Deidun’s dudgeon

Alan Deidun’s reply to “Carmel Caccopardo’s vitriolic and holier-than-thou attack on my [Deidun’s] professional and ethical integrity” is a truly remarkable document, not least because both the defensive and offensive (in the military sense) arguments it contains are irrelevant, most of them consisting of special pleading. Take a basic point: the “position” of Caccopardo, as a free-acting professional architect who also heads a political party is unlike that of Deidun. Cacopardo does not represent anybody on any Board; so his provision of professional consultation services to local councils, no matter how numerous, has nothing “hypocritical’ about it, neither “singly” nor “doubly”.

Almost all the other “arguments” drummed up by Deidun hardly have a leg to stand on: similar “predicaments” faced by other ERA Board members, our situation of a small island state, the fear of “exclusively non-maltese [acting] as consultants on local EIA’s”, “previous experience on assessing projects involving discharge at sea”, the mechanics of “expression” of the ERA Board, the rigour of Deidun’s EIAs: border on the irrelevant.

A couple of arguments verge on the incorrect. The appeal to a non-existent “collegiality” is one of them. It is all very well to sing “we few, we happy few, we band of brothers”. But that should not make us any the less careful about the conduct of our representatives. As for Deidun’s ‘fact’ “that each time a project involving [him] as a consultant is discussed at ERA Board level, [he] excuse[s] [himself] completely from such proceedings”, that brings up the question of who presents the eNGO view in that case; or to put it another way Deidun is not doing his job of representing eNGOs in that particular case. To argue that the eNGO viewpoint will in any case ooze out of the pores of Deidun’s EIA, I find to be straining belief.

To come to what should have been, but is not Deidun’s concluding line: Should eNGOs feel that I should resign as an ERA Board member, then I have absolutely no qualms in doing so : Deidun knows quite well that eNGOs do not take “dictation” or give automatic approval to “advice” from anybody. “Collective” matters like this one are collectively discussed. As far as I am aware there has not been any call for such a discussion and I am certainly not making one myself. However, I believe we, eNGOs that is, did make an attempt a “long” time ago to persuade a Minister of the Environment to allow us to have a substitute representative on boards, to act when our normal one is “incapacitated”. We should revive that request.