PN’s former shadow environment minister gets top job at developers lobby

The former MP and Nationalist Party’s former shadow environment minister, Marthese Portelli, has been employed as the director-general of the construction lobby, the Malta Developers Association.

It is a staggering U-turn for the former MP who once complained that “the pick-and-choose approach to policies in development must stop” and called for a bipartisan approach on major projects so that they impact less the environment.

Now she will be flying the flag for the much-maligned developers’ lobby, one which faces a crisis of its own after numerous construction accidents revealed the scale of uncontrolled building practices that have lost people their homes and killed one, Miriam Pace, in a building collapse in Hamrun.

Portelli was also the Opposition’s appointed member to the Planning Authority board, where she sat in and voted on important projects. She then resigned in November 2019, with former PN leader Simon Busuttil praising her move, saying she had “refused to be part of the [PA] sham” to pay for Joseph Muscat’s political obligations.

Portelli was a popular MP, elected on two districts in the last election, who also held important party posts before being elected in 2013.

She resigned in 2019 saying that the party was not the right environment for her to continue her political work. “For the ones who love it, there is no issue but the ones who feel suffocated in such an environment need to take themselves away from it. That is what I did. Although I never had any false illusions about the possibility of normality returning to the Maltese political environment and the country any time soon, I soldiered on determinedly, always staying true to my principles and objectives that had originally pushed me to enter the political arena many years ago. But there comes a time when one realises the current ambience is shackling.”

Elected for the first time in the 2013 general election, she was re-elected in 2017 from two districts - Gozo and the ninth electoral division.  During her stint in politics she was also shadow minister for the environment, planning and energy.

Portelli, who is a lawyer by profession was twice elected as the president of the PN executive committee and was the first woman to hold this role.

She was recently among 17 MPs who had urged PN leader Adrian Delia to reconsider his position following the disastrous results of a Malta Today survey.

In her announcement of her resignation she thanked Opposition leader Adrian Delia and his predecessor Simon Busuttil under whom she shadowed various portfolios. “Politics should only be used to create common good. I wish that whoever ventures into politics, will do so to do good deeds… I was proactive and put forward over 300 proposals in various sectors, mainly the environment, planning, energy, transport, real estate and EU funds among others.”