‘The reality has changed’ – Lawrence Gonzi on Manoel Island
Lawrence Gonzi and Alfred Sant look back on decision to grant MIDI the concession
Although everyone agreed that the Manoel Island concession agreement 25 years ago would be beneficial to the country, the “reality today has changed”, former prime minister Lawrence Gonzi has said.
“It was a huge investment, and you have to consider that Manoel Island was abandoned at the time,” he said. “Now there is a greater demand for public green spaces, due to overdevelopment and the construction industry being given top priority by successive governments.
Lawrence Gonzi“The government must acknowledge this growing public pressure. However, any changes to the agreement must respect the rights of all parties concerned. Any decisions must be made transparently and democratically,” Gonzi said.
Gonzi, who was deputy prime minister under Eddie Fenech Adami when the agreement was signed between the PN government and MIDI in June 2000, voted in favour of the agreement, along with all other MPs from both parties.
He scoffed at recent comments made by Prime Minister Robert Abela who said that the agreement was a “gift from Fenech Adami to his friends”.
“All Abela has to do is look at the voting record, which speaks for itself,” he said. Gonzi added that negotiations related to the concession agreement that handed Tigné Point and Manoel Island to MIDI were fully transparent “and nothing was secret”.
Manoel Island was considered by the consortium as a burden- Alfred Sant
Sant: Consortium saw Manoel Island as a burden
Former Labour prime minister Alfred Sant, who was opposition leader at the time, agreed that the concession was favourable on paper.
“At the time, it was considered that underutilised prime sites could be developed into luxury, real estate projects that would attract high-income settlers,” he said.
While the PN had started negotiations with the MIDI consortium in the early 1990s, these were continued by Labour when it was elected in 1996.
“I got an expert appraisal, in real estate terms, of the project prospects. The conclusions were positive but lukewarm. We restarted negotiations with the consortium, subject to safeguards regarding the quality of the investment parameters – environmental, infrastructural, marketing and others.”
Sant said that, out of the two sites, Tigné was seen as the more prestigious.
“Manoel Island was considered by the consortium as a burden, and, indeed, the idea was that part of the profits they would be getting from the public lands they had obtained at Tigné with a huge discount would be directed to rehabilitate Manoel Island, with minimal intentions of making money out of it.”
When the PN returned to government just two years later, the opposition did not withdraw its support.
Alfred Sant“At the time, unless one wanted to nitpick on details, there was little reason for the opposition to make a song and dance about the project, which seemed roughly to fit in with what we had ourselves had prospected.”
Sant said that, from a national perspective, the Manoel Island project no longer makes sense and would “compound the disaster at Tigné”.
“The developers maximised intense use of the land area for retail and residential purposes while the visual, environmental and infrastructural impact of what was being done was ignored or fudged with the excuse that the situation would improve with time. It hasn’t.”
A campaign spearheaded by NGOs Moviment Graffitti and Flimkien Għal Ambjent Aħjar is calling on the government and MIDI to scrap plans to build commercial and residential units on Manoel Island and instead transform it into a public park. A recent petition attracted over 29,000 signatures.
The activists behind the Manoel Island: Post Għalina campaign insist that the concession agreement should be ripped up due to contractual breaches by MIDI.
The contract that was signed in 2000, which granted MIDI a 99-year lease on the two sites, states that works must be “substantially complete” by March 2026. Activists argue this is impossible and, therefore, the government has the necessary leverage to negotiate a more favourable deal for the public.
MIDI argues that delays beyond their control due to archaeological findings and permit approval processes entitle them to a contract extension.