Love him or hate him, Sandro Chetcuti, the outgoing president of the Malta Developers’ Association, has been a prominent exponent of the construction industry. Indeed, he may be considered as its ‘face’ and a colourful interlocutor with the public, often appearing to be defending the indefensible and, on more than one occasion, even putting his foot in it.
Chetcuti set up the Malta Developers’ Association with former Nationalist cabinet minister Michael Falzon in 2010. When Chetcuti succeeded Falzon as president in 2014, he pledged he would strive to ensure the association earned the respect of politicians, professionals and society but also to strike a balance with environmentalists.
His “primary ambition”, however, was to eliminate “unnecessary bureaucracy that is stifling”.
Securing the respect of politicians was, evidently, no problem. Especially if, by his own admission, businessmen, including members of his own organisation, keep contributing money to them and to the political parties.
He insisted in an interview with The Sunday Times of Malta that most entrepreneurs who, one can safely assume, include developers, do not need politicians’ help to do well in their business. In that case, all the Malta Developers’ Association has to do is issue advice to its members to forthwith stop donating money to anybody involved in politics.
Of course, reality is not exactly as Chetcuti paints it, even because there is no such thing as a free lunch.
The way politicians and regulators juggle with rules and regulations to accommodate developers, contractors and professionals involved in the industry is there for all to see: the ugly pencil buildings and high-rise-structures, the despoiled old towns and villages, the dubious pedestrian bridges, the controversial roads, the uprooted trees, the marred natural landscapes, the disturbed agricultural land, and so on.
Chetcuti first said it in late 2015 but he might as well repeat it because it still stands: developers will continue to make hay while the sun shines. It shines because “this administration understood clearly the need and the importance of the building industry”.
He knows what he is talking about when he refers to the way the Labour administration views the construction industry. When he testified before the public inquiry into the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder, he described himself as a “facilitator” between the business community and then opposition leader Joseph Muscat.
Chetcuti insisted that the meetings with Muscat were meant to discuss policies, not personal issues or projects.
He could also have pointed out that the underlying message to him would have been: make sure Labour is elected to power and remains there if you want to continue making money from the construction industry.
That may explain why, notwithstanding his jovial character and efforts to appear like an open book, Chetcuti has not been as successful in wooing society, and especially environmentalists, as he has been in ensuring developers continue to have a hold on politicians and state officials.
But it would be thoroughly unfair to pin all the ills of the construction industry on one organisation or even any individual running it.
Malta is in this terrible state because many of us jumped on the bandwagon of greed and morphed ourselves into mini-developers. We destroyed our family homes and fields to build tasteless blocks which ruined the environment, frustrated our neighbours and relegated our country into a veritable concrete jungle.
And because of that greed, we facilitated an industry that made contractors even richer.