06th September 2004

Between the devil and the deep blue sea

The fifteen members that make up the MEPA Board have a hard task ahead of them next Thursday. If they choose to approve the proposal for a massive golf course project they may score some points with Prime Minister Gonzi, and he being the appointer of Board members the temptation may be attractive. If however they decide against Angelo Xuereb´s plans their reward may be of a more heavenly kind.

A vote in favour of the golf course is going to displease Archbishop Mercieca, who it has been reported is willing to take court action should the golf course and its multifarious appendages: business complex, apartments, tennis courts, car park, etc in an area the size of Sliema be approved.

The Church has not been one to take stands against environmental and social degradation when it came to the use of its properties in the past, but the fact that it spoke up this time must be interpreted as an indication that this time it means business. Let us hope it will not be the last time.

The MEPA Board members must weigh pleasing their worldly masters against pleasing their spiritual ones, although to be fair to Gonzi, who is a former Archbishop´s nephew, he never instructed the MEPA Board to vote in favour of the golf course proposal at Verdala.

As has been since made perfectly clear, Gonzi was careful with his words and said the decision as to where golf courses should be placed should be left up to the experts.
The planning, environmental and social experts at MEPA have now decided and their message too could not have been clearer: “On balance the proposed development is not considered to uphold the principles enunciated in the Development Planning Act, since the negative impacts including amongst others the disbenefits to the farming community by displacement of current farming activities, the high demand for water resources, the significant disturbance to ecological habitats and archaeological remains, are not considered to be balanced by the economic benefits of the proposal.”
So if the Prime Minister´s instructions are to be properly followed and one can only assume that he wants them to, then the MEPA members can feel safer agreeing with those that offer more spiritual sustenance.

Could it be that the Prime Minister was not aware that the experts were about to recommend refusal, nobody else knew as the report was finalised and made public more than a week after Gonzi´s call for two golf courses. Has the PM miscalculated? Nobody but himself might know. But we have to give him the benefit of the doubt. He said the experts should decide and they have done so.

Whichever way it goes Thursday some people will be jubilant and others down in the dumps. The delineation between those that favour the golf course and those against is not crystal clear. Many organised groups have opposed and there have been several writing the media pointing out that a golf course on that site would not add but detract from our quality of life, and some people as, well as the Malta Tourism Authority, have supported the proposal.

A certain Michael Bonello and one Antoine Vella have come to Xuereb´s support, and Daphne Caruana Galizia once stood by his side some time ago and was in charge of his pro golf course marketing.

Neither Bonello or Vella have explained what their interest in the matter is. Bonello keeps on referring to reports that have never seen the light of day and whenever environmentalists have asked to see these supposed independent reports they have been turned down. What in the reports has made them so damning that neither Bonello nor Angelo Xuereb is prepared to make them public? Could it be that the reports actually condemn the Verdala site?

The less said about Antoine Vella the better. This is the former head of an organisation that tried to persuade Nature Trust and Friends of the Earth that the environment has nothing to do with human beings and whenever Vella has been asked why he favours the golf course his reply has been: “the farmers are lazy and do not pay taxes.” Some reason for supporting a golf course that will see more than 100 people lose the land they and their fathers and grandfathers have been tilling for centuries.

I remember speaking to Kola Cassar, one of the farmers who has recently switched to organic farming. He was showing us around his farmhouse, the place he lived when he was a child. He showed us the little tower from where his mother used to call her naughty children when lunch was ready, and the well where they stored meat hanging from a rope into a well to keep it fresh. These priceless memories, and no doubt each farmer has a few, are an essential part of farming life. A life that for the past ten years now has been threatened by a developer who has no claim to that land.

Any sociologist can explain the drastic impacts communities suffer when their ties with their land are ripped away from them. Malta is not a country that can boast extensive good quality farm land, but the farmers swear that the clay slopes that meander down from the Tal Vitru promontory deliver some of the best vegetables and fruit that are to be found.
The MEPA Board members are not only being called upon to decide between the emotional memories of the farmers and the desires of an ambitious businessman who has dreams of golf English style lawns and golf balls flying all over the place; but must also weigh in the hard facts that have been clearly spelled out in the Planning Directorate’s refusal.

The proposed development is in contradiction of twenty MEPA planning policies, the draft North West Local Plan and one legal notice. Those policies are meant to guide MEPA to take its decisions. The policies that the proposal violates are some of the most fundamental to the Structure Plan. They include policies related to: the built environment, tourism, rural conservation zones, urban conservation areas, transport, agriculture, and archaeology.

Those polices are the basis for Malta’s planning law and the MEPA Board is duty bound to ensure that its decisions are based on those policies.
Although MEPA´s choice will be in a sense between the devil and the deep blue sea, it cannot but decide according to planning law. The writing is on the wall.

Martin Galea De Giovanni
Friends of the Earth (Malta)
www.foemalta.org