Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1513303
Picture the scene. The year is 1252. The place? Westmin- ster Abbey in London (which, interestingly enough, had on- ly recently been completed). And the reason we are here, is to witness the trial of a certain Simon de Montfort – crusad- er, nobleman, and a former friend/protégé of King Henry III - on charges of high trea- son. Or at least, a small part of that trial. (For obvious reasons, I won't be delving into its full political and historical rami- fications… just the juicy bits, for now). At one point, Simon de Montfort suddenly catches the King off-guard, with what would today be described as a 'curve-ball' question: "Sire: do you ever go to con- fession?" Bewildered, Henry III replies: "Why, yes! All the time, as it happens…!" To which Montfort sardoni- cally retorts: "What is the use of confession… without RE- PENTANCE?" Now: those words may well have perplexed King Henry III, at the time [Note: accord- ing to most historical sources, he wasn't exactly 'the sharpest tool in the shed']… but they were certainly not lost on the vast majority of English bar- ons and noblemen, who had been convened to serve as ju- rors for the occasion. They, it seems, understood perfectly well what Simon de Montfort was driving at (and let's face it: so would we, if we were living in the same era.) What's the point of tak- ing measures to 'improve your way of doing things' – for that, ultimately, is what 'confession' is all about – if you're only ev- er going to forge ahead with precisely the same old (failed) approaches, each and every single time? And sure enough, when it came to the vote… one by one, those barons and noblemen acquitted Simon de Montfort, on all charges: in the process, sending King Henry a pow- erful message of their own. (Namely, that barons and no- blemen might occasionally be JUSTIFIED, in openly rebel- ling against a monarch who simply never 'learns from his own mistakes'...) Right: enough with ancient history, for now. Let's jump back into our time-travelling DeLorean, and set the dial for '15 December 2023'. This morning, we all awoke to the (rather familiar) news that: 'Discount giant super- market Eurospin will be open- ing a new outlet right next door to competitor Lidl in Mosta, according to Planning Authority documents…' .. and already, I imagine, you can see the relevance of that 800-year-old 'curve-ball ques- tion', to this particular scenar- io. But in case it still needs to be clarified a little further… Just consider that - apart from being 'right next door' to the Mosta Lidl supermar- ket, mentioned in the above snippet – this new multina- tional supermarket franchise will also be sited a few hun- dred metres away from (once again) not one, but TWO ad- jacent giant 'discount stores', in the immediate vicinity: the so-called 'PAMA shopping vil- lage', just off the Naxxar-Mos- ta-Lija roundabout. In other words: the Plan- ning Authority has now ap- proved (or is in the process of approving) a FOURTH mas- sive supermarket complex, all within the same five-minute driving radius from the cen- tre of Mosta… a town which, I need hardly add, has already been rendered practically UN- REACHABLE, by the sheer volume of traffic already at- tracted to the area, by the three previously approved su- permarkets…. Now: what was that 800-year- old question, again? Didn't it have something to do with 'authorities persisting with the same old FAILED policies; de- spite all the overwhelming ev- idence (which we can all con- firm ourselves, from our own collective experience as Mal- tese citizens) that those poli- cies just… don't… WORK??!!' But wait: there's a lot more to the analogy, than that. For just like King Henry III used 'con- fession', as a means to merely assuage his own conscience (without ever actually chang- ing his policy-direction)… the Planning Authority, too, has its own 'rituals', to absolve it- self of all responsibility for its own decisions. And they function remark- ably like confession, too! For instance: with each of the above-mentioned 'three pre- viously-approved supermar- kets' (Pavi, Pama, Lidl), there had been extensive 'public consultation exercises': in which members of the public – alongside NGOs, other au- thorities, industry stakehold- ers, etc. – all got to have their own say on the project. There are also (or 'are sup- posed to be', anyway) such things as 'Environmental Im- pact Assessments'… 'Traf- fic Impact Assessments'… 'Quality-of-Life Impact As- sessments'… you name the 'Impact', there will always be some kind of 'Assessment' process, that is supposed to go with it. Meanwhile, just to give you an idea how all these 'ritu- als' actually work, in practice: in at least one of those three projects – a 2019 application to expand the existing PAMA supermarket by "a total gross floor area of 35,127 m2, spread equally over three floors (in- cluding garage-space for 380 cars)" – the Traffic Impact As- sessment report had conclud- ed that: "In view of the already ex- isting traffic pressures in the area, mainly due to the PAMA shopping complex, the pro- posal is likely to contribute further to such pressures and therefore the additional traffic generated by the proposal may potentially contribute to the degradation of the ambient air maltatoday | SUNDAY • 17 DECEMBER 2023 10 OPINION What's the point of a 'Planning Authority'… without 'Planning'? Raphael Vassallo