A disrupted conference, pointless hindsight and a slice of pizza

It is clear that we need more than just street protests to shake this government from its complacency and its smug assumption that people will simply forget about the blatant corruption and move on.

A protest will be ‘tolerated’, and afterwards those who made the effort to show up will go home and, no matter how angry they still are, they inevitably have to resume their lives.

I can imagine that the conversation at Castille goes something like this:

“Have they packed up their signs and left?”

“Yes, boss.”

“Good, you see? We let them vent, they get it out of their system, give it a couple of days and we can alienate the masses with some positive announcement soon. Any ideas?”

“I’ve got it chief! It’s the perfect time to announce that Mariah Carey is coming to Malta.”

And just in case you think the government has “nothing to do with it”, think again. The fact that promotors can afford to bring over these international stars is only possible thanks to heavy funding through the Large Scale Events Support Scheme administered by Festivals Malta. In other words, we are subsidising the costs to hold these events through our taxes, while the income from the hefty ticket prices to actually attend the concert is pocketed by the organisers. It’s safe to say you won’t be seeing them at any protests.

What we need are more visibly disruptive actions such as the one staged by Moviment Graffitti and Friends of the Earth. It was a brilliant move. When a conference was announced where Planning Authority CEO Johann Buttigieg would be one of the speakers, they were ready.  But first, can we take a minute to analyse just how brazen the very idea behind this conference was?

The venue

The Hard Rock Hotel, built on the site of the former ITS, despite thousands of objections by Pembroke residents that the hotel and accompanying high rise towers were going to ruin their once peaceful town.

This was public land which was transferred for a relative pittance to the developers, the db Group. If the choice of venue was not a deliberately provocative insult, a nice fuck you to the citizen, I don’t know what is.

The theme

The Citizen, the Environment and Development 2026. My first thought on seeing this was that they were taking the piss, only to realise they were serious. This preposterous choice of topic for a conference was coming from an administration, which has shown time and again that it does not care about the citizen or the environment, because it is being held in the tight, vice-like grip of powerful developers.

The speakers

This is where it began to sound like a farce. I know we are approaching Panto season but really, you cannot make this shit up for a script if you tried. Architects, representatives from government entities, an economist and the secretary general of the GWU. Where were the citizens themselves, who could only be truly represented by environmental activists? They, apparently, were not significant enough to be invited, despite their name being in the title.

The cherry on the cake, of course, was the presence of Johann Buttigieg himself, the very same person who was so casual in his WhatsApp chats with the notorious Yorgen Fenech about the inner workings of the Planning Authority.

Activists burst into the conference armed with masks depicting pigs and placards reading “out with the corrupt” and stood behind Buttigieg as well as Planning Minister Jonathan Attard. The visual impact was perfect.

To quote from Moviment Graffitti and FOE’s statement: “It is unacceptable that Buttigieg, against whom clear evidence of corruption and murky ties with powerful developers and business interests has emerged, remains at the helm of an authority so crucial to our country… in a farcical parody of reality, Buttigieg himself was allowed to lead a discussion on citizens’ rights in development… We made it clear that Buttigieg has no legitimacy to speak on behalf of citizens or the environment, much less to continue leading the Planning Authority. His loyalties clearly lie not with citizens, but with powerful business interests and criminals. The rot within our institutions has reached alarming levels. Not only has the government failed to remove Buttigieg despite the incriminating evidence against him, but he is being allowed to present himself as a champion of integrity in planning.”

As the whole thing was being broadcast live on Facebook, sharp-eyed observers took a screenshot when the notification came up that “Robert Abela is watching”. 

It’s good to know that the disruption got the PM’s attention, but now he needs to stop standing on the side-lines and force Buttigieg to resign. 34 entities have already called on the government to remove the PA CEO from his post. But it’s no surprise that the Malta Development Association is not one of them.

On Friday, the MDA hit out at the Nationalist Party over its insistence that Johann Buttigieg should be removed and the association even had the cheek to defend the man.  We should not be surprised; should we? It has become very obvious that developers and the PA are all on the same side.

Instead of your run-of-the-mill press coverage which is usually reported verbatim, the reporters present at the conference took the opportunity to corner Johann Buttigieg and ask him some questions. When pressed about those infamous chats with Yorgen Fenech about doing business together, Buttigieg replied that “in hindsight” he wouldn’t speak like that to developers again.

The usual saying is that “hindsight is 20/20”, in other words it is easy to be wise after the event. In this case, however, hindsight is pointless and cannot excuse Buttigieg’s lack of ethics and discretion as head of the authority which approves development permits. If you do not understand that there are strict boundaries when you are in that position, and that crossing those boundaries means you are trading in influence, then it just further underlines why you should not be in that role in the first place.

Again and again, we keep seeing people in high positions exposing themselves to allegations of corruption, which turn out to be true, and the only reason they keep doing it is because they keep getting away with it. No one is kicked out, or if they are, the prime minister just waits until the whole thing blows over and hands them another juicy position. We are being played at every turn.

If Abela can tear himself away from munching on his slice of New York pizza long enough, he needs to stop merely “watching” as his propaganda exercises are disrupted. He needs to wake up and realise that public anger is not going away but instead, it is mounting. The PA makes life hell for the ordinary citizen, forcing them to pay thousands for relatively minor infringements discovered in 60-year-old properties, which were there before certain planning laws were enacted. As many have found to their dismay, if you do not pay up and get these infringements sanctioned, you cannot sell your property. Meanwhile, the head of the PA cosies up to millionaires who have torn through the Maltese landscape with their bulldozers to build their butt ugly projects and keeps giving them the stamp of approval to destroy our country even more.

Moviment Graffitti and FOE not only should be congratulated for their actions at that conference, but they should continue to be supported by all those who truly love Malta.

The gloves have to come off and we cannot just sit back and shrug helplessly as the authorities organise these pseudo discussions while laughing in our face.