Sins of the fathers

The Green Party campaign for rent law reform is likely to divide the country right across traditional political lines. We will have friends among our rivals and enemies in our erstwhile friends. It will be very disorienting for people who regard the political status quo as unchanging as the firmament.

One of the early signs was an article on The Sunday Times by the chairman of the Housing Authority which was little short of gibberish. She scrambled all over the place attempting to point out Green blunders while contradicting herself several times in the process. Her target was to avoid a rent law reform beyond the removal of the infamous institute of inheritance of leases. It appeared that she was more interested in contradicting the Greens than in making sense.

Very evidently our opponents realise they do not have a leg to stand on and resort to extraordinary contortions to justify the unjustifiable. We were entertained by the remarkable spectacle of one of the Nationalist government's prime apologists defending the security of tenure of Labour Party clubs all over the country which were located in requisitioned premises in the 1980s.

The tenant in a political party club never dies. The lease is not inherited because the law states that the leaseholder is the person who has judicial representation of the club from time to time. The king is dead, long live the king. No removal of the inheritance of leases will oust political party tenants.

In one instance decided by our Court of Appeal, the Santa Venera MLP club was spared eviction at the demand of the landlords because the alterations made to the premises were considered to be minor changes made in terms of the purpose for which the premises had been rented. It is a remarkable decision by any measure: Walls had been removed, a courtyard roofed over and an ornate staircase replaced. Hardly a change of whitewash.

The landlords had suffered a requisition of their family home ostensibly for the purpose of providing housing to the poor in a time of housing scarcity. Two years later the place was let to the local MLP supporters. The landlords eventually bowed to fate and accepted the pittance of rent to which the law entitled them.

When they learnt of the major alteration to which their property had been subjected, they realised that they had an excellent reason to sue for eviction, their only hope of ever recovering the place. The First Hall of the Civil Court confirmed their hunch. It was no surprise that the club appealed. It was a surprise that the club won on appeal.

The appeal judgment read the situation as one in which the tenant has enhanced the premises in view of the purpose for which it is let. The matter that the landlord should have a say in what happens to the property as far as major structural alterations are concerned appears to have been put aside. With the artificial logic which only lawyers dare attempt, the court interpreted the acceptance of payment as an expression of consent by the owners. The fact that they had been dispossessed of the property by the government and the tenants foisted upon them does not seem to have entered the forensic syllogism. Accepting a pittance in rent meant accepting the dispossession, the violence to the landlords' consent and accepting that their family home had become a political party club.

The landlords have asked for a retrial in this case and a final word on the issue lies somewhere in the murky future. Whether or not the Court of Appeal misinterpreted the law is a matter which it is not proper to discuss at this stage. The question is whether the courts should be left to interpret the law on the basis of a tangle of political, legal and economic circumstances which are utterly out of touch with present reality.

Our rivals would have us believe that the matter can be laid to rest by ending the inheritance of leases. They hope that the injustice will fade away over the next 30 years through natural wastage of controlled rent relationships. It is a politically safe non-decision.

In this way the government will not incur the ire of tenants who enjoy a free ride at the expense of dispossessed landlords. Longsuffering landlords can be ignored because they have become used to being cheated and are unlikely to be very grateful at a mere ending of their misery after decades of being ignored.

There is also the question of political party clubs. The Nationalist government would be highly embarrassed to engineer the eviction of a significant number of its rivals' local clubs. Nor is it safe to say that it is only the MLP that has exploited the situation of controlled rents. The Nationalist Party could be shooting itself in the foot on some crucial district if it does anything to throw out onto the street its precious activists, along with their billiard table putting their politically indispensable barman out of a job. An election could be at stake here.

Instead of accepting the Greens' invitation to an all-stakeholder discussion preceding a wholesale reform of the rent laws, they have opted to abscond from the discussion sending out their scouts with absurd proposals. If the government were willing to remove the inheritance of leases, why on earth has it not done so in 17 long years in office? Nothing prevents it doing so tomorrow.

It would not be enough. After 60 years of sustaining the welfare state, landlords cannot be asked to sustain it for 30 years more. For some of the more unfortunate whose tenants are the political parties themselves, the injustice would stretch on indefinitely even if the inheritance of leases were to be abolished.

The Greens recognise that the consequence of the follies of the past should not be visited upon future generations. We owe it to our children to give them a country free of the corrosive influence of an unjust system that has made some of us thieves and others their victims. The contract of rent should once more become a mutual and free commitment regulated by a civil law honed in the precedents of 2000 years.

It is patently obvious that the tangle of legislation originally developed to provide security of tenure to tenants in a situation of massive housing scarcity is simply encyclopedic nonsense in a situation where we have an oversupply of housing estimated at 500 per cent of potential demand by none other than the chairman of the Housing Authority.

The paralysis of the other parties has driven the Greens to opt for the only legitimate means to get them out of their electorally motivated trance. Only a referendum for a reform of the rent laws will get them off their hands and we have been given no choice but to proceed on this course.

Because the other political parties have chosen not to discuss the issue, we have been constrained to demand the abrogation of the rent laws through a referendum. To make life easy for them we have drawn up draft legislation to govern a transition period following the passing of the referendum. We have seen to the protection of tenants unable to cope with market conditions. We have seen to rendering justice to landlords tormented by their country's laws for far too long. Two-party paralysis is not necessarily a permanent condition for this country.

harry.vassallo@alternattiva.org.mt