If there was any doubt as to who is championing the marina in Marsascala, by now it’s turned into a certainty.
Transport Minister Ian Borg was eager to show off his exuberant defence of his newest howler last week, in one of those spectacular press conferences where the minister’s statements made many a pint of blood boil.
His modus operandi is tried, tested and sometimes testing.
Branding himself as a “doer”, what Borg actually does is pleasing himself as he tries to slide massive projects underneath the noses of residents and NGOs and calling that a “consultation”. Then, the second phase sees him resort to his trademark bullish stances, stamping his feet and glaring angrily at cameras as he fires off accusations, insinuations, sweeping statements and perhaps the odd threat.
During the three weeks of Dingli, Borg had stated that “he knew the people of Dingli by their name and surname”; residents and, especially, farmers must feel very safe at night with their patron watching over them. Away from his fortress, however, he cannot say the same about Marsascala (save for the names of a few ‘investors’), so he played another tune from his worn-out record: “They are opposing the project to achieve some aim or the other.”
His final touch, of course, was to link the marina to his massive brag about the Central Link project, an environmental massacre which could have been avoided with wiser, cheaper planning and which caused untold harm to farmers and residents.
Borg gloated that the trees leading up to Saqqajja have not been uprooted, but forgot to mention how his contractors butchered a row of trees closer to Attard with a guerrilla attack at 8.30pm, while the country watched the budget for this year. It was yet another budget which saw the gigantic octopus of road contractors rub its hands in glee at the prospect of millions in ‘xogħol’ arriving through direct orders.
It is now clear that there are no bounds to this young minister’s arrogance, whose narrative has always been about his proud defence of himself from a nameless enemy and a shocking confidence in the infallibility of his ways. In reality, it’s a sign of how high up the minister’s head has ballooned. Since his meteoric promotion in 2017, Borg has not only built roads but also burnt bridges with a substantial amount of Labour voters.
The marina in Marsascala, like the flyover in Mrieħel, is but another instalment of Borg’s hyperactive assault on our towns.
Unlike other gigs he pulled off – Miżieb and Aħrax, for example – Marsascala is historically a Labour stronghold. Two protests and widespread online anger in this town are a clear sign that Borg has irritated the public with both the marina project and the way in which he tried to disguise it.
To make matters worse, Transport Malta dismissed the residents’ anger and opposition to the marina as “speculative” in a meeting held to pacify some agitated burghers, who assumed their nightmarish land grab would be carried out at a snap of their fingers.
I watched the prime minister mumble a few words about the “proġett” – note how he skirts the word ‘marina’ – and he came across as someone who was unsure of what was in the PQQ. His talk of reorganising the moorings, or of a breakwater, or both, is simply light years away from the contents of the tender document. The prime minister seems unaware of, for example, the massive administrative buildings which, in addition to the waterpolo pitch opposite, will gobble up huge swathes of the public foreshore to which he was guaranteeing access.
Strikingly, nobody in the district has found their guts. With the exception of Jean Claude Micallef, no Labour MP or candidate has spoken out about the marina. Or, rather, they did but they, too, stuck to the prime minister’s mumblings, issuing unclear, incoherent statements about the “proġett”.
Owen Bonnici and Andy Ellul, for example, could not limp past two buzzword-ridden Facebook posts; candidate Kenneth Abela took a whole page in a recent issue of It-Torċa to declare everything but his stance on the marina; Carmelo Abela gracefully told the media he’ll be passing on the residents’ feedback to the cabinet, somehow confirming how tone-deaf his colleagues have become, especially to their own.
The prime minister must have followed the goings-on in his own hometown in the past weeks. His obstinacy in accepting his fellow residents’ opposition is alarming as he chooses to, yet again, reward a minister who has brought nothing but controversy to his administration.
I’m not sure if Abela is a Pontius Pilate or a Brutus here; in both cases, the town will stand to lose out as it is sold off to a few rich individuals and their yachts, an injustice borne of greed, which the residents will have to bear every single morning.
The candidates in the third district are just as guilty of not standing up to Borg’s whims. Nor have they stood up to represent the ones who voted them in. Silence is complicity, without any excuses: it is the residents who are fronting this battle, abandoned by their representatives or those who would be.
It took Borg a month to cough up the numbers related to boat registrations: strange for a minister who is responsible for those very registrations.
He has also made it clear that the over 700 boat owners who will be catered for in the new marina are more important than the residents and their quality of life. And, yet, their representatives act sheepishly, looking away, silent accomplices to Borg’s big ruse.
