Ask a silly question…

Questions can be tricky things at times. The most immediate snag, of course, is that by asking a question, one automatically invites an answer. And it might not always be the answer one actually wants to hear.

But they are tricky for other reasons, too: including one with which any journalist would instantly be able to identify.

A single question, no matter how complex or exhaustive, can never explore the full ramifications of any given issue. And if the question also happens to be of the variety having a ‘Yes/No’ for answer (or, as is usually the case with online polls, ‘multiple choice’) it will also have the instant effect of oversimplifying the issue at hand: reducing it to the level of a crude, binary ‘black-or-white’ scenario.

Needless to add, this is the same ‘black-and-white’ mentality that informs and underpins all aspects of Maltese social life: from politics, to football, to band clubs, to ‘puliti’ versus ‘hamalli’, all the way back to the Mods and the Teddy Boys in the 1970s.

This in turn creates another problem for the person asking the question. Most of the issues up for discussion in this country, at any given moment, will inevitably be the offspring of Maltese politics. That is to say, if the issue in question ever became an issue at all… it is only because the warped logic of Maltese politics forced an unnecessary division of public opinion.

So if you ask a question about anything under the sun, at any given time, the topic of your question will already have gone through the oversimplification process. It will already be split neatly down the middle, with roughly half the country adopting opinions only on the basis of their party line.

And despite the fact that these opinions are not even their own, the people holding them will be ready to stand their ground and argue the case to the bitter end… not out of any sincere conviction, but merely out of a primal instinct to defend their beloved party from criticism. 

This is why we have never really had a ‘debate’ in this country at all. What passes for ‘discussion’ here is actually the sound that is made when two equally pig-headed prejudices collide. Sometimes one pig-headed opinion prevails at the expense of the other; sometimes the issue remains unresolved ad aeternam. Either way it doesn’t matter much, because the decision taken in the end – if any – will have been taken for political reasons, and as such will be unrelated to the issue at hand.

So let’s pick any issue at random. What we are all talking about in Malta at the moment? High-rise. Yes, that’ll do nicely. Let’s take a look at how the ‘debate’ is unfolding, shall we?

This week, One News – the Labour-owned station – decided to run an online poll about ‘permits for high-rise buildings’. The question it asked was: are such permits a) a good idea? B) a bad idea? c) necessary?

Now, if asking a question is inevitably a risky gamble… setting it up as an online poll is a bit like wrapping yourself in tinfoil, and climbing up the nearest steeple during an electrical storm. It’s just asking for trouble…

And you can see the danger before even trying to answer the question. Consider for a moment the circumstances in which I discovered this poll’s existence.

I was alerted to its presence by an article posted on Facebook (where else?), in which Cyrus Engerer claimed that the PN had personally called each of its Sliema councillors to instruct them to vote ‘Yes’ to the Townsquare project around a decade ago. This Engerer refused to do, and received a ‘camata’ – a word that is far too satisfactory to ruin by actually translating – for his pains.

As we all know, Engerer later went on to resign from the PN – for other, unrelated reasons – and re-emerged as a Labour candidate instead.

Incidentally, it was the Labour media that reported his claim… and the news item itself was clearly intended to remind us all about how the much-maligned Townsquare project had, in fact, initially been proposed and approved under a Nationalist administration.

Well, what more do you want? There, in a nutshell, you can admire the hopelessly simplistic binary logic of Maltese politics, in all its breath-taking, pig-headed stupidity.

By reminding us of a time when the Nationalists were all gung-ho in favour of unsustainable development, the Labour Party inevitably drew attention to the time when it had opposed over-development on environmental (and sustainability) grounds. To put it succinctly: Cyrus Engerer was perfectly right to vote against the project, as implied in the article. So how can it possibly also be ‘right’ for the Labour government’s representative on the PA board to now vote in favour of the same project? How can it be ‘right’ for the Labour media to support and defend the approval of the same project that Labour had objected to when in opposition?

Any attempt to apply logic to those questions will automatically result in a chaotic and self-defeating mess. But you don’t need to apply any logic: the answer is obvious. Labour was against the PN’s line, for no other reason than the fact that it was the PN’s line. And now, the PN opposes the same line only because it has since been adopted by Labour.

And that is the most that can be said about the ‘national debate’ we’re all supposed to be having about high-rise. The issue itself may have complex, serious ramifications punching us all in the face. But the only thing we’re actually discussing is the PN-PL divide… which in itself has no bearing on high-rise at all.

Such depth of intellect… no wonder all these debates always end with the right decisions being taken at the right time…

But back to the poll. Never mind that the issue of ‘high-rise’ has already been pre-emptively butchered; the problem is that the question is also entirely ambiguous.

Are we to understand that One News was questioning the need for permits to be even granted in the case of high-rise? It certainly could be interpreted that way. Anyone answering ‘bad idea’ might well be understood to mean that permits, in general, should be discarded altogether. By that reasoning, the entire Planning Authority may as well be dissolved (as indeed it may as well be, albeit for entirely different reasons)

The much likelier interpretation, of course, is that the question applies specifically to the recent slew of permits issued by the PA: in which case, the same answer would signify the clean opposite.

Even if you close an eye at this ambiguity, the question remains a little unclear. ‘Permits for high-rise buildings’ are not granted in a vacuum: they must be appreciated against a backdrop of Malta’s infrastructure, which is already very clearly insufficient to meet existing demands (let alone future ones which are unrealistic to boot).

One could therefore easily be of the opinion that ‘permits for high-rise’, in themselves, are generally good things. They stipulate conditions, ward against abuse, and generally ensure that the resulting development conforms to some kind of standards and parameters.

But the same train of thought would also inevitably lead you to conclude that the recent permits issued by the PA are a ‘bad idea’, precisely because the required ‘standards’ and ‘parameters’ are simply not there.

That happens to coincide rather neatly with my own opinion in the matter. I am not automatically allergic to the concept of high-rise, in and of itself. Handled professionally, and designed within a clear and lucid regulatory framework, taller buildings may indeed be preferable to the haphazard, piecemeal and hideously ugly urban sprawl to which we have sadly grown accustomed.

So how do I answer One News’ question? I think ‘permits for high-rise’ are actually quite a good idea… certainly better than high-rise without permits. But the Sliema Townsquare project and the Mriehel tower-cluster? The word ‘bad’ doesn’t even begin to describe the shocking intellectual paucity of the proposition.

In any case: I answered ‘bad idea’… and this brings us to the interesting part. To be fair to One News, I don’t know what answer they were actually expecting. Perhaps it was a genuine exercise aimed at sampling real (as opposed to ‘party-political’) public opinion.

Either way, once the question was placed prominently in the public domain – and who did that, I wonder? Hmm – people had full liberty to answer it. And answer it they did. Between 9.30am and approximately 2.00pm on Thursday, the percentage of people answering ‘bad idea’ shot up from 30% to 91%.

For a brief, beautiful moment in time, 91% of the nearly 3,000 respondents expressed the opinion (on the Labour Party’s own website) that the Labour government’s policy direction with regard to high-rise was a ‘bad idea’.

This at a time when the Labour government was still basking (or trying to bask) in the glory of the latest Eurobarometer survey – which was conducted using a sample of less than one-third the respondents of the same online poll.

Oh, dear. I somehow doubt that was the answer One News was hoping for. But of course, let’s not forget that our national debate is unfolding against the usual ‘us-against-them’ backdrop. And no sooner was this disastrous result duly noted by the proud defenders of their beloved government, than the ‘Good idea’ stats began to rise. Rapidly.

At the time of writing this (Friday afternoon), the ‘Bad idea’ majority has already been whittled down to 60%. I suspect it will go down further, and One News may eventually get the answer they originally intended.

What their online poll unwittingly proved, however, is that opposition to the recent high-rise permits runs deep – much deeper than the Labour government evidently seems to think – and dissatisfaction with Malta’s planning regime is at its highest since 2005.

That might be a bigger and more ominous answer than the question warranted. Labour would be unwise to ignore it.