I’m probably one of very many who feel that Christmas has come early. The news that the db Group will have to down tools at St George’s and crawl back to the Planning Authority to file a fresh application came as pure bliss. Schadenfreude all the way, but who cares? The db folks designed the hotel to look like a giant middle finger to decency – except it’s now talking to them, and boy, are we enjoying the show.
The glass, though, is also half empty. There was absolutely everything the matter with the project. It was dreadfully monstrous, the residents of Pembroke hated it, the dealings around it were shadier than a forest floor, and so on and so on. You’d have thought there was enough for the PA to turn it down tenfold. That it sailed through only to stumble on a legal technicality is really a tale of deep rot.
It was at least the second time in a week that the tale was told. The first was the Prime Minister’s decision to stop all excavation and demolition works. No Christmas this time – on the contrary, the decision is a double indictment of government, in two ways.
First, and regardless of the tkaxkira storika, it shows just how badly this government has failed its people on this one. Take a private business, by analogy. One fine morning, following yet another marketing disaster, the board of directors tells the shareholders that the situation is so badly deteriorated that business will be suspended for a couple of weeks. Do the shareholders applaud the directors? Hardly. I’d have thought they’d ask why things were allowed to deteriorate.
This is exactly where the Prime Minister’s at. He’s spent the best part of six years smooth-talking us about growth, l-aqwa żmien, and the many gifts and virtues of construction (and demolition, and excavation). Nor did he stop at lip service. The number of building permits shot up, and skylines everywhere are punctured by tower cranes. Closer to the ground, we now know that when Muscat spoke of an ‘earthquake’ in 2013, he meant it literally.
This government, in other words, has actively and enthusiastically stewarded a construction bacchanal. Apologists will say that construction madness was not invented by this government. Maybe not, but it was certainly reinvented by it.
No single person, no matter how many tkaxkiriet he has under his belt, should be able to summarily overrule the legal and democratic processes of planning permits
Now, suddenly, Damascus. The Prime Minister tells us that things are so intolerable that drastic action is needed. I don’t believe him for a second. I rather think it will be a case of if we want things to change, things will have to stay as they are. The point, however, is that the man who made the situation intolerable in the first place was a certain J. Muscat. He now wants to save us from himself – but more on that later.
Bad governance, too, because the stage is set for a disaster. The ‘improved’ regulations are being made under the worst possible conditions, with hundreds of trucks and JCBs stranded all over the place and no doubt tremendous pressure on the government to get this done as quickly as possible.
No wonder architects and geologists, among others, have called the proposed regulations a joke. They are bound to be, given the mad rush to see them through before the builders’ patience (and money) runs out. That’s the nice bit. Id-deċiżjoni ħadtha jien (the decision was mine), the Prime Minister told us. Sandro Chetcuti and the perit-avukat looked on, meek and expressionless. There’s so much to read in that, I hardly know where to begin.
A certain tweet from Azerbaijan came to mind. In 2015, a few days after hunters won a referendum on spring hunting, the Prime Minister single-handedly decided to close the spring hunting season. I now realise that the autocrat was just practising.
The point is not whether or not spring hunting is good, or excavation and demolition nectar for the soul. It is that both activities are legally and democratically legitimate. No single person, no matter how many tkaxkiriet he has under his belt, should be able to summarily overrule the legal and democratic processes of planning permits and a referendum. That autocrats are often applauded doesn’t make them less autocratic.
There’s more. The morning after last week’s press conference, I decided to call in sick to work. I imagined that the MDA would take to the streets in a sea of yellow vests, and that mass riots would break out. My prediction was based on what the MDA constantly tell us: that they have big money invested, that people’s livelihoods depend on non-stop construction, that one less day of building would ruin the economy, and so on.
In the non-event, I did go to work after all. The MDA, it turned out, was as docile as Bambi on a dewy spring morning.
Now docility is rather like silence (the adjectives ‘dead’ and ‘deafening’ come to mind). Occasionally, it is straightforward: people are docile because they are weak, or perhaps comatose. More often, it tells a story of power, and of posturing relative to it.
The MDA’s meek nod has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Chetcuti and his chums are imma orrajt ta. Nor is it down to the Prime Minister’s magical power to convince in the face of adversity. It is, in fact, the exact opposite. So inseparable and chummy and symbiotic are the Prime Minister and developers that one’s thoughts and feelings are exactly the other’s.
The decision to suspend all excavation and demolition works is not some kind of victory of political over big-money power. On the contrary, it’s an affirmation of how deeply entangled those two powers have become. Which is exactly why we ought to thank heaven (and Graffitti and Claire Bonello and Mr Justice Mark Chetcuti) that the law courts are not in on it just yet.