Power to the people indeed. The NGOs are good and important organisations, but most of the people involved are too nice and easily appeased. I can understand their welcoming the decision to amend the Development Planning Act, but let us not get too excited.
It is early days yet and things promised before an election should always be viewed with a large amount of caution.
Unfortunately, NGOs’ modus operandi, on the whole, is non-confrontational, which is not very effective when dealing with politicians and their apparatchiks.
The only way the latter take notice is when people get argumentative and do not accept their poppycock. The successful march in Valletta organised by the NGOs was proof of that.
I, for one, am not taken in by this sudden shift from power to the rich and powerful developers to power to the people.
The only power “the people” hold is when voting time comes round. We are politely ignored the rest of the time, whereas developers and entrepreneurs with promises of good investments, more jobs and God knows what else most often have politician’s attention.
Now, after years of complaints from citizens about MEPA’s arrogance, lack of transparency and development abuses, the Minister of the Environment, George Pullicino – whose words “conflict of interest is not always a conflict of interest” must win him the best quote of the year award – has suddenly got very active on citizens’ behalf.
He is proposing that in future developers would be compelled to inform residents in the vicinity about their projects by sending them registered letters. This would ensure they have the opportunity to file an objection if they wanted to.
I thought that MEPA was supposed to already have been ensuring “the people” have an opportunity to file an objection to new projects.
So because it has not been doing its job, the buck has been passed on to the developer, who will also now be obliged to change the bit of paper stuck on a wall to a billboard, as though that will make a difference.
The question is: how detailed would the information be and would we still need to employ an architect to get detailed information from MEPA?
It is all very well to say that the public will be given development plans and information on applications online. However, as we know MEPA has been very successful in being economical with information and the organisation is renowned for mystifying rather than clarifying information and drowning us in superfluous jetsam and flotsam, so I have no doubt that the developers will be just as adept, probably even more so.
Anyway, our boy George is saying he will close the stable door a little too late. The Tigné monster will not go away; on the contrary another ogre ruining our coastline will join it. And God help us on the future of Manoel Island, the bit of green left on that part of the Malta.
Do not be deceived either by Malta’s recent commitment to no longer allow construction within 100 metres of the coast.
The government has signed a protocol, part of the Barcelona Convention, on Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) in the Mediterranean. But the provisions can be adapted in projects of “public interest” and “in areas with particular geographical, or other local constraints especially related to population density or social needs, where individual housing, urbanisation or development are provided for by national legal instruments”.
What a wonderful gaping loophole.
The real difference, which I do not think is included in the Development Planning Act amendments, is to ensure that the people taking the decisions are doing their job and do not have a conflict of interest, which let’s face it considering MEPA boards are almost totally made up of architects is a bit of a joke, hence George Pullicino’s famous quote.
You can have billboards all over the place but it is the people who say yes or no to environmental and heritage damage that will make the difference.

The influential box
Enthusiasm and a dynamic personality are so important towards getting viewers to stay with your channel.
Even the people who give us the weather news are miles away from the cardboard cut-outs we grew up with.
Broadcasting bosses have recognised this. Just in case you are confused and are wondering what I am on about, I am talking internationally here; I cannot bear to watch the local fare.
And no, it is not because I think that Malta has not got the talent and creativity to produce watchable television.
But people are not chosen for their flair and inventiveness, but for their adeptness at brown-nosing. In the early 1990s there seemed to have been a move away from nepotism on the island. Unfortunately, we have regressed, it is back with a vengeance and it is not doing us any good at all.
Despite that, we are not doing too badly as a nation, but we could do so much better if only we could expand a little.
With an election coming up it is important that the public gets a fair amount of objective views presented to it.
We have plurality, (or do we?) It is all either blue or red, which is rather a contradiction.
Of course the essence of democracy means that we allow people to tell us what they think we should be thinking. In an autocracy one does not have that “luxury”.
Even in democracies, power is wielded to obtain certain results and money talks everywhere. I suppose what I am saying is that the least broadcasters can do here is entertain us and water down the brainwashing, the latter comment includes some of the press.
But I have digressed; I started to write this item because although as I said in the opening lines, enthusiasm and inventiveness in presenters on television is crucial, I find presenters like CNN’s Richard Quest rather tiresome, as in wearying. People like him should be only allowed a few minutes on screen, to give the programme a good kick-start, perhaps a pick-me-up in the middle and a punchy finale.

pamelapacehansen@gmail.com