Letters | Sunday, 09 August 2009

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Gonzi’s MEPA reform deserves a chance

Dr Eddie Fenech Adami was right to create MEPA, a body to regulate the planning and building construction in this country. The corrupt obscenities that were the order of the day in late 1970s and 1980s, where a circle of developers led by a minister had the country at their mercy, were not simply because everything was in the hands of a minister. Things were also in the hands of the minister before this; but not as scandalous and obscene as in the 1980s. That was the reason that an autonomous body (MEPA) was created as a near-perfect entity outside the political sphere. But what happened?
MEPA started to grow and turned into a giant. Nobody from the government ever tried to put the brakes on it. When citizens suffered at MEPA’s decisions, ministers told them to ‘complain to MEPA’; and when they turned to MEPA, they were given papers reminding them of their rights, or in other words telling you: ‘please leave us alone, go to a lawyer and take the developer to court’.
In the time of Lorry Sant, no brakes were applied by the then Prime Minister, and no brakes were applied now by the prime minister. It had to be the 2008 general election and the MEP elections to wake the Prime Minister and his government up (although I am sure they were not asleep) to order a reform.
I’m the last to defend the prime minister, although he does not need it; but I felt disgusted with your issue of 12 July 2009. It was a complete attack on the Prime Minister because he proposed in his reform that he is going to keep MEPA under his wings. The article stated that all those who fought and confronted Labour thuggery had wasted their time. I was one of them, with thousands more, maybe yourself too; we were fighting then so that we will have a newspaper that was free to attack the Prime Minister, and I free to answer you.
I’d attack the Prime Minister, moreso his predecessor for giving all this power to these entities, for removing the presence of police officers at the core of our villages and towns, for the creation of local councils, the harassment of the citizens by cameras and wardens and local councils traps. Now that the reform of MEPA is going to be in the hands of the Prime Minister, let’s give it a chance, hoping it will not be like the Armier dishonesty, or the local council reform, which was no reform at all except the reform of salaries.

Joseph Muscat
Mosta

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