This is the first article in a two-part series. Read part two.
Around two and a half years ago, a journalist from Net TV phoned to ask whether I could participate in a debate with “someone from the MDA” that very evening. The invite came with a gentle, almost reluctant reminder to “keep things civil” during the discussion, even though there are no records of any developer ever leaving a TV station frightened, tearful or otherwise bruised.
On the way, I was told I would be debating with the MDA’s vice president; I half-chuckled, remembering that, prior to another televised discussion months earlier, the lobby had requested to face “the president of Graffitti” (an inexistent post) since they were sending their own commander-in-chief, at the time Sandro Chetcuti.
That Monday evening, Miriam Pace had yet to be pulled out, lifeless, from the rubble that was her home in Ħamrun.
“Sandro couldn’t come because he’s on site.” Enter Michael Stivala tal-Gejges, a hotelier who speaks in very hushed tones, as if worried about God listening in.
It was my first, or rather, only direct encounter with the saintliest of innkeepers.
Before the debate, I struggled with my convictions: I felt warm, almost reassured by Stivala’s opening gambit and fought hard to hold back visions of a shirtless Chetcuti lifting one pile of limestone after the other in the dramatic night of that pre-pandemic winter.
Throughout the debate, however, I would struggle with his convictions: mostly, the insistence that there were no problems in the sector right after the fourth, tragic house collapse in the span of less than a year and the feisty denial of the authorities’ submissiveness to his lobby, despite the daily news of workplace deaths, shambolic planning decisions and precedents, damages to residents and communities and zero enforcement throughout.
Fast forward to this date and there’s a new sheriff in town. Chetcuti decided not to ride again after a few bumpy years, which he allegedly spent ridding the cabal of “cowboys”. During his tenure, the strengthening of the lobby created by former PN minister Michael Falzon and its impact on everyone’s quality of life resulted in a stronger, angrier civil society on the environmental front.
Stivala’s official crowning took some time: it’s not easy to sit in a hot cauldron like that, especially because anger at the MDA is justifiably high. More so, credibility requires way more Puritanism than he professes.
The MDA once famously criticised the government’s cheap concessions to the DB and Corinthia groups. After braying conspicuously about “level playing fields”, MDA director Anton Camilleri (tal-Franċiz) bought a public alleyway next to his Villa Rosa site for just €134,000.
The sale happened right after the election, with Camilleri as the only bidder; he can build a tunnel to service his adjacent development on public land bought for a fraction of its value.
It’s therefore legit to ask if there were any pre-electoral meetings between Camilleri and lands minister Silvio Schembri, if Camilleri has ever donated to Schembri’s campaign, and if, during this time, any meetings were held between MDA and high-ranking government officials behind closed doors.
There will be no answers of course, giving Stivala and his lot the illusion of impunity.
Stivala feigned ignorance about the illegalities surrounding his ‘Gourmet’ eatery- Wayne Flask
Pressed by André Callus of Graffitti during a radio interview, the MDA head honcho took umbrage at the notion that the Planning Authority has been only too willing to bend over, do the twist, the limbo and the macarena at the lobby’s behest.
Whinging like the engine of a septuagenarian Yugo up its last hill, Stivala feigned ignorance about the illegalities surrounding his ‘Gourmet’ eatery on a public pavement in Sliema, which is turning residents’ lives into a daily hell. Instead of apologising and promising to look into the matter, he said he had immediately applied to sanction the irregularities. We know what the decision will be, unless the objectors strike an unlikely win after taking legal action.
He demanded respect for “feeding 300 families”, which – while assuming they don’t feast on caviar and foie gras every night – is not a feat worthy of a medal but a way of using them as a shield to justify his actions.
Elsewhere, he claimed to “listen to residents” of Gżira, despite the fact the he and the PA ignored a survey commissioned by sociologists Maria Brown and Marvin Formosa, where the vast majority of the town opposed his tower in Testaferrata Street.
Statistics extracted from the PA show that all 18 applications presented by Stivala since 2018 were granted permission and, in six cases, the case officer’s negative recommendation was overturned.
But even beyond the sprawl of his empire, which sees him click into siege mode every time he is unmasked by one of his own applications, strange decisions in favour of developers are also taken outside the PA.
The two architects responsible for Pace’s death were given suspended sentences a few months ago, after which, according to the Periti Act, their warrants would be revoked.
However, a “divergent legal interpretation” has kept the warrants in place.
Therefore, since the day of that collapse, architect Roderick Camilleri has signed 90 applications, four of which on behalf of Malcolm Mallia, the developer on the MDA board whose plot bordered the Pace household.
Stivala doesn’t come across as your average virgin martyr, yet he feels “hurt” at articles highlighting his obnoxious business interests and which inevitably unmask his immensurate hypocrisy. But this is only a fraction of what he and his people have brought on to thousands of citizens across Malta and Gozo: quantifiable in noise, congestion, ugliness and death.
While construction is neck to neck with transport for Grim Reaper of the Year, Stivala goes to Castille demanding “less bureaucracy”, even days after a Turkish worker died on the site of his Ta’ Xbiex tower.
He reacted by ducking interviews and applying for two extra storeys.
We will never know the outcome of the inquiry and whether Hayrettin Kok’s family were even spoken to, let alone compensated.
But there’s an even bigger endgame unfolding, which explains why Stivala is so nervous of late.
Read the second article in this two-part series.