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Mr Albert Mizzi made a rare appearance in the media recently in connection with his consultancy to government in the purchase of the Brussels embassy. Evidently the government required his advice in handling a multi-million business deal.
As shown in the recent Bondi + television programme aimed at sugaring the pill of the Brussels purchase, Mr Mizzi is in the business of selling properties at prices easily comparable to the purchase price in the Brussels deal. He also has a very long history of investment in every field of business from construction to manufacture through services to niche tourism and newspapers. He is a walking encyclopaedia on how to do well in business.
Soon after the 1987 change in government he was interviewed on a television chat show “Darek mal-hajt” by Godfrey Grima. He was able to tell the country that he had served it well and gratis as Chairman of Air Malta and was then doing just as well as Chairman of Sea Malta. Mr Grima asked whether it was true that at the time when he headed Air Malta he had also been the Malta representative of the Boeing firm which had sold airliners to Air Malta. Mr Mizzi replied in the affirmative informing the country that he had always acted with the utmost propriety and with the full knowledge and consent of the government of the time. Wow !
Mr Mizzi attained critical mass many years ago. Politicians need him more than he can ever need any politician. If Dr Fenech Adami as Prime Minister humbled himself before the anger of the Chairman of the Polidano Group at being fined for violating building permits in the Solemar case, the respect shown to the older, wiser and much wealthier Mr Mizzi must be great indeed. He need never be so crass as to threaten to fire his employees to get the government’s attention.
What struck me in the Brussels deal was Mr Mizzi’s presence. I found it very ironic that he was involved in a property purchase which the government defends as a solid long term investment. Mr Mizzi has made better investments for himself. His home in St Julian’s is not his property. It is probably his best investment. Without putting a penny towards acquiring title, he has enjoyed its unobstructed sea views for decades. The rent for one year is less than his chauffeur’s salary for a few weeks.
It is the same for his Valletta offices, less the sea views. Thanks to his use of the place it is well maintained and does not fall into the class of crumbling Valletta palaces. He has the means to ensure that his landlords carry out all the necessary repairs. It may cost thousands of liri that dwarf the rent he pays, but if the law says that he is entitled to such treatment, he will not pass it up.
The great contrast between his advice to government in Brussels and his practice in Malta is simply a matter of law. Belgian law does not create the madhouse he has learnt to navigate so well in Malta. Mr Mizzi can recognise an opportunity when he sees one. If landlords are obliged to leave their money in the streets, he has no problem with picking it up and showing them how well it can be invested.
His example has been followed by his St Julian’s neighbours. I suppose this too is free advice in a way. The scion of one business family has changed the address on her identity card in order to lay a claim to the lease of her grandparent’s house. The law allows her to inherit the lease. A few doors away another branch of another major manufacturing business family has the tenancy of yet another house. The rent is controlled and much lower than the interest paid by their employees on mortgages for much humbler residences.
It may be unfair to Mr Albert Mizzi to have his private affairs bandied about in this way. I have selected him out of the many hundreds of wealthy tenants squatting in more lavish properties and paying a pittance in rent simply because he is something of a national figure. His rarified eminence in the business world is in the greatest contrast with his tenancy of the premises referred to and is a memorable illustration of the absurdity of the present rent laws.
I very much doubt that a man of Mr Mizzi’s stature will have sleepless nights over any of this. However to be fair to him it is proposed to publish long lists of names and addresses with the relative rents paid for controlled premises by the wealthiest men and women in Malta. If they are happy to do it, why should they be unhappy that it is done in public? Many of them are ostentatious about their yachts and their gleaming limos, why not about their rent law savvy? Business is legitimate opportunism and they are respectable and successful opportunists. The rent issue shows exactly how much.
It also goes to a significant length in describing the actual situation regarding the tenure of controlled rental property. If ever the rich were landlords and robbed by a Robin Hood government to help the homeless poor, it is not quite so today after 60 years of mayhem in our very own Sherwood Forest.
In a manner of speaking Robin Hood is robbing the poor to help the Messrs Mizzi. In most cases it is a war among the poor. Impoverished landlords act as an unrecognised bastion of the welfare state sustaining tenants as poor as themselves and often wealthier than themselves. We have come to an era where landlords, exasperated by tenants’ claims for repairs, have offered the premises to their tenants for free – and have been refused! The repairs cost more than the rent and the landlord is legally obliged to see to them even if it means the loss of decades’ worth of rent. The government is quite happy to leave them doing its job.
In one legal gem they are invited to sell out to the government capitalizing the rent at 6 percent. If they earn Lm6 per annum they can sell the place for Lm100. The government generously offers to buy any property at this rate. Who says that the Brussels embassy was the only good business deal the government ever made? To top it all the government exempts itself from the restrictions of the rent laws. There is no such thing as controlled rent as far as the government is concerned in its role as landlord. As a tenant it takes advantage of every restriction laid on private landlords.
Many of the landlords who get in touch with me are by no means wealthy. They find themselves making enormous sacrifices to help their children buy properties at astronomic prices while the properties they own are occupied by people wealthier than themselves. The experience of this injustice is a very personal, private tragedy.
It is, in fact a national tragedy distorting our economy, wasting our scarce resources, tying up capital that can be employed to create wealth, driving wages ever higher to cope with free market housing costs spiralling ever upwards because of the absurd legal situation. The rent laws are a major spanner in the works of our economy which the other two Parties do not want to recognise simply out of electoral opportunism.
They are not defending the poor and the homeless who would be better off in a better regulated market subject to an oversupply of 25 percent of the total housing stock. They are directly defending themselves and their electoral prospects. Indirectly they defend the wealthiest and most successful opportunists in the country.
The Green call for a referendum reforming the rent laws is aimed at removing a massive, economic, social and environmental distortion which so far has been as invisible as the Maghtab mountain was for over 20 years. A government that cannot handle a landfill cannot be expected to deal with a challenge of these proportions. A referendum is the only way.
harry.vassallo@alternattiva.org.mt
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