Where will the buck stop over farmhouse permit, Muscat asks

The controversy about his farmhouse in Baħrija did not end when Victor Scerri resigned as president of the Nationalist Party, Labour leader Joseph Muscat said yesterday, wondering who would assume responsibility for the whole affair.

"Unless (Lawrence) Gonzi says who will be shouldering political responsibility, he will be undermining the proposed Mepa reform," he said, adding that the Prime Minister was doing nothing in the face of this "scandal".

"Dr Scerri's resignation means very little. I would like to see who will assume political responsibility, especially in view of the auditor's report," he said when interviewed by One journalist Aleander Balzan.

He was referring to the Mepa audit report about the farmhouse permit. Over a span of nine years, beginning in 2000, Dr Scerri was given permission to demolish the farmhouse in an area outside development zones and rebuild it, extending it by a third in the process. The audit report concludes that the last permit given in a series of four was illegal.

The planning authority has committed itself to revoke the permit. However, Dr Muscat said this was not enough and asked who would carry the political responsibility for the mistake, whether the Prime Minister, Minister George Pullicino, who was previously responsible for the planning authority, or Nationalist MP Philip Mifsud who was one of the board members who approved the permit.

He also took exception to the fact that an important file belonging to this case had gone missing. The matter was highlighted in the audit report. "I would like to know who last saw this file and when. I am worried that crucial evidence has disappeared," he said.

Dr Muscat said the report threw a very bad light on the Malta Environment and Planning Authority, which he described as rotten from the inside.

He said Dr Gonzi's proposals for changes within the authority were a vote of no confidence in Mepa adding that the proposed reform was a piecemeal solution that lacked vision.

He accused Dr Gonzi of lacking credibility when speaking about zero tolerance with regard to permits in outside development zones when it was known that he changed the zoning allowing Mepa to issue numerous permits before last year's general election.