From G. G. Debono
Marisa Micallef is very fortunate in having a whole page to herself in
The Malta Independent on Sunday, which allows her plenty of space to take pot shots at her critics.
Her article “City quarry, silly quarrel” (TMIS, 6 May) is very much of a parson’s egg – with some good bits and many bad bits. One cannot but wholeheartedly agree with the good bits. How true it is that Sliema and its environs cannot sustain this rate of development and that Fort Cambridge and Pender Place are waves of concrete ugliness.
But unfortunately Ms Micallef seems unable to resist being negative and patronising towards those who are trying to stem this tide of over development that is sweeping over so much of Malta. Ms Micallef tars today’s protesters with the scandalous property speculation that took place a generation ago. Among the profiteers she includes, of course, “Slimizi” and “Nationalist voters who joined in and pocketed the money”. This is particularly offensive and mostly beside the point.
Her snide remark about people throwing stones at anyone who is “doing exactly what people chose to do a generation earlier” namely, to demolish a house and live in a flat “or buy a flat where a townhouse once stood” betrays her distorted view on the matter. Equally obnoxious are her insinuations about “the people leading these protests... living in cosy Sliema flats where a townhouse once stood” and who are “on a moral high horse and snobbishly attacking the next generation who do” – all this when half of Malta lives in apartments nowadays – not by choice, but simply because they cannot afford to buy a townhouse any more.
Not as many are as guilty as Ms Micallef makes out. Surely one must distinguish between people who were obliged to sell their home for reasons unrelated to money-grubbing, on the one hand, and developers who do so for (huge) profit, on the other. A typical example of the former is old people seriously in need of money or for whom the house became too big to cope with or maintain, or whose house had become uninhabitable as a result of surrounding “development” – or even a burden because of our stupid rent laws. In any case, very few of these Slimizi actually went into business.
Thus, while it might be true that much of the initial scandalous rape of Sliema may have been due in part to greed of the residents, there were a great many cases where people had no choice but to sell their house. These were targeted by predatory developers who snapped up properties by outbidding other purchasers who wished to buy a nice old townhouse but could not match the developer’s price. Some developers are also expert at winkling out residents by making irresistible offers – or making their life hell in one way or another. Many of those who now live in flats did not “pocket thousands”, they were mostly offered one or two new flats in exchange for having their house demolished and replaced by an apartment block.
Ms Micallef’s derision of people who are objecting to over-development out-does those cynics who, until recently, called environmentalists “tree huggers”. Her insinuations about protesters, “Slimizi” and “puliti” are unpleasantly high on the Richter insult scale. Ms Micallef’s accusation of protesters indulging in dishonest nimbyism is particularly disagreeable; these people are clearly trying to preserve what is left of Malta’s heritage irrespective of where it is.
After all, objections to extension of the development zone, to a golf course at the far end of the island or to a harmful development in Mellieha or Gozo, can hardly be called nimbyism. Besides, Sliema is the worst hit area, so it is little wonder that Sliema features so prominently. If the destruction is allowed to proceed unhindered in Sliema, it will go on to spread elsewhere.
The other side of the equation is MEPA. MEPA has repeatedly caved in to big business and did not impose any standards on new buildings, thus allowing cowboy developers to make a huge profit through building second-rate apartment blocks that now blight our islands. As Ms Micallef rightly says, it is clearly the responsibility of MEPA to recognise that its policy to concentrate so much development in Sliema was wrong, that it is granting too many permits and that it should be as tough with the big as they evidently are with the small.
Unfortunately, Ms Micallef views everything in terms of money; her knee-jerk reaction when somebody sells his property for whatever reason seems to be that it was done “for the money”. Equally, most of those in control of Malta’s destiny have exceeded the limits of decency in putting money (and votes too, maybe) above everything. This will be Malta’s ultimate ruin.
The tragic truth is that, irrespective of who started this process, it has accelerated out of control. MEPA and our politicians have a lot to answer for. It is truly sad when Ms Micallef belittles the efforts of a few people who are genuinely trying to save Malta not with shrieks, as Ms Micallef sarcastically asserts, but with deeds.
G. G. Debono
ST JULIAN’S