Robert’s retreat

On 4 June, Prime Minister Robert Abela announced that he had tasked Labour MP Edward Zammit Lewis and Labour Party President Alex Sciberras with examining the Manoel Island concession agreement to identify potential breaches by the concessionaires. Just five days later, their work was done.

Abela publicly announced that the developers had indeed breached the concession agreement. It was all a face-saving gimmick to cover up his sudden change of heart. That pantomime reveals some truly shocking truths.

If MIDI had truly breached the concession agreement, why did Labour wait until 29,000 citizens took a stand before looking into the concession? Labour knew for years that MIDI was breaching the agreement.

In 2016, a Labour government filed a judicial protest accusing MIDI of failing to adhere to contract conditions by denying the public access to the foreshore. Even former Labour prime minister and MEP Alfred Sant revealed that the government had closed its eyes to MIDI’s breaches.

Yet disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat negotiated with MIDI in 2018, despite the concessionaire’s breaches, and reached an agreement to allow them to retain the concession.  He helped set up a “guardianship” and hailed it as “a model for relationships between investors and communities”.

Abela’s predecessor declared, “The investors had long been granted the right to build this project”.  Muscat said, “We opted for the path of compromise and sought a balance between the interests of the developer and those of the Gżira community”.

So when Abela claims that MIDI “did whatever they wanted”, he can blame Muscat for letting them.

Really, he should blame himself. He’s been in power for five years and did nothing about it until he was forced into a corner by 29,000 angry petitioners, a former party leader, a disgruntled Labour backbencher, and his own Party president.

For years, Labour closed both eyes to MIDI’s breaches. Abela continued to defend the concessionaires, declaring that he would not scrap the concession. Then, when he faced a tsunami of dissent, he quickly changed his mind.

Nothing changed over those few days—only Abela’s position did. And that is one of the shocking truths this saga has revealed. Whether a concessionaire retains his government concession does not depend on whether contractual obligations are met. It depends only on the whims of the Prime Minister.

Abela knew exactly what he wanted out of the phoney scrutiny of the concession that he ordered.  That’s exactly why he tasked two individuals – Zammit Lewis and Sciberras – who had already expressed their view that the concession should be terminated.  Those two were hardly neutral, objective assessors.

The outcome of their “combing” through the concession was pre-ordained – to look for breaches.  It took them just a few days to conclude.  Why hadn’t Abela scrutinised that concession before?  He had five years in office to do so.   And why task the Labour Party President to look into the concession?  The President of a political party should not be scrutinising government contracts and concessions.  The state has a whole army of lawyers in the State Advocate’s office to perform such tasks.

MIDI, on the other hand, one day declared that it had “a right and an obligation” to complete the project.  The following day, they made an apparent retreat, saying, “The company is committed to finding a solution to return Manoel Island to the government”. It issued a statement on Sunday night declaring that it was “ready to negotiate”.

This circus reveals other worrying truths.  Abela’s government isn’t scrutinising existing concessions or agreements with private companies or groups of companies. He’s not protecting the interests of the nation. If you believe Abela, he didn’t know until Zammit Lewis and Alex Sciberras completed their task whether MIDI had breached the contract conditions.

“We need to see what emerges from the analysis of the concession,” he said. Abela let them do “whatever they wanted” for years. He’s probably letting hundreds of other private companies do “whatever they want” with our land and our money.  And the nation stands to lose.

Abela decides who to grant his favour to and who to withdraw it from based on personal political expediency.

On 9 June, Abela declared that his government would “consider an out-of-court settlement that would see the site returned to the people”. The following day, Abela took the case to court.

Through that letter, Abela demanded that MIDI pay its penalties – those very same penalties that Abela failed to enforce or recoup over five years.  His legal letter threatened that his government would not be extending the timeframe for the company to start work on the project.

Abela’s sudden turnaround reveals one other important reality. He is at the mercy of the public. The minute Abela’s support is threatened, the second he senses that his backers are turning against him, he will change tack. The defiance of those who publicly challenged him forced him into a humiliating retreat.

That’s a recipe for the nation to protect itself and its interests. The country knows what it must do to preserve what belongs to all of us – our land, our shores, our common wealth and our freedoms.