The PL is pro-active not reactive on Mepa reform

Article from Malta Independent.

The PL would have been reactive and negative on Mepa reform had it chosen, a priori, to merely shoot down the government’s proposals without even finding a single redeeming feature to praise or single out.

On the contrary the PL is publicly committed to taking a pro-active approach as intimated in its initial, preliminary reaction to the government draft Bill, by having already gone on record stating that it will give a blow by blow account of its position in the House while tabling a number of amendments based on new and innovative ideas and proposals when we get to the committee stage.

It was petty indeed of the Prime Minister to state on TV during an over extended series of sound bites during the news bulletin of last Thursday that it is difficult to know what the PL thinks on the subject since it never aired any views and that it was represented by a single token MP during the government-promoted and sponsored Mepa Reform National Conference.

The Nationalist media on their part implied that the PL even fell short of honouring Joseph Muscat’s public pledge to set up a party commissioned working group on the subject.

Although I will give my official reaction to the draft Bill proper in the House, suffice to say that in our initial reaction we already came forward with four bold pro-active statements:

a) That it does not make sense for development planning and the environment to remain interlinked under the same umbrella organisation;

b) That it is high time that Malta had a fully fledged Environment Protection Agency on the lines of EU best practice as many EU member states have long had;

c) That archaic planning methods should be abandoned and that one should instead look at more innovative ways of planning such as spatial planning etc.

d) That the parliamentary scrutiny set up being proposed is weak, and that one should instead try and emulate the Public Accounts Committee structure and model.

Conveniently, the government chose to ignore all these points by simply not reacting to them at all.

In past months the PL had set up a working group consisting of technical people, experts and NGO members in a focused manner without much fanfare.

We had made a public call for feedback on the whole subject – both through the printed media and also on our own party web site.

We also had a series of internal discussions at Parliamentary Group level which included among others discussion about the findings of the said working group which were always meant as a spring board for our own internal debate and deliberations.

Meanwhile during the same period Lawrence Gonzi changed his position more than once on this so-called reform process. Particularly after the Mepa Reform National Conference sent a clear message that government should go back to the drawing board since it had kept the environment locked in as a Cinderella.

All this can explain the fact that announced deadlines for the publication of the final draft and the discussion of the Bill in Parliament have been shifted for umpteen times.

Where the PM was politically cheeky indeed was when he said on TV that the PL merely made a token one man presence during the Mepa Reform National Conference.

On the contrary both my colleague, the planning and housing spokesperson Roderick Galdes and I attended the said conference right through and intervened from the floor with clear ideas on the way forward.

It makes no sense for the PL to take a final position when the government was constantly moving the goalposts until last week.

We are already working on a series of amendments which shall be tabled at the appropriate moment.

The fact that the government chose to start implementing certain administrative changes without prior parliamentary discussion, leaving the bare bones of inevitable legal amendments to be tabled in the House, could imply that the PM had set out from the beginning to implicitly contain or curtail the extent of the parliamentary debate on the subject.

The government can rest assured that the PL will rise to the occasion when performing its duty as the alternative government of Malta in Parliament the moment the debate starts. On the other hand we will not fall for the obvious booby trap of giving our full official reaction publicly in order to dilute the importance and significance of a fully fledged debate on the subject in the House.



Back to the dark ages

I have no intention of delving into the censorship issue that the PL is handling very professionally. But I find it baffling indeed and a matter of deep concern that some of the best legal eagles on the island and PN leaning hacks have allowed their ossified and conservative ideas to blind them to the obvious fact that there is a yawning gap and divide between censorship laws and laws relating to pornography and obscenity.

The same applies to those journalists who were unable to distinguish between censorship laws and laws relating to libel proceedings in Court.

The PL was always at the forefront in introducing a liberal set of ideas in the country. I still vividly recall when film censorship was liberalised extensively in the early 70s as well as when homosexuality was legalised.

Although then we had the privilege of being in government, I am still confident that with the confessional, Christian Democrat leaning mentality still prevalent in the higher echelons of the PN, Labour will come across as the guiding light and the catalyst that shall bring about real change in our draconian censorship laws which have earned themselves the wrath of such independent broadcasting stations like the BBC.

The fact that a number of long established authors of different political orientation chose to get together and publicly support our call for wider and unhindered freedom of expression shows that government should put pettiness aside and instead go for a root and branch overhaul of censorship by abolishing it and instead settling for a classification structure, while allowing all those who may take offence at artists’ ‘expressions made to make recourse to the law courts if they truly and genuinely feel offended by what was put on show.



Dalli right on track

I had no doubt that John Dalli would have fared well during his probe by the European Parliament on his way to become Malta’s next and worthy Commissioner to the EU. While the PL was supportive all along, both as a party and also within the PES in Brussels, I am not that convinced that the same can be said for all elements close to the PN.

This could be detected from certain articles by Gonzi friendly ‘independent’ correspondents who dropped a number of innuendos, hints and nuances throughout the days leading up to the event proper, implying that Dalli’s past business interests could rock his boat somehow during the proceedings.

That common sense prevailed is in Malta’s best interest. I am confident that John Dalli will rise to the occasion if endorsed as a Commissioner. The biggest loser will be GonziPN which caught as it is in the middle of an internal sand or snow storm, can ill afford to do without someone so level headed, competent and experienced as Minister Dalli.

I wish him well in the foreknowledge that he will do us proud.

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