A damning indictment of our democracy

The Villa Rosa controversy has two distinct aspects to it. One concerns the size and design of the development being proposed by developer Anton Camilleri, il-Franċiż; the other the manner by which the government chose to acquiesce to the developer’s demands for a change in the local plan.

The first issue is really and truly a moot point at this stage since the developer already has a building permit to erect residences, offices, retail outlets, a hotel and language school on the Villa Rosa site.

What the new design tries to do is concentrate the development into high-rise buildings thus freeing up more open space at ground floor level. Camilleri’s towers will not jar or stand out because Paceville has gradually transformed into Malta’s high-rise district over the years. The main concern linked to the new proposal is whether its impact on existing infrastructure will be bigger than that of the previously approved project.

But then again, it is not just the Villa Rosa development that will contribute to the added strain on existing public infrastructure in the area such as roads, electricity grid, and water and sewage systems. Just metres away from Villa Rosa, db Group has commenced work on its own residential towers and high-rise hotel. Further up the road, Paul Xuereb’s PX Tower will soon start taking shape. These are projects that still have to come on stream; others such as Mercury Towers, Portomaso and Pender Gardens are already part of the Paceville landscape.

What is more concerning for this leader is the second issue – the secrecy and willingness by which government acquiesced to the developer’s demands for a change in the local plan.

The truth is there is nothing within the current planning policy framework that prevents Camilleri from putting forward an application for the new project to replace the already approved plans. Indeed, the Environmental Impact Assessment published last year indicated that the developer was going to apply on the basis of the hotels heights policy of 2014.

The 2014 policy sets different parameters for hotel heights than those identified in the local plan thus creating a conflict situation that is open to interpretation. While the Planning Authority has approved projects on the basis of the 2014 policy, there have been instances when the court has struck down these permits on appeal because they have argued the local plans should prevail.

Within this context, the only reason the government has opened a partial review of the local plan for the Villa Rosa area is to remove one of the strongest grounds of appeal NGOs and residents can have to challenge the permit once it is issued.

Now, there is a perfectly valid argument to align local plans published back in 2006 with today’s exigencies and realities but what we have here is a piecemeal approach to what should be an all-encompassing exercise. The review was not even widened to at least incorporate the whole of Paceville but limited specifically to the Villa Rosa site and a sliver of land adjacent to it that did not originally form part of the Villa Rosa local plan.

More disconcerting is the revelation made by Times of Malta that the objectives of the review published by the Planning Authority were practically lifted from a presentation prepared by the developer’s architects.

It is pretty obvious what happened here: The developer met the government – read the Prime Minister and the Planning Minister – to give them a rundown of his plans and presented them with a list of demands to avoid any legal complications down the line. The government nodded and instead of having a public authority issuing objectives it deems are in the best interest of the community, we now have the developer’s demands given the veneer of officialdom by the PA.

To add insult to injury, the Prime Minister has refused to confirm whether he personally met Anton Camilleri and if so, who was present at the meeting and what was discussed. If Robert Abela believes that what his government is doing is right, why all the secrecy?

It is this accommodating attitude towards developers by politicians like Abela and his counterpart Bernard Grech, who also refused to say whether he met Camilleri, that rubs people the wrong way.

When non-governmental organisations and activist groups of any nature protest and make demands, the retort by government apologists is ‘who are these non-elected people making demands and seeking to get their way?’. Somehow, this question is very rarely posed to developers, who are also unelected and who make demands. The only difference between the two is that politicians are more willing to sit down and enjoy the company of those who have deep pockets. And this is a damning indictment of our democracy.