Raphael Vassallo | Sunday, 22 November 2009

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What’s good for the Gonz...

Out of curiosity: was Lawrence Gonzi born with two faces, or did he buy his second one from a Gift of Life charity shop?
Reason I ask is that on Friday, I chanced upon the tail end of a political debate between the Prime Minister and Opposition leader on the Church radio station RTK (and please note I stress the ‘chance’ element, as listening to endless recitals of the Angelus is not exactly the sort of thing I would normally do out of choice).
Truth be told, my automatic reaction was to reach for the tuning dial to change channel, as by that point I already had Budget 2010 coming out of my ears... not to mention one or two other orifices that need not be anatomically specified here.
But by that point I realised that they were not actually talking about the budget at all. They were talking about Joe Falzon, which naturally changes everything.

Right: here’s a quick identikit for the benefit of those who usually limit their Sunday reading to the sports pages (and who can possibly blame them?).
Joe Falzon is the internal auditor of MEPA – short for ‘Methods to Ensure Permit Approval’, though I’ve come across less flattering interpretations of that acronym in my time – and like many citizens in this country of ours, he is somewhat puzzled by the fact that MEPA seems to consistently approve “dodgy” development permits, even if the case officers involved in the adjudication process had recommended a refusal... sometimes on multiple occasions.
OK: I promised myself I would resist the temptation to go off at a tangent about MEPA, and the shocking state in which it has stubbornly remained more than a year since Gonzi promised to reform it. But stuff it: here’s a quick parenthesis anyway.

Dr Gonzi: may I offer a small word of advice? Instead of criticising Joe Falzon for doing his job and pointing out irregularities in the granting of one permit after another (after another, after another, etc.)... shouldn’t you be doing yours? Because last I looked, your job description also included a self-imposed remit to restore public confidence in the workings of the same planning authority.
What? No, of course I’m not making this up. You told us so yourself, before the last election. Remember? Well, in case you don’t, these were your exact words: “I will reform MEPA like I reformed the economy”. Yes, Lawrence, you really said that. And yes, we are talking about the same economy you somehow managed to reverse all the way back into deficit mode, after your own economic forecast for 2008 went askew by the around €20 million... (but don’t worry, Lawrence: this is a Christian country and we’re very forgiving when it comes to Nationalist cock-ups. Aren’t we, folks?)

Sorry to be blunt, Dr Gonzi... but what exactly happened to that MEPA reform? I ask this because, as far as I can see, it’s still business as usual in that particular authority... and instead of putting your foot down about the unscheduled, unminuted (and, quite frankly, unacceptable) ‘secret meetings’ that continue to take place between some DCC board members and certain well-connected developers, what you are effectively doing is dismantling the office of the only person who seems to have a clear idea of what public expectations of MEPA actually are.
That, Dr Gonzi, does not exactly qualify as “reforming MEPA”. But it does qualify as political interference in the supposedly autonomous role of the authority’s internal auditor... which is not quite the same thing.

Anyway. While you were busy humiliating Joe Falzon – the same Joe Falzon you yourself asked to investigate at least two “dodgy” permits before an election, only to publicly rubbish his conclusions afterwards – the rest of us out here were admiring the emergence of a very clear pattern in the modus operandi of the same authority you were once supposed to reform. It goes something like this:
1. Architect applies for a development permit;
2. Case officer recommends refusal for any of the following reasons:
a) it’s outside the development zones approved by the local plan;
b) it’s in violation of Mepa’s own planning policies;
c) it defies any recognised aesthetic, logical or environmental considerations;
d) it blatantly breaches height limitations restrictions;
e) it’s in an urban conservation area;
f) it’s in a designated area of special environmental significance (whatever that means), or;
g) it’s just plain stupid;
3. DCC board members – and on at least one occasion I can think of offhand, a member of the private staff at the Office of the Prime Minister – meets the applicant in secret, after which meeting the applicant re-applies for the same permit, only with a few ‘alterations’ to the original architect’s design... and finally;
4. Your MEPA development permit is served, m’lord.

Naturally, ‘tis but a coincidence – nothing more – that so many of these permits are dished out to the same individuals who have publicly admitted to making regular contributions to the two political parties, in cash or in kind.
So Charles Polidano, who publicly boasts of having provided the PN headquarter’s kontrabejt for free, came away with two permits for Lidl supermarkets, both of which are entirely irregular: the Safi one because it’s ODZ, the Luqa one because it’s directly in the flight-path of the MIA runway (if you don’t believe me ask the Civil Aviation Authority. They were less than amused).
Elsewhere, we watched in disillusion as the controversial Fort Cambridge permit in Tigné was approved on paper before the “public vote” was even taken... after, I might add, Lawrence Gonzi had already assumed political responsibility for MEPA, and appointed his former colleague Austin Walker to take over at the helm.

Did I mention something about political party financing earlier on? Ah yes! Reminds me of another Lawrence Gonzi promise which seems to have gone walkabout while we weren’t looking. Am I imagining things, or did the Prime Minister also promise us a law to control this widespread abusive practice... considered illegal in many European democracies? And what ever happened to that, I wonder?

But hang on: now I’m really digressing, and like Major Tom I need Ground Control to pull me back out of orbit. Right: as I was saying before I interrupted myself, on Friday I listened to a debate between the PM and the KO (Kap ta’ l-Oppozizzjoni), and for the first time heard an explanation for Gonzi’s uncharacteristically brutal savaging of Joe Falzon’s entire office. It appears that Falzon’s mistake was that he openly questioned part of a ruling by the Magistrates’ Court, which described as “commonplace” the above-mentioned meetings between developers and the MEPA board.
Falzon, it seems, humbly reiterated his opinion (which the magistrate’s ruling does not appear to contradict in any way) that these meetings, commonplace though they may have become in the past four years, are still... ILLEGAL. In so doing, we were told last Friday, Joe Falzon mounted an ‘unacceptable challenge’ to the autonomy of the law courts, undermining public trust in this vital institution, and vitiating the entire legal process while he was at it.

Hence my earlier question regarding Lawrence Gonzi’s second face. Excuse me, but... is this the same Lawrence Gonzi who, just last week, came out in full force against a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights regarding crucifixes in Italian schools? And if so... why is it unacceptable for the MEPA auditor to publicly disagree with part of a ruling by the Magistrates’ Court (if indeed that’s what he did – I still have my doubts)... but at the same time, it is absolutely fine and dandy for the same Prime Minister to directly contradict the authority of the ECHR, riding on a wave of popular emotion (and shocking ignorance) that seems to have convulsed the entire outcry, while at the same undermining the only institution the rest can turn to, when his own government tries to deny us our human rights?
And while I’m on the same subject: where was Dr Gonzi’s moral outrage, when his predecessor Eddie Fenech Adami suggested ditching the jury system altogether, simply because it didn’t return the verdict he expected in the Richard Cachia Caruana attempted murder trial in the 1990s?

But oh! How silly of me. I keep forgetting... it’s not that Lawrence Gonzi was born with two faces, or that he somehow acquired a second one since becoming PM in 2004. It’s that Malta has two entirely separate codes of conduct: one code for the Nationalist Party (which can be summed up in one sentence – “anything is acceptable, so long as you’re Blue”); and another, altogether different code for everyone else.
As the old maxim goes: ‘if it’s good for the Gonz, then it’s good propaganda...’

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