Reinventing Mepa or just a charade?

Only time will tell whether the Malta Environment and Planning Authority 'reform' will either serve to reinvent Mepa or else end up as just another political charade.

There were two major driving forces behind the inclusion of Mepa reform in the PN's electoral programme. These were the perceived 'slowness' in the processing of certain applications and Mepa's perceived rigidity with the common citizen, and a number of controversial decisions supposedly taken by authority.

While the government tried to please two different constituencies - those who took part in pro-environment protests from 2006 to 2008 on the one hand, and on the other, people who had 'hang-ups' about Mepa, including those who had built properties illegally and were refused sanctioning - Mepa (no doubt with more than a governmental green light) issued a number of controversial permits.

The Mepa auditor, whose competence and integrity were only ever rubbished by those with not-so-hidden agendas, summarised the across-the-board sense of frustration when he recently went on record as saying that we might as well have reverted back to the previous PAPB system - since the result would be the same.

I am confident that he did not say this out of any anti-Mepa bias but rather that he had had more than his fill of a dire situation. Such as the authority and the DCCs frequently overturning decisions of the Planning Directorate without sound planning reasons for doing so, as required by the Development Planning Act, and approving developments contrary to official policies without much regard for environmental considerations.

With this in mind I cannot but agree with the Parliamentary Secretary responsible for Mepa reform, Mario de Marco, that the law is not the reform and that the reform must be the whole process.

But will it happen? Is there enough genuine political commitment on the government's part to see it through, or is it case of just going through the motions to be able to claim that another manifesto pledge has been fulfilled?

I say so because the government only recently ignored calls by the Mepa auditor for a formal commission of inquiry under the Inquiries Act to investigate in detail the dubious operations of the DCC on certain questionable issues. Can government really absolve itself of sins committed in the recent past, when a lot of irregularities continued to prevail not only since the Prime Minister assumed political responsibility for Mepa but also during the Mepa reform process itself?

Eurobarometer has recently revealed that a staggering 95 per cent perceived corruption as a major problem in Malta and that 73 per cent consider abuse to be widespread in the granting of local building permits. This shows that rather than an institutional reform, it all boils down to people, rather than policies or structures.

This explains why Labour wants the proposed parliamentary environment and development review committee to become a fully-fledged scrutiny committee which, apart from probing policies, can also scrutinise all those appointed on such boards, and to ensure, through regular declarations of assets, that they do not abuse the power they wield or change their lifestyle as a result of their position.

When the Prime Minister expressed his disagreement with a magistrate's decision over a case related to a Mepa issue; when the Mepa auditor was rapped publicly by both the Prime Minister and the Mepa chairman; when NGO leaders were publicly attacked even in the independent media (not this newspaper); and when de Marco himself said the proposed changes are not meant to reflect badly on those who have served on DCC boards, one begins to question the true sense of commitment for real and radical change.

Even more importantly, the true litmus test will be to ask whether a 'reformed' authority will have avoided the recent and current batch of Mepa scandals. Anything short of this will show that the whole game is a charade, spurred by expediency.

The PL is committed through its soon-to-be-announced proposed amendments to ensure that change will be for real and that through two separate authorities - as is EU best practice in many member states - the environmental and development arms can and will develop into a more effective, fairer and speedier set of mechanisms.

brincat.leo@gmail.com

www.leobrincat.com

Mr Brincat is Labour Party spokesman for the environment, sustainable development and climate change.