It's all about a date

Oh dear, my small disquisition last week on the importance of the perceptions of the Great Unwashed certainly seems to have got someone's goat. You'd think I was accusing Joseph Muscat of gross corruption or of trading in influence or some heinous crime like that, which I emphatically wasn't, so immediate and seemingly crushing was his legal chappie's response to my sally.

Actually, had my friend and colleague in real life been instructed by his client to respond to the original story with the same alacrity that mine was responded to, the whole thing might have been nipped in the bud.

Or might it not?

The whole thing, at least as far as my musing was concerned, revolves around one single, solitary, date, the date on which the Development Control Commission approved Dr Muscat's application for whatever it was for which he applied. For all Dr Paul Lia's client's bandying-about of dates on letters and such-like niceties, the fact remains incontrovertible that the application was approved on February 27, 1998, which is before, whichever way you slice, spin or type it, the Representation Expiry Date of March 2, 1998.

Clearly, then, anyone who may have wished to make representations on the application and who thought it would be safe to leave it to the last couple of days to do so would have been wasting pen and ink.

I'm not saying that any such representations could have been validly made. I'm not saying that the application was for a development that was not permissible. I'm not saying anything other than it was and remains perfectly fair for the public, or even just for me, to comment that Dr Muscat's application was, for some reason or another, processed right snappily and speedily, so much so that it was approved before the period for representations thereon had even expired.

And my corollary to that comment, that is to say that this leaves Dr Muscat in a bit of a pickle, small as it may be, given Dr Victor Scerri's reaction to being criticised in the context of his own application to Mepa, is equally valid.

As valid, in fact, as the comment I am about to make: What should Mepa's auditor, who has quite a way with words, as the emotive language he chose to adopt when reporting on Dr Scerri's application amply demonstrates, say about the efficiency demonstrated in Dr Muscat's case?

Should Joseph Falzon say that he is comfortable that the Representation Period was not respected by the DCC or should he consider this small fact to be unimportant in the greater scheme of things? Should he fret that most ordinary mortals' applications take their own sweet time to be processed while this was not and should he give vent to expressions of almost poetic timbre in expressing this concern?

I've no idea.

The problem with public perceptions is that they are so dependent on the way the public, bless it, is conditioned to perceive things. It may be a fact, for instance, that Dr Scerri's application differs not one jot from two or however many others had been successfully piloted through the shoals and reefs of Mepa's hoops: if the Voice of the People, blaring through megaphones amplified and distorted by political expediency, trumpets negatively, then negative will be the perception of the public.

Dr Scerri would not have been the only big beast of the political jungle to have a development that is, in the acronym-ridden world we inhabit, ODZ.

There are others, and they know who they are, and they, who as I say, know who they are, also know that it is politically expedient for them not to be targeted by the Protectors of the People.

On a profoundly sad note, I'd like to mark the passing of Dennis Vella, who shuffled off this moral coil as quietly as he lived in it. For all the quietness of his passing, he left an indelible mark on the world he inhabited, the world of art and, forgive me for using the word, culture in Malta. I'd known Dennis, off and on, since we were both kids in Buġibba and he was always symbolic of the importance of appreciating the better things in life. Rest peacefully, old friend.

I promised to report further on DVenue, in Xagħra. We had lunch there on Sunday and a better steak I am yet to eat in Gozo: it is a fine venue, indeed.

Continuing on nourishment, we attended a one-off, mass-catering event in Żebbuġ that technically shouldn't be commented on here, as you can't try it out. Well, you can, but you need a contact in that fine village to induct you. If you manage, it's worth a try, even only because you can indulge in some minor celebrity spotting.

Who knows, you might even spot me.

And also worth trying is Margo's Pizzeria, in Mistra, near the Palazzo Santa Rosa. They produce pizza as to the manner born (or is that manor born?) and it's a fine place for an evening with good friends, which is what we made of it.

imbocca@gmail.com, www.timesofmalta.com/blogs