A court decision to the effect that the owners of a small number of caravans placed practically on the water’s edge in Little Armier lacked legal title is the latest episode of an interminable Maltese soap opera that has been going on for years and seems to be without an end in sight.
The lack of support from my then Cabinet colleagues – let alone the then backbench and the opposition – was overwhelming
The bizarre nature of the situation is evident from the fact that the court case in question was not instituted by the government, but by the occupants themselves after they challenged an eviction order made by the Commissioner of Lands.
Their argument that they were entitled to make use of their ‘structures’ in virtue of a 2003 ‘agreement’ with the government was not accepted by the court that concluded that this ‘agreement’ was not tantamount to the granting of a legal title of sorts.
The background and long history of this never-ending soap opera must be the only justification why this obvious court judgment sentence was given front page treatment in newspapers.
The claim was just cheeky but this soap opera is so replete with cheek that a new word must be coined to mean unlimited cheek of the incredible kind. How about ‘doing an Armier’?
Armier is an interesting case study of what happens when problems are not nipped in the bud. I am sure that the first structures – dubbed boathouses when they were nothing of the sort – were erected by a few individuals seeking a place where they could spend a few tranquil summer days. That they had no right to take over a piece of public land and act as if it was their own does not seem to have been an issue.
What followed was astonishing. Someone ‘took over’ a large chunk of public land in the Little Armier area and divided it into ‘plots’ fronting ‘roads’ that were eventually even given (unofficial) names.
The ‘plots’ were then built and ‘sold’ to individuals who over time pretended to be the rightful owners of these structures built illegally on public land. The thing just grew and grew as if it had a life of its own until now nobody seems able to control this shenanigan.
When the Structure Plan was drawn up in 1990, it called for the demolition of these illegal structures. The Structure Plan was duly approved by Parliament but the demolition of these structures never took place. As Minister for the Environment after the 1992 election, I did make an attempt at it. I figured that another election was five years away and that was therefore the right time to do it. This attempt was recently described by a journalist as a ‘botched’ one. He is right, of course.
The truth is that when I tried to do something about the obvious sore, I was left to burn my fingers alone.
The lack of support from my then Cabinet colleagues – let alone the then backbench and the opposition – was overwhelming. Perhaps I was naïve but the truth is that I was slowly learning that votes come before principles.
At some juncture, the Armier ‘boathouse owners’ had even met me to put forward their case and determine their demands.
During this meeting someone argued that they had been recognised by the government as they had been provided with a water and electricity supply for which the then Water Works Department regularly sent them consumption bills. I said that this did not legalise what they did, but my mind clicked.
I hit on the idea that water and electricity supply should not be provided to any building not covered by the necessary permits. My Cabinet colleagues agreed and I issued a circular to that effect. Eventually it became part of the land of the law.
Today, I almost rue the decision. The simple idea became a bureaucratic mess with somebody extending it to mean that water and electricity were to be denied to any building that is not in strict conformity with all the conditions of a permit. One should appreciate that conditions attached to permits have in the meantime bloated into a gargantuan clutter. This is the story of the ‘invention’ of the compliance certificate required for the provision of water and electricity.
Yet again, a simple idea went berserk with everybody elaborating and complicating it. Today, one needs a compliance certificate in the case of buildings that were built before building permits existed and it is denied if in the building there is a small inconsequential difference from the approved drawings of the Mepa permit.
The process also gave me the opportunity to see an economic truism at work: invent a rule, create a market.
Overcoming bureaucracy in the issue of compliance certificates even made it to the recent Labour and Nationalist electoral programmes.
This is how our society evolves. The wish of a small man to have a few tranquil days at sea develops into a fully-fledged illegal holiday resort. The simple wish of a minister to restore a modicum of order develops into a big uncontrollable bureaucratic monster.
This is also the way the cookie crumbles, of course.
micfal@maltanet.net