Editorial: Standing up to the enablers
Voters whose daily lives are affected by the construction lobby need to continue forming resistance and join NGOs on their mission
Arguably, the biggest source of wealth in Malta that remains intimately tied to the democratic process of lawmaking, is the construction industry.
It is an economic sector whose effects on people’s lives – quarrying, air quality and noise pollution, urban disturbance and rural exploitation, its corollary in the tourism industry and the fatal outcomes of overtourism on a small island – mean that its regulation can never be extricated from the machinery of the democratic state.
The lobby’s quest for unfettered growth and maximum profit requires a network of political enablers who serve the industry as and when it pleases, and more importantly, who counter the public’s outrage.
Nowhere has this been clearer in the attempt by the Abela administration to power through two controversial planning bills which, after being resisted with great force by the indefatigable environmental lobby, were forced into abeyance with the end of the parliamentary legislature.
And yet it will not be the end, as the prime minister has indicated that local plan reform is on the cards. There will probably be a renewed attempt to tinker with planning boundaries set out in the infamous 2006 rationalisation, and to tweak limits applying to particular construction types or town areas that could immediately raise property values and construction revenues for developers.
Under the guise of an insipid concession to activists to have development and construction suspended when these permits are under appeal procedures, a new Labour government will launch a public consultation to “address contradictions within existing local plans”.
This will be the new skirmish on the planning front and will once again pit the public and the environment lobby against a coterie of construction developers and its enablers, who will request more developable land to be taken off the ODZ under cover of mealy-mouthed ‘injustices’ suffered in the 2006 redrawing of boundaries.
Those ‘enablers’ will probably include the Planning Authority CEO, who had drifted from regulator right into the arms of Malta Development Association chief as a consultant, and now back to head the regulator. And then there is the PA’s ‘academic consultant’, who vacillates between private practice and a government consultant who authored the controversial Bills 143 and 144.
This new battle will once again pit the public against Robert Abela’s probable attempt at placating the influential and liquid developers’ lobby. He will once again push his own unwilling ministers to the frontline.
It is no secret that in the months-long talks that took place between government ministers and NGOs, loyalties towards the prime minister’s headstrong position on planning have been waning. Far from being the author of the initial reform, then planning minister Clint Camilleri sought out compromise alongside other invested ministers who resent this conflict; internal Labour figures, chiefly party president Alex Sciberras, urged caution from the government on pursuing such a mindless capitulation to the development lobby.
The all-important planning ministry is now in the hands of Jonathan Attard.
We can only hope he will not ingratiate himself with the construction lobby and that we will see ministers and MP who are prepared to stand up and say no to more concessions.
The environmental NGOs will not only push back, but further demand that the sanctioning of illegal structures in ODZ constructed after 2008 be prohibited; and that all areas of agricultural, natural and historical value that were removed from the ODZ in 2006, and which have not yet been legally committed to development through approved applications, should be reclassified.
Voters whose daily lives are affected by the construction lobby need to continue forming resistance and join NGOs on their mission. Let us show there is strength in numbers.