Following an electoral campaign can be painful. More so if you’ve long lost faith in politics and its players and are thus relegated to the status of commentator, outsider or even casual watcher.

In each case, justified disenchantment is the only certainty. Elections and the brouhaha around it are another reminder that decisions are taken by few hands in rooms much bigger and very distant to ours.

At the time of writing, those very hands have reversed at least two atrocious projects which would have seriously damaged the communities of Marsascala and Marsaxlokk. Watching Robert Abela verbally withdraw the marina project was a brief moment of relief (different to ‘joy’), especially after months of obstinacy and dismissive posturing in the media.

Cynicism at the withdrawal was served not to the prime minister and Labour but to residents and activists expressing cautious satisfaction: those leading the campaign suddenly became ‘naïve’, if not ‘sell-outs’. I understand the bitterness: some would have rather seen an invisible PN gain votes than residents succeed in the first step.

It takes sweat and focus to face this formidable formation of bidders, politicians and even electoral candidates. Get your eye off the ball and they’re through on goal.

In fact, had residents not kept the issue prominent during an election period, the tender would have proceeded all the way to the Planning Authority. There, their objections would have been quashed and billed as ‘frivolous’ by CEO Martin Saliba, while Victor Axiak’s ERA would have given another deceitful green light and then the EPRT would deliver the third consecutive snub. The courts might find in the residents’ favour but by then works would have started and the bay destroyed.

We’ve seen this script elsewhere: Balluta, Central Link, Dingli, Luqa, Żabbar, Gozo. It is but half-time in Marsascala, and there’s a long way to go.

With interests ranging from Jerma to Żonqor and to other bays around Malta, the cabal planning the assault is big and varied, partly unnamed, yet financed to its teeth. It is still salivating for its promised pound of flesh: whether it involves the construction of a marina, its lucrative mooring fees, ancillary services (fast ferries, security) or seasoned speculators circling above town.

Despite the prime minister’s verbal assurances, the conditions for the marina in Marsascala are still there. And they have been for at least 15 years, ever since George Pullicino’s MEPA ignored its own recommendations and slated Marsascala as an ideal site for a marina in the 2006 local plans.

I’ve no doubt some other kind of ‘hands’ were involved in this designation, seeing Marsascala Bay scored very poorly in two siting studies carried out before 2006. An application for a marina in 2007 was eventually abandoned, even though at least one consortium involving local businessmen and Italian marina operators was created for that purpose.

When people protested in 2006 against the local plans, Labour were among the crowd- Wayne Flask

Mayor Mario Calleja, who emerged on the pages of The Malta Independent two Sundays ago calling supporters of the marina plans “brain-dead”, had stolidly defended the project back in 2007. In fact, he defended the project in two letters to this paper over a period of three weeks between 2007 and 2008, a reminder of how energetic the First Citizen can be about these proposals.

But there’s a basic hypocrisy in Labour blaming Pullicino’s local plans to ram the marina down residents’ throats. When people protested in 2006, Labour were among the crowd. Then, they promised a reform of these plans, which they did only where it suited them and their electoral donors.

Transport Minister Ian Borg is fluent in local plan apologia. While the former planning minister had no intention whatsoever to formally review these plans, he quotes them as if they were Moses’s templates. Indeed, he has broken those commandments many times and had no issue with the tweaking of local plans in his Duchy of Dingli.

The number of mysteriously scheduled roads built in the past four years (ever since the birth of Infrastructure Malta in 2017) has seen many a local plan compromised, largely without planning permits. This also means that some speculators stand to benefit from past and future road-building projects by pouncing on what were previously ODZ areas, now cut in half by a new road.

This brand of deceit is on par with his calling the residents’ resistance a “Nationalist” campaign.

Every five years, those hands in huge rooms send many more hands knocking at our doors, promising this and that. In Marsascala, they ignored a semi-incontinent elephant in the room: voter sentiment. Residents made it clear that candidates who hadn’t spoken out against the marina weren’t welcome in their homes.

Their “Nationalist” campaign would convert Deputy Prime Minister Chris Fearne and two more Labour candidates within a week. By the time Abela announced the marina’s withdrawal he had seen the numbers of Vincent Marmarà’s survey, a confirmation that his party’s own grassroots were against the project.

Yet, the town is still up against powerful private interests, which can lurk in the dark for years, a bit like a submarine unit in the Baltic.

The local plans need to be rewritten so that Marsascala and other localities are spared another fight against Leviathan, rising from the sea every few years even in non-election years.

This time, however, residents should be the ones who have the leading role in drafting these plans. Successive administrations and their consultants have unequivocally failed everyone but the most powerful; and now that the prime minister is suddenly talking about our quality of life, we should have a say in it, beyond a simple vote every five years.

Marsascala should serve as a lesson to many. The election played a role but those in power underestimated a determined, bipartisan alliance where residents put the community before politics.

Now, there’s a second half to be fought.