It is going to take more than a lawsuit to defeat the democratic distortion, the institutional violence and the planning blasphemy proposed in the Sliema, St Julian's and Gzira area. The law is being very obviously abused already. It has become an instrument of outrage and oppression. When MEPA bleats at objectors that it has no legal power to view any development project against the context in which it will take place, ordinary citizens are being laughed at.
What kind of planning is that? In Tigné, which is about to attain global fame as the most densely populated spit of land on earth, MEPA approved the MIDI development in direct contradiction of the North Harbour Local Plan which was kept in suspended animation until developments such as this and the Hilton could take place against all planning common sense. Since the local plan did not permit it, the local plan was not allowed to become law.
There are now two applications for mega-developments in the immediate proximity of the MIDI project: Town- square and the ex-Crowne Plaza. By an estimate dubbed conservative by MEPA technocrats, these and other less gargantuan construction projects aimed at this tiny peninsula add an additional 1,300 flats to the area. Another 2,500 vehicles to add to the gridlock?
In an 'oops' of massive proportions it turns out that the Tigné tunnel originally intended to take traffic in two lanes in both directions around the peninsula, will now hold just two Valletta-bound carriageways. How about St Julian's-bound traffic? It will be diverted through the shopping area in Tower Road. Goodbye pedestrian area. Traffic to Tigné will head up Censu Scerri Street and simmer and fume in gridlock there.
Vote George get Lorry? Lorry Sant was a pathetic wimp compared to George. Lorry Sant only engineered the destruction of Tower Road. George has given the go-ahead to Armageddon. Tigné residents are still trying to get their heads around it. "How can any politician be so stupid?" they ask themselves. The problem is that many of them still imagine that politicians, particularly Nationalist politicians and George Pullicino especially, are still after their vote. Obviously, they are not.
The outrage being perpetrated in Tigné is so enormous that people are stunned. It is hard to digest all at once. People who have voted PN all their lives, people who have lived with the idea that the PN is their bulwark against violence, corruption and oppression, find it hard to admit that not only is their protection gone for good but that it is their bulwark that is exposing them to harm, to damage from which they will never recover.
Someone in the PN has decided that Tigné should be developed as a mini-Manhattan. Quite evidently the decision was taken years ago. Quite evidently the resistance of local residents was anticipated and avoided. Residents were not told what was planned for them. They were not asked what they thought because they would say no.
My guess is that in the calculation of the unseen and unheard genius deciding all this, it is expected that the new developments will put such pressure on the remaining properties that they will be sold and developed too. The Tigné community is doomed. Very shortly it will no longer exist.
What does it feel like to be a Tigné resident today? To feel that you have been deliberately ignored? People who put their lives' savings into a property which will be devalued by the intolerable development may go beyond the political aspect, their loyalty thrown back in their faces. They will consider that their lives, the money they have made and skimped and saved is being devalued, discarded and rendered an irrelevance, mere collateral damage thrown over to the side in the PN's onward rush to glory.
It is clear that the government has no fear of Tigné residents; if they vote for the devil himself in revenge, the PN does not care. Protest vote? It will be a screaming rage vote but it will not hurt the PN enough for it to worry. Either it is assured of victory already in secret polls or it has given up all hope and is amassing a war chest for a long stretch in Opposition. Too bad, Tigné residents.
We are all Tigné residents. When the chips are down, none of us are worth a jot in the PN's calculations. Why mention the PN so often? Because it is the PN in government, moving and shaking. Why not give the MLP its share of the blame? Why bother? Everybody knows that an MLP one-party government will be no different. It was the MLP which started the smash and grab and once in power it has years of catching up to do.
It is structurally coerced to follow suit in order to secure brownie points from the construction industry and the funds that brings. No funds, no facing up to a PN at its best, a lethal Opposition swimming in its ill-gotten gains and very little to do except to shoot down the government. The MLP cannot offer a credible alternative on such issues unless it commits to public financing of political parties. It will not.
Right now Tigné residents are in the eye of the storm. In Gzira, residents have no idea what is about to hit them. Their local council has spent most of the last period of office squabbling on who should be mayor and how. Meanwhile, plans for a high-rise tower replacing the Mamo garage have continued. A 40-storey tower has been mentioned. It is something like sweeping up the whole of Gzira into a tube reaching into the clouds. At least over the smog.
Gzira has been a traffic-infested area for many decades. The mess has continued to get worse. Now it will take a quantum leap in the same direction to levels unimaginable by residents. The construction of a tower just there in the heart of hellish traffic must be an insanity unparalleled on a global level.
The Traffic Impact Statement (TIS) prepared for the Manoel Island Project clearly foretold the advent of complete gridlock without the project in four years' time. Gridlock would be postponed to eight years' time if a link road from Manoel Island to the regional road at Kappara is built. When the project comes on line, gridlock is anticipated within four years, link road and all.
The question of the opening of the Tal-Qroqq hospital was mentioned in the Manoel Island TIS. No traffic solution can prevent the mess once traffic from the project though the link road hits traffic from Mater Dei Hospital at the Tal-Qroqq junction. Nobody can get to Kappara faster if the tailback reaches from Tal-Qroqq back into Tigné, back into Swieqi, Pembroke, Ta' l-Ibrag and Madliena. Do commuters from San Gwann and Ta' Giorni use the Tal-Qroqq Junction? And all those heading down the Birkirkara bypass to Valletta? Say hello to your future. Yes, we are all Tigné residents.
None of the Manoel Island TIS predictions could take into account the mega-developments at the Mamo garage, at Pender Place, at the Hilton, at Townsquare and at the Crowne Plaza. Even today MEPA is unable to collate and guesstimate the vast, diffuse, ongoing building project resulting from the redevelopment of new areas such as Swieqi and The Gardens as well as those in the conservation areas exceptionally mushrooming to six storeys everywhere.
All this is proposed in the total absence of a credible public transport strategy. It is as though the mayor of New York were planning to shut down the subway to Manhattan and call it progress. The pinnacle of public transport ambition of the present government is to arrive at 1995 levels of public transport use on buses.
Who cares? Who can do anything about it? The opposition to this insanity takes place in a leopard spot pattern. The Pender Place objectors do not know the Tigné objectors and the residents of Gzira will only start their own complaint once they are thick in smog.
The politicians in the other parties are depending on this. They are convinced that the Maltese are unable to act together on anything, that they can pick them off in ones and twos at will. We are all Tigné residents. When our turn comes, the construction industry party knows that it can run over any of us and never stop to notice the bump.
They are probably right. Cool reason gives no hope. Our track record for solidarity is abysmal. Our ability to get out of our political straitjackets is virtually non-existent. We are sitting on the tracks bound up like bragjoli waiting for the next train.
It never was a good reason to give up the fight as far as the Greens are concerned. We will fight until we win. And we will certainly win in the end. The question is when. Are people waiting to support us when they grow up? In another life? When there is no political bogeyman to blackmail them into submission?
The present ongoing rape of Malta is unlike anything we have ever witnessed before. This time it is different. This time Labour cannot say that its speculators are to make millions to provide housing for the poor homeless. This time not even the most shameless Nationalist can claim that we have to make some small sacrifices in the name of progress. One of every four properties is vacant. There is no economic reason why anybody should be homeless. Nobody, not even the most utterly inebriated partisan, can claim that what is being proposed resembles progress in any light at all.
It is no empty boast that only Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party offers any hope of change. Only if we have the political clout will anything change before we have reached the very bottom. Only we can boast of a track record of commitment to the rule of law and the respect of residents as equals in rights in the face of anyone. Only we can boast that we are not beholden to the construction industry. They have neither built our offices nor any party club for free. We do not depend on anybody for advertising in our cash guzzling media empires. We do not have one. We are free to say it like it is and to do something about it.
We can insist that the tunnel which MIDI was committed to provide must be provided at any cost. If the investors go broke to keep their word to the government, it is just too bad for them. Why should taxpayers fork out a cent for a link road necessitated by overdevelopment by a few? Why should link roads and what not follow development not precede it? If the developer were so cash-strapped that they have to wait until they make their profits from the sale of the properties, perhaps the government should not have been so generous with its land.
Greens will never permit any planner to admit to legal tunnel vision. It is simply blasphemous in planning terms to claim that developments are to be considered one at a time as though they took place in splendid isolation. It is simply unacceptable. The Greens deny it and they will never change their minds. Everybody knows it.
Does anybody imagine that if the Minister of Environment were a Green any of this would be on the cards at all? Would a Green allow a government depending on his or her support to fix its public accounts with the sale of the Hilton, Pender Place, the Crowne Plaza and Manoel Island/Tigné, all former government properties, without considering for an instant the impact on residents' quality of life?
The elimination of the Environment Impact Assessment in the case of the Crowne Plaza is illegal and ultra vires. All permits issued on that basis are and will remain invalid. The ultimate invalidation of permits will require the demolition of anything built on the site. It may take years but the Greens will never give up and we will never shed a tear for any developer or any purchaser of these properties. They have had no compunction about the impact of their actions on others.
The Lm23 million paid to Government will not be refunded. The banks financing the project will have to sue personally those acting beyond their legal powers because no government can be liable for what its servants do beyond their remit. Purchasers will have to find someone to sue as best they can. We will have no compunction about binding the Tigné/Manoel Island project to its original obligations to provide a tunnel and to build a breakwater protecting the road and moorings at the Sliema Ferries. We owe them no favours.
The combined economic weight of what we are taking on is very obvious. The political and propaganda clout it generates is clear to everybody. We simply do not care. What we are taking on is a fight in which we will find out whether rights and the rule of law have any weight in the face of money. We have always been at it.
Today things have gone from bad to worse and this is crystal clear to everybody. Those who want to stand with us now are very welcome. Those who are still afraid to show anybody that they exist have my undiluted pity.
Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party
www.alternattiva.org.mt; www.adgozo.com