With the Euro 2020 football bonanza having just kicked off, one can be forgiven for borrowing a metaphor from the beautiful game. The 19-year-long saga at Ħondoq ir-Rummien has, in fact, once again emerged from lethargy to play a role in the perpetual political football game waged by the two main parties. Both are keen to project themselves as green champions by opposing the proposed residential development on site by Gozo Prestige first touted way back in 2002.
While the PN is proposing to rehabilitate its legitimacy on the issue, dented through the covert way (as the Qala local council was kept in the dark) in which the Gozo and Comino local plan was revised in 2006 to render it more congenial to a tourist-oriented development on site, by proposing the repurchase of the same site pursuant to converting it into a national park, the Labour government has simply stated its objection to the development of the same site. The latter position does not entail any repurchase of the same land and none of the two parties are courting, at least for now, a revision of the local plan in question so as to reinstate the site’s ODZ status.
Gozo Prestige have countered such developments with a sleight of the hand... a hefty price tag (€17 million, equivalent to a return of 11 times on their original investment, once all compensation to the Augustinian Order is factored in) and a veiled threat that they will not take any requisition attempts by the authorities lightly, with a recourse to the European Court of Human Rights being bandied in their formal submission to the government.
Within such a context, it is inconceivable as to how none of the parties are actually taking a revision of the Gozo and Comino local plan seriously. Such a prospect is considerably mellower than the one which former prime minister Dom Mintoff would have resorted to... expropriation coupled with a paltry requisition at non-market prices. After all, tweaks to local plans are not unheard of and have rarely elicited litigation procedures which have left the authorities on a limb.
Take the infamous 2006 local plan revision exercise, ostensibly marketed as a ‘scheme rationalisation’ exercise. While some benefitted from the financial windfall such new development zone inclusions ushered in, others, namely those whose amenities (like unhindered countryside views, absence of contiguous constructions) were devalued overnight, were definitely short-changed.
This did spur four different eNGOs, along with affected residents, way back in 2007 to open legal proceedings against the then MEPA for not conducting a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) of the increase in development boundaries. However, such a bold move did not hamper MEPA from ploughing ahead and approving permits, in the years to come, on the newly-recognised developable pockets of land.
So why is the government discounting the local plan revision prospect altogether? Having Ħondoq ir-Rummien admitted to the public domain registry, as vehemently suggested by environmental NGOs way back in 2017, would ward off development of the area once and for all. Is it because the government is wary of alienating the developers’ lobby, who has made repeated, strident calls to respect the 2006 rationalisation schemes lest it wishes to face the wrath of a zillion lawsuits for compensation?
Sitting on the case and maintaining the status quo is not an option- Alan Deidun
The government could always invoke the overriding public interest to turn the clock back at Ħondoq ir-Rummien. Or is it because, as some pundits would have it, that having a large-scale residential development at Ħondoq ir-Rummien would be consistent with the long-term strategy for the east coast of Gozo, which features a destination port within the large-scale coastal quarry further north as well as well as with the proposed tunnel which would emerge somewhere at Qala?
The public domain registry inclusion move does not necessarily need to be reminiscent of past, heavy-handed requisition strategies (even though Infrastructure Malta regularly requisitions agricultural land for its road-widening exercises) but can be sugared through the payment of a reasonable compensation to the owners, albeit not to the tune of the requested €17 million. Such a compensation could be justified by the government as a purchase of the exhausted quarry on site, which is worth its value in gold at the moment as a depository of surging volumes of construction waste.
By charging building contractors market prices for the right to deposit their demolition waste at such a quarry, the government would easily recover part of the sum it would have forked out as compensation to the Gozo Prestige owners.
The same move would also win brownie points for the government with the electorate on the environmental front even though, admittedly, this does not necessarily wash with Labour’s strategists given that the party is set to win another landslide at the polls.
Either way, sitting on the case and maintaining the status quo is not an option, given the nagging doubt that once environmental stalwart Paul Buttigieg, mayor of Qala and veteran campaigner against the development of Hondoq ir-Rummien, is no longer in the picture, carte blanche will be finally granted for such a project.
And the detractors of Buttigieg have been scheming throughout the past few years to undermine his position by, for example, fielding rival candidates on local council elections on the same party ticket (which resulted in Buttigieg capitalising on cross-party support) or by picking on his every venial misdemeanour to have him defrocked from the local council.
The same high-profile detractors are in hock with big business and will probably not be deterred from seeking Buttigieg’s scalp. Hence, the government should do the honourable thing by giving Ħondoq ir-Rummien back to the people.
