Objectors to the approved ferry service at Balluta Bay, St Julian’s, have filed a constitutional case challenging the impartiality and independence of the appeals tribunal that is hearing the case.
They argued that the tribunal was chaired by a Planning Authority employee, raising doubt over the right to be judged by an impartial tribunal.
Moviment Graffitti and independent candidate Arnold Cassola are among the objectors to a new hop-on-hop-off ferry service at Balluta Bay, which they insist would ruin a top bathing zone in the area.
In all, there are 87 objectors, including four environment NGOs and the St Julian’s council, who have appealed the PA’s decision to allow the ferry operators to build a private jetty at the popular St Julian’s bay.
The project, which will effectively privatise a section of the public bay, was approved by the PA last March. The approved plans will allow Fortina Investments Ltd - the company that owns Captain Morgan Cruises and which won a tender to operate a Malta-Comino ferry - to build a jetty to ferry tourists to and from Balluta.
On Monday, Moviment Graffitti and Cassola argued, through their lawyer Claire Bonello, that their right to a fair hearing, as guaranteed by the European Convention of Human Rights, was being breached.
They insisted that the man, hearing the appeal against the PA decision to grant a permit for Balluta Bay to become a port of call for a hop-on hop-off ferry service, was employed by the PA itself and therefore could never be impartial in the way he handled the appeal.
They quoted an article published in Times of Malta in November, which revealed how Joseph Borg, who heads the Environment and Planning Review Tribunal, was a PA employee despite being on unpaid leave to retain his post as tribunal chairman.
In their application, filed in the First Hall of the Civil Court in its constitutional jurisdiction, the objectors called on the constitutional court to declare that Borg’s chairmanship of ERA was in breach of their right to a fair hearing.
They also called on the court to declare that they had been denied an effective remedy when the tribunal ruled that the permit should not be put on hold pending the appeal. This meant that work on the new jetty had started and the developer had already gouged trenches in the quay at Balluta Bay.
Times of Malta revealed on Monday how ERA has fined the contractor digging two trenches into the concrete quay at Balluta because a silt curtain was not used.
A spokesman for the regulator said the infringement, found following an investigation, breached conditions in the environment permit it had issued.