Lower Fort St Elmo - back to square one

Some years ago, President Emeritus Guido de Marco stated that Lower Fort St Elmo was a national shame. Regrettably, it still is.

Just over a year ago I publicly congratulated workers from the Ministry for Resources and Rural Affairs for their thorough clean-up of Lower Fort St Elmo, whereby they cleared about 90 tons of accumulated rubbish from this historical site.

Soon after this clean-up, soldiers were posted on guard at Fort St Elmo to make sure squatters and vandals do not continue to have the run of the dilapidated monument. Access to the fort was then controlled by the army, 24 hours a day, following a security agreement between the Parliamentary Secretary for Government Revenues and Land and the Armed Forces of Malta. Carnival organisers and related volunteers, whose names and details are on a list, were still allowed to enter (The Times, December 2, 2009).

A brief peek into Lower Fort St Elmo, however, now seems to suggest that some things and/or people never change, as can be seen from the attached photographs. Need one say more?