Try as I might, I find it hard to sympathise with a man whose nickname translates directly as ‘Urine’. Sure, there are far worse bodily fluids after which one could conceivably be named. It could have been ‘George il-Bili’... ‘George Il-Vomtu’... ‘George Il-Mahta’... even ‘George Il-Li... um... Lim... erm... Limfa’? (Ok, I give up. What’s Maltese for ‘lymph’?)
In any case, I’m talking about George Micallef here: chairman of a construction consortium called GAP, and fondly known to friends, associates, employees and toilet attendants alike by that wonderfully sophisticated nickname, ‘Il-Bewla’.
Very appropriate, I must say. For I am told that, apart from a building contractor, George Micallef is also one seriously pissed-off bunny at the moment. And who can possibly blame him? There he was, permit in hand, about to urinate all over the Qui Si Sana neighbourhood by erecting a tower block 23 storeys above the Sliema skyline... when suddenly, the same authority that issued him with a permit in the first place, simply turned around and said: “Hey! You! Bewla! Remember that outline development permit we once gave you for a 341-apartment project on the site of the former Crowne Plaza in Tigné? So sorry, but we were only taking the piss. Yes, it’s true that we were the ones to tell you didn’t need an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) to begin with... But what can we say? Those were the days before the government started listening to all those darn environmentalists. And long before the Prime Minister decided to muscle his way into our offices, and turn the Malta Environment and Planning Authority into an extension of the his own party’s electoral office...”
...Or at any rate, words to that effect.
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But, oh! The good old days: when men were men, and building contractors simply got whatever they wanted, when they wanted it, where they wanted it, how they wanted it... and if they then went ahead and built something entirely unrelated to the approved plans, well, so what? All they had to was to threaten to lay off all their employees, and hey presto! They would get their illegal development retroactively sanctioned, every single time.
Well, it seems that times have now changed... and so has the upper management at Mepa. And guess what? Just to rub a little bleach into the toilet bowl, the decision to revoke the outline development permit for Fort Cambridge was taken on the same day that a separate permit was issued to build 900 apartments – almost three times the number Il-Bewla had planned for Tigné – at Mistra Village: way out in the country, in a relatively unspoilt area overlooking Xemxija and Mistra Bay itself.
Hmm. Two projects, two developers, two permits... but only one project allowed to actually go ahead. It would make an marvellous nursery rhyme: “this little building contractor hits the jackpot; this little building contractor cries ‘wee-wee-wee-wee’ all the way to the prime minister’s office...”
But while there is infinite satisfaction to be had at this remarkable break with tradition, it must also be said that something, somewhere stinks. And I don’t think we need to call in a plumber to get to the bottom of this cesspit, either.
If I say ‘cesspit’, it is for this reason: regardless of whether people like myself agree or disagree with the government’s land-use policy - I for one certainly do not - the fact remains that GAP Ltd was given an outline development permit to construct 23-storey tower block. You can pick any amount of holes with the procedure by which the permit was issued... for instance, that the EIA was (illegally) waived, then had to be carried out anyway on EU insistence; or that Mepa’s left hand appeared not to know that its right hand had already sanctioned an astonishing amount of development in the immediate vicinity... but the permit was granted all the same. Which, theoretically at least, should be the end of the application process, not the beginning of another one.
***
So much for theory. In practice, what Il-Bewla’s experience actually means is that an “outline development permit” granted by MEPA is a little bit like an assurance given by government a few weeks before a general election. It is completely and utterly worthless.
If you don’t believe me, ask the developers of the Ulysses Lodge in Ramla l-Hamra... or for that matter, of Spin Valley Discotheque in Mistra Bay. Outline development permits were issued for both these proposed projects... only to be sheepishly withdrawn soon afterwards, when Mepa belatedly realised the extent of the cock-up for which it was about to be responsible.
There are, however, significant differences. In the case of Ulysses Lodge, Mepa discovered a technicality whereby the permit could legitimately be revoked. Under scrutiny, it turned out that part of the land in question did not belong to the developer at all. This is at best a flimsy pretext, as Mepa has elsewhere repeatedly informed us that it doesn’t actually take land ownership into consideration when evaluating a permit application. But then again, the only alternative was to tell the truth: i.e., that the real reason involved 1,000+ angry middle-class protestors, carrying placards such as “Vote Gonzi, get Caqnu”... barely a year before Gonzi’s first election as Prime Minister.
As for the JPO case, matters get weirder still. The outline development permit was granted in January of this year. But it has since been revoked at the behest of the owner of the land... who told us all very loudly that he had nothing whatsoever to do with the application to begin with... but who appears to nonetheless have some kind of say over whether Mepa processes an application for development filed by third parties who are also legal tenants... at a time when Mepa itself is not meant to go into ownership merits in the first place... and so on, and so forth, and so fifth.
But back to Il-Bewla. As in Ramla and Spin Valley, there was also enormous pressure on the authorities to turn down GAP’s Fort Cambridge application. Some of this pressure came from the European Commission, which agreed with Alternattiva Demokratika that an EIA was among the legal requirements for the application to even be considered, let alone processed. But the permit had by that time already been granted, and even if an EIA was eventually carried out (practically at gun-point), it was by that stage already too late.
Contrast this with the 900-apartment Mistra Valley project, approved last week, and you will find an almost diametrically opposed scenario. On this occasion, Mepa did request an EIA... but even though the assessment warned against the project’s negative visual impact, the permit was granted all the same.
Fort Cambridge, on the other hand, was approved by MEPA without an EIA... only to have an EIA forced upon the developer after the permit was already issued... at which point, the Prime Minister’s appointee on the board took the astonishing initiative of vetoing the development, on the grounds that – wait for it – the development would have a “negative visual impact”.
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Huh? What? Quoi? Come again? You mean to say that the exact same objection which failed to halt the Mistra development, suddenly became a good enough reason to revoke a legally (albeit carelessly) granted permit... when there wasn’t even an EIA to begin with?
Besides: where was the same Prime Minister’s appointee when Mepa issued a permit for a giant supermarket to be constructed entirely outside the development zone in Safi? Or how about the approved Nadur cemetery, also ODZ, which threatens the water supply of all the area’s farmers?
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Oh, but of course! How silly of me. Those applications were not filed by George ‘Il-Bewla’, but by Charles ‘Ic-Caqnu’ and the Gozo Bishop’s Curia in Victoria. And what difference does could this possibly make to a fair and transparent institution like Mepa? Good question, but there’s no point in asking me. Ask the PM’s appointee to the board. If he can’t tell you, perhaps the Prime Minister can...
