While on a brief trip abroad about a year or so ago, we got a very agitated call from the teenager back home. “The garden wall is … gone!” What do you mean gone? “Gone as in gone!”

A nanosecond later, a flurry of photos flooded Whatsapp: the garden was truly sans boundary, and my lovingly tended herb patch looked like an infinity continuation of the demolition site next door.

The workmen were unperturbed. From their JVC diggers, they waved at the stepson and at the dog, as he was frantically calling us and she was frantically barking to guard her territory. Across the Mediterranean Sea, we were gawping and swearing at the phone.

Had we been notified, consulted, given any prior notice or warning that this was going to happen? Absolutely not. The workmen and their boss, busy digging up foundations for a swimming pool, simply thought nothing of pulling down the dividing wall and leaving us with a house open to all. Permits? That’s so Stone Age.

Today, in the scheme of things, I think we were lucky. Judging by the way things are going nationwide, we could have woken up to find ourselves sleeping al fresco. Or who knows, we could have suddenly found ourselves living in a mere cross-section of the house, with a side elevation gashed away, holding half a mug of tea.

This is what happens when development rules are crunched into a ball and thrown in the bin. It’s replaced by the law of the jungle with everyone thumping on their chests: “Me. Build. Big. You. Eff. Off.” Now, the consequences have become dangerous.

At the end of April, in Guardamangia, a corner wall of a three-storey block came crashing down.  At 10.30pm instead of a residential block of flats, the site looked like a warzone. You looked up and you saw the inside of the rooms, you looked down and you saw bricks, concrete and rubble. And next door? A construction site.

Then last week we had the Mellieħa accident. When a 77-year-old grandmother opened her eyes at 6am in the morning she did not see the painting on the wall opposite her bed. Instead, she had the view of the whole street below her. And instead of getting out of bed to make a cup of tea, she had to get out of bed, step in the rubble and sling herself over a fireman’s shoulder to be saved from her own apartment. And next door? A construction site.

I know I told you to go out and wreck, but now the people are angry so I’m going to have to give you a punishment and confiscate your JVC diggers until … until…

And now, as I am writing this, a wall of a block of apartments in Ħamrun has collapsed. The families living in the flats had to be evacuated. One woman heartbreakingly tried to explain that her niece’s Holy Communion dress was in the flat, and she needed to get it for Sunday. The residents had repeatedly pleaded with the workmen over the last month to stop their work as they had felt unsafe. “But they kept telling us it was safe.” Because, you guessed it, next door was a construction site. These people, suddenly homeless, could easily be your grandmother, my aunt, our neighbours. The home should be the place where we feel safest. The place we work hard all our lives to purchase. It’s our main investment. When that is demolished, then what is left?

“When a 77-year-old grandmother opened her eyes at 6am in the morning she did not see the painting on the wall opposite her bed. Instead, she had the view of the whole street below her.” Photo: Jonathan Borg

Well, now that everywhere is falling like a house of cards, the Prime Minister has put on his superhero cape and told the developers and contractors to go sit on the naughty step. “I know I told you to go out and wreck, but now the people are angry so I’m going to have to give you a punishment and confiscate your JVC diggers until … until… ” he told them.

Prime Minister, you created this. And what you need to suspend is the greed. This is nothing but the result of the philosophy of ‘greed is creed’ that you have nurtured from day one.

You gave contractors and developers free rein. You’re the one who oversaw the stamping out of planning rules these last six years; the one who encouraged the exchange of cranes for votes and the dishing out of planning permissions like festa confetti. This is what you get when you do not invest in running a society for collective good. This is what you get when your god is money.

No superhero temporary punishments will make our future better than the one we’re dreading. We quickly need to start rebuilding the foundations afresh, in more ways than one. But do we have it in us?

Ivan

Back when I worked in the newsroom, I’d sometimes go to colleague Ivan Fenech for advice.  Often he’d tell me, in that soft-spoken way of his, “Let me think about it.”

He’d go and mull over the issue while smoking his pipe in the doorway of the Valletta Allied House and a few hours later, he’d come over to my desk unassumingly, and give me his thoroughly thought-out arguments, usually peppered with his typical mocking humour.

He was one of the rare breed of people who actually took the time to reflect and ponder before saying anything – practically a lost art today – and that is what made him so trustworthy. You always knew where you stood with him, for his eyes spoke way before words came out of his mouth, and he’d never say anything which he did not believe in, or which in any way thwarted his principles.

I considered Ivan a mentor because he was never scared of making enemies and saying it as it is. It is what made his columns and his editorials so powerful: he’d say things unflinchingly, sharply, but oh so truthfully.

Whenever you’d read a Times of Malta editorial and you’d realise at the end that you had forgotten to breathe, that would be his. He was a voice for the traditional values of the family, community and common good which will now be heartbreakingly missed.

Ivan, your mischief and your wisdom will forever be etched in our hearts. But, damn, I so wish you’d taken the time to think about it before leaving us.

krischetcuti@gmail.com
twitter: @krischetcuti

This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece