‘For the people’? Abela’s planning reform is a developer’s dream

Prime Minister Robert Abela cynically claimed that his proposed planning reforms are “for the people, not big developers”.  He insisted they were a “victory for objectors”.  He seems to think everybody’s dumb.

He’s convinced he can dupe enough people to get his way.  This time, however, he’s grossly miscalculated.  The backlash against his shameless red carpet for developers has been fierce, not least from the Labour Party’s President, Alex Sciberras.

Abela was sorely stung by the overwhelming wave of resistance against his proposals. He was particularly peeved that even his own Party’s president expressed his disgust at the way Abela was being controlled by developers while completely excluding the general public and NGOs.

Those NGOs urged him to immediately withdraw his planning reform Bills. They accused Abela of trying to “dismantle the few remaining safeguards in the environmental and planning sectors”.

They declared the truth that Abela’s reforms were “designed to facilitate a complete takeover of the country by the development lobby”.

Those NGOs revealed that while Abela had been meeting developers regularly, even at Labour fundraising events, he had obstinately ignored the NGOs’ repeated requests for a meeting. They lambasted Abela for the lack of transparency in the drafting of those laws, noting that there was no public consultation whatsoever.

Labour president Alex Sciberras was brutal in his condemnation: “People, not just developers, should be heard and have a full voice in this process”.  He said Labour was “always at its best when it was a movement that listened”.

“Let’s be the movement that not only delivers reforms quickly but seriously,” he added.

In a pointed dig at Abela, he warned that “those who have trusted us for so many years deserve nothing less”.

Labour’s own grassroots are livid.  They know Abela’s claims that his reforms are “for the people” are just a devious deception.

The “single winner” is not, as Abela bluffed,  “the objector”.  They know Abela’s strings are pulled by the developers, so much so that even his defence of the shameless proposals echo the developers’ statement.

On 27 July, Abela repeated the developers’ claims that his planning reform “is certainly not a win for developers”.  Just the day before, the Malta Developers’ Association (MDA) issued a statement declaring that “The reform… is far from a walkover for developers”.

Yet the MDA was the only group welcoming Abela’s proposed reforms.  Everybody else was up in arms, incensed at how absolutely shame-proof Abela was.

Typical of Abela, he didn’t sense the rage, even from among his loyal party officials.  Instead, he lashed out: “Critics are misinformed or acting in bad faith,” he said on the Labour Party’s radio station.

According to him, those criticising the new Bills were either ignorant or malignant, which supposedly includes the Party president.

Abela should know threats and intimidation won’t work, at least not with everybody, and not all the time. Maybe that’s why he came out with the most ridiculous sob stories to try and fool the public that his reform “will be a reform of empathy”.

He told the story of a terminally ill father suffering from cancer who built his house illegally on ODZ land and who pleaded with the prime minister not to let his children suffer.

Abela argued: “No authority pulled it down in the 80s, 90s or since, and they worked with blood and sweat for what they have… the father now has cancer and told me he didn’t want trouble for his children”.  So Abela will simply regularise the man’s illegal development.

That man built illegally on land that was not meant to be built on, and enjoyed his illegal property for decades.  And because no authority pulled his illegal house down, Abela now proposes to regularise his illegalities and allow his children to potentially make an absolute fortune off their father’s illegalities. Where is the sense in that?

That’s a slap in the face of all law-abiding citizens who truly worked with their blood and sweat without breaking the law for decades, as that man had.  It’s an insult to the public who looked helplessly on as one administration after another enabled that man’s illegalities to go unpunished and in the process encouraged thousands of others to do the same, knowing no action would be taken.

Abela now plans to go a step further. Not only will he not demolish the illegal ODZ building, but he’ll reward cheats, like that man, and his inheritors. The rest of us are expected to just acquiesce because Abela demands it, and because his fictitious man allegedly has cancer?

If that ridiculous story weren’t enough, Abela came up with an even more loopy one:  “I think of the old man I visited in Gozo recently, who told me he has an illegal room in his backyard and pleaded with me not to pull it down because it would ruin his life… we want to do justice to both sides”.

How does demolishing an illegal room in a backyard ruin an old man’s life? What justice rewards a man, no matter how old, for building an illegal room? Abela’s sense of justice is completely warped.

What’s the message here? If you speak to the prime minister and plead directly with him, he’ll mete out his specific type of “justice” – he will let you enjoy your illegality and profit from it.

Who believes Abela’s sob stories? We know exactly who profits from his reforms.  It’s not objectors or old men with cancer.  It’s his friends, the developers. And Robert Abela.