Declawed

One of the most painful and pitiful of surgeries is the declawing of cats. The removal of claws leaves these animals with no natural form of defence since, as felines, they rely on their claws and not on their teeth for protection.

On reading Harry Vassallo's Toothless Tiger, I could not help smiling. The Alternattiva chairman's reaction was typically one of a declawed feline: painfully aware that defence is no longer possible.

The Malta Environment and Planning Authority has fallen foul of Alternattiva Demokratika, having exposed the shameless way in which they will jump on to any and every bandwagon in the hope of eking out a few votes.

Let us just start with the Hamrun case, a Nimby if ever there was one. The issue: the protection of wartime shelters found in a development in Hamrun. The accusation; that Mepa is doing nothing to protect the cultural heritage.

Way back in 1994, Mepa was the first entity to schedule wartime shelters as part of our cultural heritage.

Mepa did not wait for other agencies to do this. It just saw the lacuna and addressed it.

In this particular instance, the permit was approved after plans were amended to include the shelters as part of the basement.

This is no big deal and such compromises are made constantly in an island teeming with, among other things, heritage issues. I shall not reiterate facts already made crystal clear elsewhere.

That Alternattiva chose to take as gospel truth the audit officer's report is neither here nor there. Suffice it to say that the initial concerns by the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage were completely overcome. Not only.

A joint statement by Mepa and SCH officials shows that all is proceeding according to permit and in due respect of the protection of the cultural heritage. The statement states that a joint inspection by the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage and Mepa has certified there is no infringement of the permit conditions in the development PA 5495/02 in Triq San Guzepp, Hamrun.

Curiously, the Alternattiva spokesman for the environment chose to circulate two dossiers on what he terms as the abuses in the Hamrun development and the documentary evidence supporting, among other things, parts of the Wignacourt Aqueduct.

Perhaps the newspaper is not the best place for what I am about to say, but, for those more academically minded, in historical research there is such a thing as forcing evidence.

These two dossiers are the best example I have seen of this type of forced evidence for quite a number of years.

What to the untrained eye might appear as the top of an aqueduct arch was identified by a trained geologist as a rock fissure. There is nothing new or academically sound about them and are simply a collation of known generic facts.

Perhaps one might feel inclined to attribute naïvité to Dr Vassallo that he took his spokesman's word for what transpired in the saga of the remains found in Mark Causon's house in Rabat.

It beggars belief that Dr Vassallo states that absolutely no enforcement notice was issued against Mr Causon.

The audit officer, whom Alternattiva so gleefully quotes elsewhere, was completely satisfied that the house where excavations were being carried out belonged to Mr Causon and that the enforcement notice was handed to him in the presence of officials from both SCH and Mepa.

Dr Vassallo might not be seeing the teeth of the mythical tiger but is certainly feeling its claws. I wonder what would have happened had the roles been reversed and it were myself as minister defending a colleague or myself in a similar matter? It is my turn to ask: Where is the logic?

When a party, which purports to safeguard the commons, takes on an ethos in which all criticism is regarded as attempts at victimisation and laws are flouted in an attempt to discredit authority, the situation is worse than having no such party.

The fact that a party is forced to bolster one of its spokesmen facing allegations of being in flagrant conflict with the law is a measure of the opportunism of the party and its lack of direction. Apologies are in order Dr Vassallo - to Mepa.

Mr Pullicino is Minister of Rural Affairs and the Environment.