Project Green was announced with much fanfare after Labour’s 2022 win, on the back of the much-vaunted promise to give residents of Malta a better “quality of life”.
If most were wary about the promise to spend €700 million on open spaces, the Abela government has outdone even its harshest cynics by squarely placing its biggest electoral promise six feet under.
The “garden within walking distance of your home” has more than probably never materialised.
Environment Minister Miriam Dalli had inaugurated 14 public spaces, some of them minor, before the agency was even launched. Under the helm of MEP candidate Steve Ellul, the government agency achieved virtually nothing and was left rudderless after he moved to focus on his campaign.
He has now been replaced by former MFSA head Joseph Cuschieri, who had resigned in 2020 after visiting Las Vegas with businessman Yorgen Fenech.
The first noises coming out of Project Green tell of the unfeasibility of the Floriana gardens project, a private proposal resurrected after almost 10 years by Labour, in time for the 2022 election.
It’s a fitting metaphor indeed. Labour clearly lacks vision in the environment policy field, to the point that even projects such as that of Floriana – which would also leave hefty sums in the coffers of a select cabal of contractors – turned out to be a highly-oiled damp squib.
Incompetence, however, is not the only bane. The government may have turned up short on funds for these projects, especially if most of the time it insists on costly road infrastructure “upgrades”, without achieving any particular success in that field either.
There’s no damp squib without an elephant in the room and that is the development lobby. Quite to the contrary of the open spaces promised, almost every week we have had news of atrocious construction projects proposed everywhere, including the massacres planned for Żurrieq, Qrendi, Xemxija, Pembroke, Marsaxlokk, Birżebbuġa, Mellieħa, Marsascala, Għarb, Comino… virtually everywhere.
Yet, the government continues to turn a blind ear to public discontent, and private interests continue to gobble up the available open spaces.
The case of Mellieħa is telling indeed: residents of Qortin are being threatened with a 109-apartment development, with the foreseen excavation of 171 garages over two underground storeys. The previous local council, led by Labour mayor Dario Vella, did not object, quoting the fact that Project Green was going to open a public space in a much smaller area just around the corner.
The developers also acquired land on the cheap. MDA general secretary Paul Attard, a director of GAP Holdings, seized this open space for less than €400,000 yearly on a 50-year emphyteusis, which can be revised and redeemed after 15 years. His yearly payments will amount to practically less than the price for which some of the apartments will be eventually sold.
MDA council member Anton Camilleri, tal-Franċiż, had previously purchased a public alley in St Julian’s worth €1 million for less than €300,000; another piece of work from the Lands Authority for which Minister Silvio Schembri is politically responsible; more so when he admitted that he rents offices from both developers.
Just as responsible for GAP’s takeover of land in Qajjenza is Minister Dalli, who would later baulk at the disproportionate mass of concrete proposed by the developers.
Both political parties are at crossroads in these two years: they will have to choose between governing for the people or for lobbies such as the developers. The signs aren’t encouraging, especially for Labour, which is haemorrhaging votes in its own strongholds.