DB high-rise: Labour’s fat cats leave voters fuming

The story of how the db group’s City Centre high-rise was approved follows a familiar plot which fits perfectly in former Labour leader Alfred Sant’s own 1990s narrative, when he lashed out at the “barons” and their “friend of friends” networks. News this week that a PA Board member was flown in on a private jet to vote for the project gave this plot the kind of surreal twist that used to fire Sant’s literary imagination.

And to reinforce the “back to the 1990s” theme, hotelier Silvio Debono, a well known PN supporter, rallied around him iconic figures from the Nationalist heyday like former broadcaster-turned-PR man Lou Bondì and former Nationalist minister, later outcast, Jesmond Mugliett.

Adding insult to injury are the plans for the extravagant project to host a “millionaire’s club”, right beside the Labour-leaning community of the Pembroke housing estate.

What could be more fitting now for a placard than the 1996 billboard shouting: “The environment belongs to all of us not to the barons”?

“We have been betrayed… we never expected this to happen under our government,” an elderly Pembroke resident told me after the controversial board decision to approve this project by 10 votes to four. It is therefore no surprise that Sant has described the approval of the City Centre tower as a “mistake”.

But he does not stop there. He questions the development model operated under both PN and present-day Labour administrations that sees public land being allocated very cheaply to a developer for what is presented as a tourism project that is meant to generate jobs and intensify economic activity.

Sant can do this with some credibility. For, apart from voting in favour of the MIDI project from the Opposition, no new project set on public land was proposed in his brief term of office. As Sant correctly pointed out, such a development does not consist only of a tourism proposal but also includes residential and a commercial development. Sant describes this as a “double subsidy”.

Sant may even be filling a gap left by the Opposition which is not only ridden by factional in-fighting but whose leadership is hesitant in its willingness to confront big business and further alienate its traditional allies

Sant is not alone in Labour to object to the db project. Pembroke mayor Dean Hili and the president of the Local Councils Association Mario Fava have criticised the approval of the project mainly because residents were ignored. But Sant was the first to challenge the economic logic captained by Minister Konrad Mizzi, who runs the Projects Malta ‘PPP’ arm – an agency responsible for special projects.

Labour’s Balzan councillor and academic Desmond Zammit Marmara too does not mince his words.

“The developer was given public land very cheaply, making great commercial profit, and the Planning Authority board approved this development despite the opposition of residents of the area, three local councils, twelve NGOs, and the Inter-diocesan Environment Commission. Decisions like these raise the question of whether business interests are being given more priority than the public interest and the rights of citizens”.

More ‘unity in diversity’?

Yet as Labour insiders point out, it is extremely unlikely that Sant’s criticism will result in any cracks from within. Joseph Muscat himself has an uncanny ability to take criticism in his stride, never use his official platform to crush dissenters, and often co-opting his critics along the way.

He is also quick to distance himself from blunders like that committed by the PA’s executive chairman Johann Buttigieg, who took the flak for the government after flying in PA member Jacqueline Gili by private jet from her holiday in Sicily to place another vote in favour of the City Centre project.

“He is still insulated from criticism. Moreover, those who criticise certain decisions do so in the comfort that they can still remain part of the party,” one Labour insider told me when I asked him about the risk of Labour facing its first internal chasm.

Labour activists may feel disgruntled about issues related to the environment and construction but they do not blame Muscat whom they still credit for bringing the party from the wilderness.

“Even critics credit him for great advances in other areas. For example, leftists dissatisfied with environmental policies are the most likely to back Muscat on civil liberties… our strength lies in unity in diversity,” the same insider told me.

Godfrey Grima

Muscat’s ‘dash for growth’

The thing is that Labour voters no longer fit in one category.

Apart from traditional Labourites, Labour’s fold does include a number of floaters who voted Sant in 1996 and 2008 as a protest against corruption and collusion between the government and the fat cats of construction. This category may be the most likely to desert Labour if only it can find a decent alternative.

However, Labour now also includes former Nationalist voters who grew up in awe of the “progress” which transformed Malta in the 1990s. Surveys show that in the last general election Labour continued to drain support from the Nationalist cohort who had voted for Gonzi in 2013.

As veteran political commentator analyst Godfrey Grima told me when I asked him whether Labour is facing its first cracks, Muscat still has the wind blowing in his favour.

Muscat, like Eddie Fenech Adami before him, is presiding over “a dash for growth” in a period characterised by “social and economic momentum…. What people expect in politics is an orderly wind, which balances public concerns with the expectations of seeing Malta prospering.”

Neither does Grima put too much weight on criticism from former leaders on current ones. “Former leaders including Tony Blair and Neil Kinnock are shadows from the past because the world moves on.”

While admitting that he himself suffers from inconveniences created by construction, he sees high-rise buildings as an inevitable part of the country’s future and insists that Malta’s resources consist of “stone, land and labour”, and all governments have striven to use them to get investment.

Yet even Grima acknowledges that progress comes with new challenges. “You have to break eggs to make an omelette.”

He also warns that despite social mobility, there is a growing layer of people at the bottom layer. But he still does not see any risk for Labour to face a left-wing insurrection similar to that in the UK where Corbynism swept Blairism aside.

A guardian of identity

Yet not everyone, including Labour voters and activists, is comfortable with the direction taken by the country. The anger is palpable not just in Pembroke but also amongst a segment of educated Labour-leaning voters who care about governance.

In this context Sant may well stand up as a “guardian” of party identity more than a challenge to Muscat’s hegemony. Moreover, with the Opposition in tatters this may even be the ideal time for some internal debate.

Sant may even be filling a gap left by the Opposition which is not only ridden by factional in-fighting but whose leadership is hesitant in its willingness to confront big business and further alienate its traditional allies. In a way criticism from the Labour party’s ‘left-wing’ helps to keep the debate within the confines of the party and keep it from erupting elsewhere, for example in third parties or a new left-wing outfit.

Sant can do this comfortably, fully knowing that his words carry gravitas without posing a threat. In a way Sant’s words may well feel “reassuring” for those in Labour who resent Muscat’s over familiarity with big business.

If he contests next year’s MEP election, Sant would remain a choice for these voters.

“Alfred Sant belongs to a generation of politicians who do not need to affirm their status basking in the shadows of the current leadership and while he was never a good communicator, he is universally appreciated for having substance and an analytical mind which contrasts with the lack of gravitas among most of the party’s young Turks,” a left-leaning academic who preferred not to be named, told me when asked whether the words of the old leader still carry weight in the party.

So what Sant may have in mind is to “steer a debate” to ensure that his party does not abandon “principals for which he fought for heart and soul”, the same academic told MaltaToday.

And if Muscat does keep his word and leave the party’s leadership before the next election, this debate may also influence the succession process. Even if internal observers are quick to point out that “there is no Maltese equivalent of a Jeremy Corbyn on the horizon.”

What could be a problem for Labour is the ability of the next leader to keep the party together in the same way as Muscat. So far, the best hope for Labour’s left is to push for a debate.

Time is ripe for debate

For Desmond Zammit Marmara “the time is ripe for a discussion” on the issues raised by Sant in the Labour  Party. “Many are questioning the closeness of the PL to the developers’ lobby. Does this not go against the very ideals of what a Labour Party should stand for?”

Yet like many other internal critics who have spoken to this newspaper Zammit Marmara is cautious. “One has to be realistic and pragmatic and recognise the fact that continued economic growth cannot be sustained without a government pro-business approach that sees it energetically supporting the private sector…

“But the Labour Party should discuss how to find a balance between the interests of developers, those of local communities affected by development, and the national interest in general.”

The crucial question I would ask is, how crucial is the economic model challenged by Sant to Muscat’s vision of a cosmopolitan Malta characterised by never-ending construction and growth?

The other question is, how crucial a cosy relationship with the fat cats is for implementing a growth model which may be alluring for some but dystopian for those living in its shadows?