Ignoring the (DB) elephant in the room

Is Silvio Debono’s DB group more powerful than the Prime Minister and the Opposition leader?

As both political leaders emphasised their commitment to environmental protection during their Sunday sermons, both failed to comment on the controversial approval of the DB project by the Planning Authority board. As Bernard Grech continued running with the hares while chasing with the hounds in his sermon on the need to balance environment and development, Robert Abela brushed aside growing concern on Malta’s planning mayhem by underlining his government’s commitment to cleaner energy infrastructure.

The failure of both major political parties to take a stance on mega-projects like the DB project reveals the scale of embarrassment at both parties’ subservience to big business interests: both now find it difficult to reconcile the different aspirations and interests within their respective electoral blocs.

Silence is not golden

For the past months both government and opposition have stopped participating in planning board meetings, absolving themselves from the inconvenience of voting on projects which impact on the lives of thousands of residents.

Ironically it was the PN – then led by Adrian Delia – which in November 2019 decided not to appoint a representative at the PA board to replace Marthese Portelli following her resignation on the pretext of refusing to be party to a broken system (the former MP later resigned from the House to become a developers’ association lobbyist). The government welcomed this decision and stopped sending a representative to board meetings

But this was clearly done to save political parties from having to choose between residents and big developers, which puts them in a position of alienating potential donors. By not participating n the planning board decisions, both government and opposition agreed to withdraw from a process over which they had lost control.

The Opposition itself, lost an important tool in holding government in to account.

By not voting on projects like the DB mega-development in Pembroke, both parties are now even less accountable to voters than before, when at least people could judge them on the way they voted on the board. Instead the government can hide behind the vote of anonymous government appointees doing its bidding on the planning board, while the Opposition has renounced its vote, leaving it up to individual MPs like David Thake and local council representatives to take a stance on developments like the DB project.

‘Clean energy will absolve us’

Last week, Robert Abela took a leaf out of Joseph Muscat’s book by not only ignoring the DB project altogether, but also growing discontent at the planning mayhem ruining the country, by simply underlining his government’s commitment to cleaner energy infrastructure.

And while the shift from heavy fuel oil was a notable achievement of the Labour government, this is no alibi for Abela’s ostrich act on land use issues.

Abela seems caught in a quandary: while he views construction as an essential peg in the economic model he serves, he is incapable of defending the indefensible. SO while his minions of the PA board vote for the DB project, he cannot bring himself to defend the benefits of this project. In fact no politician has had the guts to defend it from its detractors, despite the fact that the project itself was paved by a political decision to privatise the ITS land which was public.

For on the DB project, Labour still faces a contradiction between the objections of a Labour-led council which stood for its residents by voting against the project, and the decision of a Labour government to hand over the ITS land to the DB group despite their clear intention to build a massive project opposite a housing estate. Abela can’t escape the reality that in this case, Labour has ultimately chosen to side with oligarchs and not with the people.

And while tribal loyalty ensures that a vast segment of voters will never dare speak against a project approved under Abela’s watch, Labour’s voting base still includes thousands of floating voters which shifted to Labour in 2013 and 2017. These are a mixed bunch, including both property owners who wanted more development but also voters who hoped Labour would be more sensitive than the PN on environmental issues.

By shifting the debate to energy policy, Abela cannot ignore the fact that construction and the economic model he advocates, are themselves a major contributor to global carbon emissions. The production of cement itself is one of the main producers of carbon dioxide and the mega-projects also contribute to the increase of traffic and the need for more concrete infrastructure.

So while it is true that the interconnector itself does not create emissions locally, it does depend on power sources in other countries which still contribute to carbon emissions. And while LNG is surely less polluting than HFO, the increase in domestic energy demand to which major real estate and tourism projects are major contributors, makes carbon neutrality more difficult to achieve, especially at current rates of population increase.

Such projects also trigger infrastructural projects like the proposed 1.4 km tunnel at Pembroke, which apart from requiring more carbon-taxing concrete, also creates more construction waste.

The reality is that the resource and carbon cost of construction and road infrastructure is not being accounted for.

Bernard’s sin of omission

In his Sunday sermon, Bernard Grech also failed to mention the approval of the DB project.

Grech’s omission followed an ill-advised press statement in which the party called for the resignation of those board members – including the NGOs’ representative – who had recused themselves from this second PA board meeting due to potential legal implications stemming from the court sentence that revoked the original permit. But the PN failed to condemn the decision itself.

And while the PA itself is duty bound to explain why board members were made aware of this situation only 10 minutes before the meeting started, the party deliberately chose to bark at the wrong tree when lashing out at the individual board members who had recused themselves.

Instead, Grech resorted to platitudes on the need for more balance between development and environmental considerations, ignoring the fact that the balance is already skewed in favour of development and that the country now needs to compensate this by skewing the balance in favour of local communities and the environmental, to make up for decades of bad decisions which included both the infamous extention of building zones by the PN-led government in 2006, and the local plans which started the onslaught on our towns and villages aggravated by Labour after 2013.

The PN’s Achilles’ heel

Instead of apologising for past mistakes and taking a firm stance on the DB project, which the party had previously opposed not just on environmental grounds but also on the basis of its commitment towards good governance – a stance vindicated by the National Audit Office report on the transfer of land to the DB group – the PN now chooses to remain silent.

While Simon Busuttil had exposed his own party’s Achilles’ heel, when the DB group revealed its own donations to the party, Bernard Grech’s silence on the project once again raises the question on whether the party remains in debt to the DB group. In this sense, Grech’s silence not only flies in the face of the PN’s environmental credentials but also reneges on its past criticism of the ITS land grab.

In his brief comment on NET FM, Grech said that no country moves forward without a reasonable element of development. “The country can’t move forward or improve people’s lives by stagnating development. We need development even in construction.”

He spoke of the need to also protect the rights of others, however, and not just of those developing. “Development should not come at all costs,” he said. Yet such vague statements sound like an understatement in view of the scale of the planning mayhem unleashed both by mega-projects and the tinkering of planning rules over the past two decades.

Instead of taking a clear stance on projects like the DB’s City Centre project, and by coming with a concrete proposal for an overhaul of local plans and planning procedures, Grech prefers preaching balance.

Ultimately this reluctance to call a spade a spade stems from his political calculation that his potential vote base includes voters who either have a stake in property development or who are still mesmerised by the PN’s own pro-development mantras from the 1990s.

In reality talk about balancing acts is not a reflection of what the country really needs, but a reflection of the quandary faced by mass parties to keep on board both the local communities under siege of development, and thousands of potential ‘little rich men’ who stand to gain from planning policies facilitating development.

While one cannot underestimate the strategic quandary faced by Grech, by trying to strike a balance between the environment and development he is disorienting another segment of his electorate, which is exasperated by the onslaught of uglification and the disfigurement of the country.

Ironically Labour’s betrayal on environmental issues upon being elected in government now serves a warning against these balancing acts and the vague talk which characterised Joseph Muscat’s commitments before the 2013 electoral victory. Floating voters seduced by Muscat’s chatter are now less likely to be seduced by Grech’s equally vague platitudes.

The problem is even more serious for Grech, because discontentment with his silence on the DB project is also pronounced among voters who are also angry at corruption and Labour’s track record on governance. In running with the hares and chasing with the hounds, Grech risks pleasing nobody and instead paves the way for more abstentions in the next general election, particularly among those critical of Labour but who expect a principled alternative from the Opposition.

And while this seems to increase the demand for a credible and viable third party, the option has so far been shunned in the polls. Could it reappear on the horizon once a new generation of activists and charismatic leaders take on political status quo?

In the meantime it is more likely that people will put their trust in civic resistance by groups like Moviment Graffitti, prominent in both direct actions and in crowd-funded legal actions, which so far have proved more effective in fighting over-development then empty commitments by politicians.