labour has betrayed us when it promised it will work to safeguard the environment. We all remember the fuss Labour used to create on each and every environmental issue that occurred under the previous Nationalist administrations. And before the election we heard Joseph Muscat pledge to be the defender of the environment when he became prime minister. Now, as prime minister, he is bulldozing his way through, ignoring the pleas of the real defenders of the environment.

Saying that the footprint of the ODZ land to be taken up in Marsascala was drastically reduced is no consolation. What’s the point of drawing up which land can be used for building and which can’t when, at the stroke of a pen, development can take place anywhere?

My fear is that, when it comes to this particular area, this is only the beginning. I am sure that there will be growing pressure on the government to allow others to develop land in the vicinity. Once the university... oops... higher educational institute is completed, building will be sprouting outwards from it.

Labour has betrayed us from the educational point of view too. We all know about the value of the real American universities, and by using “American” in its promotion exercise, the government tried to make it appear that something like Harvard, Princeton or Yale (universities; yes, the real ones) were coming over to set up shop in Malta. But it quickly became apparent that there was little, if anything, American in the administrators.

Added to this, the more recent news that it will not be a university at all – not American, not Jordanian – continued to expose the deceit. One just wonders whether the government knew about it as from the start and kept it away from the public eye, or whether it was realised later that the credentials submitted by the developers could not make it to university level. Frankly, I wonder which of the two options is worse than the other.

Labour has also betrayed us when it comes to its promise of a new way of doing politics. It used to viciously attack the Nationalists for their systems of government, but now it is repeating the same mistakes and doing much worse. It pledged accountability and transparency, but it’s simply not happening.

In a nutshell, Labour is doing the opposite of what it promised.