More guts than brains

Announced on the eve of a batch of local council elections the Smart City project caught all opposition off balance. To criticize the promise of 5000 new jobs would have been politically suicidal. Once the opposition had sidestepped the initial assault, it had no choice but to acquiesce in all that followed. It rode the bandwagon on Smart City in an attempt to share in Minister Gatt’s aura of innovation and futuristic vision. The construction industry which finances both parties in parliament would not have it any other way.

What have I to criticize about Smart City? Nothing in particular except that it is a real estate deal disguised as a technological renaissance. The five thousand jobs made to seem as though they were all already feeding families are a guesstimate over the next decade and there is no guarantee that they will fall to anybody Maltese if and when they become available.

Far be it from me to be against Smart City or any other such project. I just want them to be sold with less hype and for our government not to make nonsense of our laws to make them happen. The 2006 Local Plans for the area explicitly stated that there were no rules governing the area and that each project would be considered separately. The plan was no planning.

Having succeeded with Smart City, Minister Gatt must have convinced himself that he had found the holy grail of government without rules. If the timing is right and enough energy is committed, a Minister can become a sultan. He probably regrets the Prime Minister’s U-turn on the Xaghra l-Hamra golf course. There should be villas and greens now where a national park has come into being.

The charge of the light brigade over electricity tariffs is well known to us all. With industry to the right of him and unions to the left, Minister Gatt pointlessly charged the canons of common sense, humiliated regulators and consultative bodies to take the country into such a crisis that unions spoke with one voice probably for the first time in history. The greatest casualty of all was our government’s reliability with foreign investors. We have become unpredictable.

His latest project is a road from nowhere to nowhere at great expense and at horrendous damage. No, not to the environment. Who ever worried about damage to the environment? In this Minister Gatt turns ecologist. He is proposing the new motorway in Mellieha because he cares so profoundly for the sand dunes.

No, the damage was done as he swept past in his cavalcade through decency and common courtesy. In response to concerns expressed by the Mellieha Holiday Complex he is reported to have quipped that if the operators don’t like the idea of his road running past the most secluded part of their Danish Village, they can sell out at any time. Had Minister Gatt been a common or garden ignoramus it would not have done much harm. Unfortunately he is a Minister of the Government of Malta.

None of us has any business to expect any Dane or indeed any foreigner to make any distinction between politicians of any colour in this matter. Dr Gatt simply becomes Malta, you and I, as the resounding insult reaches the ears of its remote victims. The developers and operators of this complex have the unique merit of having taken over a devastated barrack complex and turned it into Malta’s best landscaped touristic development.

By operating it as a holiday venue for union members they have been able to maintain a constant flow of visitors from a country otherwise far removed from us through good seasons and bad and very, very bad and for several decades. Telling them that they can jigger off just because Minster Gatt wants his road to go through is outrageous.

Only political prejudice and ideological blindness has kept us from seeking to have a dozen Danish Villages. All over Europe but particularly in the North, unions and pensioner associations, invest in similar operations in the warmer south. Two Danish Villages in Gozo would break the back of the seasonality monster which leaves many Gozitans without a job in winter. Such projects give stability through recession and financial turmoil without the spectacle of high rises and vast glass walls. They are our softspoken support especially when things become tough.

Minister Gatt should not apologise for his unforgiveable arrogance. He should resign. He has shown himself to be worse than unpredictable. He is a menace to economic security and at a time when caution and prudence are mandatory. Never mind the road. Never mind the electricity rates. His methods and his manners are an extravagance we cannot afford.