It is indeed worrying to learn, from MEPA auditor Joe Falzon, that the appointment of Austin Walker as executive chairman of the Malta Environment and Planning Authority board might actually be illegal.
According to the Development Planning Act, no employees of a public agency can serve on the MEPA board. At a glance this would apply to Opposition representative Roderick Galdes as much as to Walker: both being full-time MEPA employees, and as such at apparent loggerheads with the selfsame law they are duty-bound to enforce.
This is cause for grave national concern on a number of counts: not least, because things appear to have picked up considerably in the first few months since Walker took over the helm at the Malta Environment and Planning Authority.
Granted, there were a few initial hiccups: the most notorious of which was his first major decision as chairman, when a press release, announcing the approval of the controversial Fort Cambridge project, materialised during the public hearing before the vote was actually taken.
Otherwise, MEPA has of late displayed a rare sensitivity to the concerns of residents, which stands in stark contrast to the reputation for impunity and hard-headedness that characterised the authority under its previous chairman, Andrew Calleja.
Examples include the recent volte-face over the development of a four-storey apartment block right next to the historical Belvedere in Lija’s Transfiguration Avenue: firmly opposed by the locality’s mayor Ian Castaldi Paris, with the outright backing of Lija residents. Admittedly, the decision to overturn a valid permit may be seen as a dangerous precedent by developers who were more accustomed to the previous policy regime.
But it is clear from the decision that MEPA appears to be rediscovering its original raison d’être: that is, to protect the environment, both urban and natural, and also to oversee planning in a sustainable way for the benefit of all.
But although Austin Walker appears to have ambled off in the direction of openness and transparency, there is a serious danger that all this may be undermined by what can only be described as a silly administrative mistake.
If Falzon’s interpretation of the Planning Development Act were correct, the implications would be serious. Basically, any decision taken by the board in recent months could conceivably be challenged in a court of law. Granted, some might welcome the opportunity to overturn a development permit which they may feel should never have been approved in the first place; but the result would nonetheless be farcical and chaotic from a governance point of view, conceivably plunging the nation still deeper into the cynicism with which it so often views authorities such as MEPA to begin with.
How could this situation come to pass? Certainly through no fault of either Austin Walker or Roderick Galdes – the Opposition representative who is similarly in the unique position of being employed by the same authority over which he presides.
But it does seem unusual that neither Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi nor Labour leader Joseph Muscat, who appointed their respective choices to their board, would have done the necessary homework to find out if their choices were actually permissible by law.
Unaccountable though this may seem, it is also symptomatic of a certain laxity and carelessness that appears to have crept into various levels of the nation’s administrative bodies of late.
Consider, for instance, this week’s revelation that the much-touted plan for the privatisation of Malta Shipyards may actually be illegal according to European law. It is inconceivable that the government which brokered this deal – and which had also negotiated the terms of Malta’s accession in the first place – would fail to anticipate such an embarrassing eventuality.
Likewise, Joseph Muscat is himself a European member of parliament. Is it possible that he would have publicly welcomed a deal considered unacceptable to the same European Union he now calls home?
In view of the apparently illegal set-up of the current MEPA board, Joe Falzon has justifiably asked Austin Walker to regularise his position with the Attorney General. One sincerely hopes that the request proves unnecessary; that both Prime Minister and Labour leader would have already vetted their appointments with the AG, as experience and common sense dictate.
Otherwise, it is hard to reconcile the image of good governance evoked by both Nationalist and Labour parties in recent months, with the somewhat farcical decline in administrative standards we appear to be witnessing. It is a pity that the long march towards MEPA reform should have got off on the wrong foot.