The Balluta Residents’ Association can claim to have come into life with a bang. Few NGOs can claim to have achieved such a signal success so soon in their careers. The Balluta Carpark Project, claiming the unanimous endorsement of the St Julian’s Local Council, ran into a brick wall of opposition, and... disintegrated.
The unanimous endorsement may have been the key: the residents were presented with a fait accompli, both in the framing and design of the project, as well as in the political backing for it. They were spared the discomfort of mixed loyalties, of appearing to forsake one’s political allegiance in order to form a temporary allegiance with those opposing the project.
All the council was on one side. All the residents, it appears, were on the other. The showdown at the Balluta Corral could have only one outcome. Only years of detachment and complacency can lead to such a shambles.
St Julian’s is a PN stronghold and nobody has ever managed to dislodge its Mayor Peter Bonello from the post he has held since local councils were first introduced in 1994. The electoral equation has meant that he has been able to be a pro-business Mayor like no other. Despite the various public works carried out in the locality in the past 15 years only a small minority can be ascribed to the local council. Most were the result of Central Government intervention egged on by the business community. In not a few cases residents whose interests ran counter with this enthusiastic laissez-faire ideology drew the short straw. Residents have been picked off in small interest groups and ignored. It was a recipe for disaster.
This time, the resident group in question was well organised, irate, articulate and had more strings to pull than the council imagined. The hasty withdrawal of the project says it all.
And yet it would be more than hasty to assume that residents everywhere are being heard and having their way. There is nothing in this episode to indicate that residents of other parts of St Julian’s will not continue to be ignored when they have to deal with noise pollution for hotel airconditioners, all night street partying and the resulting mess they have to inhabit during the day.
Never mind extrapolating anything from this incident to the rest of the country. Other instances of project withdrawals – from the Mnajdra Landfill, through the Xagħra l-Ħamra and Verdala golf courses to the Qui-si-sana carpark – bear little resemblance to this battle. Mnajdra, Verdala and Xagħra l-Ħamra were national issues which drew together wide coalitions across political party lines and though the NGO world. Some lasted for more than a decades; some were resolved in less than a year.
Mnajdra and Verdala succumbed to technical issues, Xaghra l-Ħamra to the revelation that all golf courses were a real estate coup, disguised as an aid to tourism. In all of these cases, local councils – sometimes an alliance of local councils regardless of political majorities – backed the objecting residents. In the Balluta case, the council had antagonised its own electoral base.
None of these cases can be compared to the Marsaskala recycling plant issue which is still pending: the plant not fully operational and the objectors still fighting the case institutionally. There, the National Government had decided the issue and only then tried to go through the motions of consultation and the planning process. It would brook no obstruction and no delay. In that Labour stronghold the majority holds no prospect of gain and therefore no potential loss for a Nationalist Government. Its own support in the constituency bound by its siege mentality is seen to have nowhere to go. Only PR gymnastics were necessary to confuse the issue and maintain the status quo.
Damage limitation took the form of vilifying and isolating opponents and finally a mea culpa on the environment in general at election time. The Prime Minister has since taken direct responsibility for development planning but the decision was not re-examined, much less reversed.
The St Julian’s local council was a walkover for its own voters on a very local and specific issue; but no fundamental changes can be expected as a further outcome. Chances are that the ruckus will blow over and everything will pan out the way it always has at election time. Had the council had the good sense to propose a project that would reduce traffic and ease communication, Friday’s objectors would gladly endorse it.
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