There has been yet another request for pardons related to the Daphne Caruana Galizia assassination.

The requests come with the offer to reveal more about past unsolved crimes. And armchair detectives have been eager to dispense advice, clamouring for the granting of more pardons to get to the ‘truth’, the big fish or the ultimate mastermind.

This kind of reasoning is totally misplaced. Granting pardons to individuals who have committed such terrible crimes, leaving scores of victims in their wake, is already very shaky, to begin with.

I fail to understand why revelations about one crime should bring about absolution for another.

Why should revelations about one person’s murder be used as currency for killers to get off scot free for slaying another? Aren’t all victims equally wronged?

This pardon tombola should stop.


Financial practitioner Matthew Pace was hauled before the courts. Together with others, he faced a slew of money-laundering and other charges. A court expert described him as a “professional money launderer”. Well. Who would have guessed? Pace is not new to controversy.

He was a member of the Planning Authority board until forced to resign because of the most blatant conflict of interest in the ITS City Centre case, where the project was being advertised on the website of his estate agency, prior to approval by the board which he was part off.

Even then, he did not go gracefully but rather hung on until it was apparent that even with the execrable standards of the Planning Authority, he couldn’t stay. The Planning Authority couldn’t have retained the flimsy fiction of impartiality and independence in view of such behaviour.

However, there were a myriad of warning signs which showed that Pace was not fit for purpose as a member on a board which has the power to make decisions which may turn people into millionaires overnight while ruining the environment for others.

Many might not know when Pace first came to the attention of people following the planning scene. That was during the hearing of a planning application meant to sanction an illegal zoo.

A paltry fine of €50,000 was going to be imposed when Pace piped up with a suggestion. Why not have “educational” visits to the illegal zoo by school children imposed as a “corporate social responsibility” obligation instead of compelling the contravener to pay the fine?

Never mind that a circular issued by the department of education prohibited such visits, where children would be used to validate animal confinement in conditions which were not ideal.

This pardon tombola should stop

Never mind that there was no consideration of whether the dubious monetary value of these school visits would be equivalent to the proposed fine. Never mind that the visits would actually boost business for a contravener. Never mind that the useless Planning Authority could never enforce such a vague condition.

By means of Pace’s suggestion, an illegal zoo was sanctioned with no penalties to speak of.

Who knows how many other “helpful” suggestions in the planning process by Pace have gone unnoticed in the torrent of approved permits.


While Infrastructure Malta butchers mature trees and ODZ land outside Dingli (ostensibly with this zeal to open a road), Infrastructure Minister Ian Borg has shifted into positive PR mode and announced that the Planning Authority has approved the application for the Ta’ Qali National Park.

The Ta’ Qali Park has been Borg’s ‘go to’, ‘green’ project whenever he gets called out for tree slaughter and agricultural land take- up. You’ll find repeated references to it, in his emoji-strewn propaganda stream. However, the approved project (to build an open-air concert/recreational space, performance stage, shops, clinic and office) are far from the tree-studded park we were hoping for.

The approved application replaces a disused concrete plant with a lawned space opening into a stage area with erected lighting and three underground walkways from the subterranean car park. It’s not much of a park, more of a large paved and lawn expanse for commercialisation.

The so-called Ta Qali National ‘Park’ has had so much pre-emptive positive publicity/propaganda that people feel they can’t criticise. But, as usual, the devil is in the detail.

Just as the Joseph Muscat administration heralded an educational investment which turned out to be the American University of Malta shambles, just as the same administration trumpeted increased accessibility to Gozo as a code for the tunnel, just as it boasts of lack of bureaucracy, which translates into Infrastructure Malta’s bulldozer approach, this is really something else... not a park... a business/commercial opportunity.

We wonder who will benefit most from it.

drcbonello@gmail.com

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