Chewing gum planning and politics

It must have been 18 years ago and I can recall the phone call. “The minister would like to talk to you, he has something important to tell you.”

The venue was a restaurant in Spinola Bay; a stone’s throw away from Tigulio. MaltaToday will be celebrating 25 years next month - 18 years ago we were already a buzzing newspaper and I was used to long and late hours.

I waited for an hour and a half. This particular politician was renowned for never being on time. George Pullicino finally arrived and what followed was an introduction to why the local plans needed to be changed. The changes were required to address the grievances of so many badly designated development and non-development areas.

I listened and soon after I wrote an editorial echoing this line of thought. When weeks later the new local plans were out in the public domain, I realised that the local plan review was not addressing any grievances; it was basically a strategy to wipe out hectares of pristine land and make dozens of people rich overnight and energise developers and speculators. It was also an electoral ploy.

What was worse was that several areas, coincidentally or not, included in the development plans were surprisingly owned by some very well-known people.

Life goes on but what I do remember is that in 2006 there were big environmental protests which also saw the participation of Labour exponents such as Joseph Muscat who would be appointed Labour Party leader in 2008.  

The local plans led to large tracts of land being developed, villages scarred, and towns annexed to each other.  Nothing will bring this back. In Opposition, Labour talked of the PN’s environmental deficit but it was one big joke. When elected in 2013, Labour retained the changes and refined planning policies to make developers even more content.

The Planning Authority was dominated by more political interference than ever before. In 10 years, construction has taken over the life of this country in an insane way.

And every time the government was called upon to review the local plans, the answer by Robert Abela was straightforward and simple - ‘local plans cannot be modified, it would be contrary to what is right.’

A sort of riposte for upholding propriety and the rule of law.

So, when this week it transpired that the local plan for the Villa Rosa area had been discussed at Cabinet level to accommodate a developer many people were curious why this was happening.

Now, stirring the pot against this local plan change were two likely culprits and one unlikely culprit. The first culprit is a developer himself who presents himself as the virgin but who in the circles of developers is a rat and who traditionally always rats on his competitors if not allowed to be part of the project.

The second was the Labour mayor of Pembroke and the third (the unlikely ones) were the Labour politicians who spoke to this newspaper and expressed dismay that something like this was happening.

“One of the first comments by Robert Abela Prime Minister after the election in June, was the need to be more responsive to people’s feelings about the environment and planning, I am not sure how this initiative helps us to embolden this determination for the environment,” one Labour MP told us.

But the more solid and robust criticism came from the environmental lobby, who expressed shock that local plan policy reforms were only possible if they suited developers. When something like this benefited the communities and the environment it was never ever possible.

That Labour has no empathy for the environment and no soul is taken as a given. No amount of tokenism and borderline greening will change our view that on environment Labour scores very low.

But more worrying is Bernard Grech’s stand on these issues. Unlike Robert Abela he does not understand planning laws. Abela worked all his formative years as a legal adviser at the Planning Authority; he knows the laws, understands the demands of developers and the concerns of objectors. But Grech’s omerta is not due only to his personal limitations, but rather because of the PN’s decision to sell its soul like all political parties to the construction lobby.

Grech believes that people vote for the PN because he thinks they recognise the PN has a vision. When it comes to political vision the PN is limited. It has no stand on local plans, planning reform, independent planning policies, keeping developers away from politics, protecting nature and preserving land.

People vote for the PN because they are simply tired of the PL and they could not care less if Castille is run by their grand aunt living in a retirement home. That is the kind of respect they have for politicians.

Today it is obvious that apart from its insistence that the protection of the environment is included in the Constitution, the PN has no idea what to do about the environment.

It has basically sold its soul to big developers just like the PL.

Nonetheless, today it is not the PN that is in government.

Today, surveys with a margin of error of just above 3% all show the same trend.

The MaltaToday survey shows that the PN could win and Labour could lose. Many in Labour believe their party will lose; others say they will definitely win. These are the ones who believed that in June they would win by 29,000 votes over the PN.

Tweaking the local plan in Villa Rosa to craftily prevent a legal challenge might not appear to be a big deal but it is yet another message to the people out there, that all this talk of being sensitive to public opinion on the environment is one big joke.  And that government is a lackey to big business but not to the people.

Not all people are loquacious and loud about their intentions; the vast majority say nothing. Then when they get the chance to cast their vote, they send a message that proves many of the surveys toasting majorities of 18,000, 26,000 and 29,000 for the Labour Party are very, very far from the real electoral outcome.