From my article in The Sunday Times today:
“Many people never cared for local councils. They dismissed them as petty and parochial and beneath their daily concerns. It is in the shadow of that indifference that Joseph Muscat and Robert Abela hollowed them out, leaving little more than flags and glorified local clerks working as branches of central government offices.
“Meanwhile, town and village centres that enjoyed a short-lived renaissance for the first three decades of local government are now neglected, maintenance and upkeep below par. We’re back to ministers diverting their national budget towards their constituencies. Indeed, we’re back to the industrial-scale clientelism of 1987.”