Assessing the councils

I read with interest your leader of August 20 in which you gave a very clear assessment of how local councils developed over the past 10 years. It is now an undisputed fact that local councils cannot any longer be considered an experiment but are now accepted as an efficient and effective form of government.

It was not an easy task for the Nationalist Party to introduce local councils. In 1993, when the Local Councils Act was being pushed through parliament, former Prime Minister Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici initiated a scare campaign that local councils would mean a waste of public funds.

He was proven wrong. Dr Mifsud Bonnici is currently spearheading another misguided, ill-conceived scare campaign for which, eventually, he will also be proved wrong.

The Malta Labour Party strongly opposed in principle the participation of political parties in local councils. However, like most of Labour's supposedly immutable principles, this proved to be flexible and was overturned by Alfred Sant himself, bowing to mounting pressure from within the party to change course.

Despite the strong opposition, the Nationalist Party forged steadfastly along and pushed decentralisation through, starting from the basic services to what we have today, when local councils have the responsibility for law enforcement and the management of almost all of the activities that take place within the various localities.

As mayor since April 1994, I have been intimately involved in all the developments that have taken place. There is no doubt that local councils have matured into true local authorities that are autonomous from central government. They have boldly taken up initiatives that no government department would have taken and as you so rightly state in your editorial, the upkeep of our localities has improved considerably.

The Nationalist Party believes that local councils are the solution to many of our internal problems. Central government discharged some of its responsibilities to local councils. Bureaucracy has thus been reduced and efficiency increased, thereby improving the quality of life of our people.

Labour, who, when in government, reduced the local councils' funding to starvation level, does not share the principle of decentralisation. They gave local councils the equivalent of bread and water and expected results.

Labour also criticised decentralisation when the government set up a number of agencies to manage arts and culture. This is one of the main dissimilarities between the two parties. The Nationalist Party favours decentralisation, whereas the Malta Labour Party wants to retain total control over everything.

Local councils gave the opportunity to many people from all walks of life to involve themselves in local politics and to be able to contribute directly to the management of their localities.

I have no doubt that many former and serving councillors would never have dreamed that they would ever contest elections. Local councils have given birth to a new breed of politicians with impressive political acumen and a great sense of pride in their locality.

Love them or hate them, local councils are here to stay. They will stir up controversy and debate. They will carry on improving the level of our well-being.

Local councils will only progress in their development as long as there is a party in government that truly believes in the evolution of local government.

Local councils will only progress so long as there are councillors that also believe in the advancement of local government, who want to see continuous improvement in their localities and have the vision and creativity necessary to bring about a better quality of life for their residents.