Bending over to Sharlon

Bending over to Sharlon

I guess padel is the ultimate sport for middle-aged men. It is a low-impact sport and offers a highly social doubles format in a smaller court size. So, the news of so many padel courts in Manoel Island was good news for the sporty guys. This of course meant that at dinner parties everyone sort of shifted the conversation whenever the illegality of the padel courts was brought up.

I, of course, am in no position to play padel. Apart from the fact that I have never been the sporty type, I am not at all competitive. But even so, the real story about the padel saga in Manoel Island is about bad government policy, the different yardstick for big guys and small guys, and the principle of good governance in our sports clubs.

Let us start from the last point.

Good governance

Gzira United have long had a title to land at Manoel Island granted to them by the Lands Authority. When you are given a concession by any government entity you are obliged to respect the conditions of the concession. It is abundantly clear that when Gżira were given the land at Manoel Island, the main reason was for the club to have a football pitch, where it could train. Padel was definitely not on the agenda.

But what has happened is that this land has now been converted to padel courts run by Sharlon Pace. At the same time Pace is the president of Gzira United Football Club. Somehow, the club has allowed Pace to make money from these padel courts and somehow get compensated.

How this arrangement operates is unclear and whether it amounts to good governance or not for a football club I do not really know. What I do know, however, is that somewhere along the line, both the club and Sharlon Pace ignored the fact that they needed a planning permit to build the padel courts.

Big guy versus small guy

When the development was first flagged, the decision was to impose a miserly €900 fine for the illegal construction of the courts. As expected, public outcry was loud and clear. The fine was a sick joke.

One must know that decisions like this are usually influenced from the powers that be. The illegal courts were regularised last week and in addition to the fine, the PA imposed a €25,000 planning gain—let’s just call it a ‘fee’ for regularising a serious illegality that will render significantly more than that.

Bad government policy

Months ago, the government led by Prime Minister Robert Abela decided to take a bold decision and rescind the Manoel Island concession that had been granted to MIDI through a negotiated procedure. Manoel Island had been passed on to a group of businessmen by a Nationalist administration some 26 years ago but with the Labour Party in Opposition nodding its head in approval.

The highly publicised decision to annul the contract and take back Manoel Island served as a backdrop to Robert Abela’s willingness to do the right thing in the face of mounting public pressure. Manoel Island was given back to the people and the owners and shareholders were paid back millions of taxpayers’ money.

Manoel Island was an unexpected achievement that raised the profile of the Labour administration. It was an intense proud moment; so proud that the Labour Party even made it a point to use Manoel Island and Fort Tigen (also taken back) as the backdrop for the election campaign launch.

Rightly so, Prime Minister Robert Abela declared that he had managed to achieve something special for the Maltese and given back a valuable historical island to the public. Manoel Island would be converted into a national park for the benefit of all Maltese not a selected few.

As all this was happening, Sharlon Pace was constructing illegal padel courts as if there was no tomorrow.

Not making sense

Now, let us stop for a minute. I cannot see that a national project of this magnitude will not and should not include sporting facilities. It should and God forbid if anyone argues that the whole project should be simply an unmaintained and unattended open space. Sports facilities are essential, more so when we know that Manoel Island is bang in the middle of a heavily-congested conurbation. But these facilities have to be consonant with the plan for the area.

We ended up with no holistic plan but with padel courts already taking up space.

There is no doubt that the government led by Robert Abela emerged from its election victory, feeling self-confident. It believes people will remain silent if the Manoel Island plans turn out to be a mockery.

Bending over to Sharlon also devalues the achievement at Manoel Island and risks turning Robert Abela’s magic moment into nothingness. Taking things for granted is wrong and will only piss off people. So much so, that come 24 July, Moviment Graffitti is organising another protest about Manoel Island—the first national protest since the election.