I like architects. Some of my best friends are architects. At their best, architects can conjure the divine. In Malta we call them periti; at its best this brings forth a hybrid of soaring creativity and dependable engineering.
Of course, every profession has its artistic and technical Lilliputians. Malta is littered with graceless jerry-built boxes that have been passed off as fit for human habitation by the signature of a perit. We often berate the greedy and ignorant kuntrattur, who has become the national pantomime villain. But behind every kuntrattur there is a perit who feels powerless to stand up to him (invariably, him).
Or perhaps the perit is just a phantom menace, happy to sign off the ugly design and shoddy workmanship of a small-time kuntrattur as long as they get their set percentage and get on with more high-profile work. Let’s see if anyone will tell me that this has never happened.
Of course, one cannot condemn the whole profession because of its sore thumbs. In advanced democracies, the answer has been a dynamic balance between self-regulation and standard-setting by the State. When this works well it sets the public’s mind at rest that appropriate checks and balances are in place.
Unfortunately, this is not an automatic guarantee that the common good is going to be safeguarded. I don’t remember any universal wailing and gnashing of teeth by our periti when the infamous 2006 re-zoning exercise of previous ODZ land was passed. Nor have we seen any sign of a general mea culpa from the profession for the rapid acceleration in cementification over the last years.
If the onus of accountability in the new mishmash of construction regulations that were rushed through by government last week did not fall on them, would the periti be up in arms as they are now?
But perhaps it is not fair to pose such a hypothetical question. The new Kamra tal-Periti president Simone Vella Lenicker (full disclosure: she is a good friend) is demonstrating strong leadership not only in exposing the danger to public safety posed by the new regulations.
She is taking a firm stand against fellow periti who work for developers who have ignored instructions about ensuring a site’s structural integrity. Otherwise, what is the point of self-regulation if it only amounts to self-preservation?
But this is far from being the only problem of the construction industry. Seven workers have died on construction sites in the last 18 months, more than when the death rate of fireworks enthusiasts was at its worst. The lives of four sets of families have been destroyed in a few months.
Following the court’s cancellation of the permit for the db tower, the credibility of the Planning Authority and the Review Tribunal are (still) nil. If their members are anything but a rubberstamp of government and a stooge of the building lobby, they should draw the inevitable conclusion and do the decent thing.
Unless there is a government that is truly safeguarding the national interest, everything else is just wishful thinking
So, the standard-setting side of the mechanism of checks and balances is missing. Government has failed its responsibility to ensure regulation, monitoring and enforcement that are fit for purpose. It has allowed greed to mock our laws, consume our land and poison our self-respect.
The Chamber of Commerce has said the construction industry needs to rebuild its reputation. True, and the Kamra tal-Periti is part of that equation. But unless there is a government that is truly safeguarding the national interest, everything else is just wishful thinking, little more that the peasants of old hoping that their lords will be merciful and enlightened.
Of course, the cherry on the putrid cake of governmental oversight is this: it is to be driven by the minister most responsible for the flouting and creative interpretation of planning and construction regulations both in his official and personal capacities.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the man of the hour: Minister Ian Borg.
Gafà: Gaffe or Gaffa?
Joseph Muscat’s followers adulate him as the rock upon which Labour is built, and the doors of l-Istamperija (what’s left of them) will not prevail against it. Unfortunately, the thing about rocks is that they protect a multitude of slimy creepy-crawlies underneath.
One of the slimiest is Neville Gafà. Political parties tend to attract hangers-on, appeasers and fixers, who hope that their slavering loyalty will eventually be repaid with a sinecure, a post that matches their ambition rather than their ability, a tender thrown their way, a back turned as the brown envelope slips into their pocket. This is true of both Malta’s main parties, although it must be said that Labour has a particularly nasty infestation.
But once the independent media brings the greed of these parasites to light, most scurry back to the shadows. Even if they still manage to gorge on the State in some other way, a residual sense of shame keeps them out of sight. Witness, for example, the disappearing act of il-Kink tal-Lands after his misdeeds brought down Michael Falzon three years ago in the aftermath of the infamous Gaffarena land deal. Can’t quite remember who il-Kink was? Precisely.
But recently we are seeing a new breed of political parasite develop an immunity to shame. Enter Neville Gafà.
Gafà has been taken to court on charges of involvement in the medical visas racket linked to Libyan refugees. He was then accused of trying to bribe or scare Libyan witnesses from testifying, and was caught talking to a war-lord he just happened to meet on a Libyan street, presumably asking him for directions to the nearest Lidl outlet.
He was even caught talking to Libyan authorities while pretending to be a Maltese government representative. Or perhaps he actually was there on official business, and our own authorities colluded with Gafà’s lie to us. Who knows?
All this was serious enough for Deputy Prime Minister Chris Fearne to publicly fire Gafà. So he, Gafà, sought refuge at the OPM, and we were told with a straight face that he was doing some voluntary service there.
A few days ago he resurfaced, this time as an official member of a Maltese government delegation.
Official sources could not bring themselves to confirm it, so it had to be Prime Minister Muscat himself who did. He had no problem confirming that the Maltese government was now officially using the services of someone on trial for fraud and gross misuse of humanitarian procedures, and facing strong suspicions of witness tampering.
It gets worse. Muscat had no problem confirming that Gafà has been asked by our sovereign government to tap, for the government, the same Libyan connections that had got him thrown out by said government.
No wonder Gafà could afford to tell the press to eff off. Your friend the Prime Minister remembers your shady Libyan contacts but forgets your court case and why he put you on contract in the first place. With such unconditional love, who can be against you?
We are left to wonder: was Muscat scrambling to cobble together a response to a diplomatic gaffe, thereby displaying catastrophic lack of judgement through his tunnel-vision loyalty for his friend?
Or is this another fine example of Muscat at his disdainful hubristic worst, crushing all objections like the proverbial Maltese gaffa to demonstrate that none may question his judgement, his power, his friends?