The funny side of outrage

Kurt Burach* bought a property in Malta several years ago. He was told it was subject to a ground rent of Lm50 a year and that the lease (cens) would expire after 20 years. The matter had been clear in the deed as in the reduced price he paid.

In 2002, his neighbour's lease expired and, to his immense surprise, Kurt discovered that his neighbour, being a Maltese citizen, was entitled to renew his lease for a further 40 years; the owner's objection being overruled by the Housing (Decontrol) Ordinance as amended in 1979. It was quite baffling since Kurt's neighbour's title deed clearly stipulated the agreement with the owners, the expiry date being unequivocally recorded in a public deed. His neighbour was overjoyed to have the rent raised from Lm20 per year to Lm 40 per year. He no longer needed the property but was now free to sell it for a very fat profit.

One year later, Kurt's other neighbour also faced the expiry of his lease but this time the owners put up a forceful resistance. The matter ended up in court and Kurt's second neighbour lost. It was even more baffling. Then somebody explained that the 1979 law had been as poorly drafted as it had been thought out. Where the lease was held from an owner who himself held the property on perpetual lease, the infernal mechanism of the 1979 law did not engage.

It was only last Wednesday that Kurt discovered that a judgement of the court of appeal, describing the unconstitutionality of the law and the fact that it did not apply in the case of Kurt's second neighbour, was to be overturned by a special amendment to the law. Kurt turned on his computer and checked out Bill 090 before Parliament.

Up to that point he had followed up the matter out of curiosity. He had been quite happy to face eviction on termination of the lease on his own house in the somewhat distant future. It was only on close scrutiny that he discovered that the law did not apply to him. It was not surprising that the original law and its 1979 amendments reserved its benefits only for Maltese citizens. He was piqued that the 2007 amendments did so too.

It irked him that the 2007 amendment flew in the face of the simple and well known fact that Malta had joined the EU in 2004. He did not want to cheat the owner of the lease, he just did not want to be discriminated against.

Asking around, he was told not to worry too much about the issue; it was just another bit of political gymnastics. The government was fully aware that it would lose hands down whenever anybody contested the new law, if not in a Maltese court, certainly in the European Court of Justice. This was just an electoral game the government was playing. It would lose on the illegal extension of development zones and it would lose on its concessions to hunters. It would also lose on this latest bit of tomfoolery, but only after the general election.

After the election they would all be brought back down to earth but the Nationalists' hope to have won and hope to fudge their way out of the mess somehow. They control enough of the media to pull off any stunt and their archenemies, Labour, are sure to keep mum on an issue such as this.

Kurt began to think of Mr Bugeja* to whom he paid the lease money once a year. He was a dear old man who had explained that the rent received did not mean very much to him but that he was glad to think that his children or grandchildren would have the property in freehold some time in the future.

Inevitably he began to think of his neighbours. How could they even contemplate cheating the owners of their houses of their properties? The fact that the law aided and abetted them was of little consequence. The freehold value of any house in Malta is simply amazing. It is always in the tens of thousands. How could anybody pocket such an asset and face his victims in the street?

He was completely baffled how any government could defend such an evidently immoral act.

The cheated owners could be Nationalist or Labourite, they could be the greatest supporters of the Nationalist Party and still the properties they had waited to recover for 40 or 50 years would be snatched from their grasp.

The beneficiaries benefited in an equally arbitrary manner. Why should some ill-fated individual bear their burden and not the state?

Nobody knew and nobody asked. What was clear was that they stood to gain significantly if the law went through. They would have a house for next to nothing. Their personal interests were suddenly channelled into re-electing the Nationalist government, which had allowed them such a windfall. Perhaps it was no accident that the law was amended on the eve of an election.

It was at that point that Kurt began to see the funny side. He lived in a Nationalist area and he had heard snippets of Malta' political history. Labour had been pretty grim in the past and many people were still allergic to the prospect of another Labour government. Why? Because it was a time of arbitrary government? If Alfred Sant was elected this time around there would be requisitions and nationalisations, vindictiveness and violence. They heard it all the time on Net TV.

It made him laugh out loud. These people were afraid of Labour but it was the Nationalist government that was acting like old Labour, expropriating private property without compensation and in a completely arbitrary manner. Labour could not do much worse than the Nationalists were doing already in tacit agreement with them.

The election would come and go. Some people would be fooled, others not. Some would find out that they had been cheated and some would not discover it until after the case against the government had been won by others in the same predicament. That too was funny: Some people would vote PN without realising that the PN had appointed heirs other than themselves to inherit their parents' estate. It's not that many people are dopey, it's just that the least possible publicity had been given to this amazing, galactic policy U-turn by the Nationalist government.

Soon it will become too much for Mr Burach. He may not see the funny side forever. He will decide that this sort of nonsense is for the Maltese to sort out for themselves; that he should find a buyer for his property and move to somewhere safe from arbitrary government and electoral gymnasts. He may not be alone.

(*All names in this article refer to fictitious characters, the rest, sadly, is our reality.)

Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party.

www.alternattiva.org.mt, www.adgozo.com