Opposition leader Simon Busuttil said he would not have regularised the theft of public land by installing smart meters at the ‘illegal’ Armier boathouses and would have settled the matter without rewarding wrongdoing.
He told Times of Malta the decision was another move by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat to buy votes, which amounted to corruption. That was a style of politics the Nationalist Party would not be adopting, he said.
“This is a form of corruption; it’s buying people’s votes. I can combat Joseph Muscat by promising to be more populist than him but that’s not my way of doing politics even if it will cost me votes,” Dr Busuttil said.
He insisted the installation of smart meters in boathouses illegally built on public land sent the wrong message to law-abiding citizens. “The government’s decision rewards those who take the law into their own hands,” he said.
There are about 800 boathouses in Armier, with sources saying only about 25 per cent actually have an electricity meter. The rest either connect to their neighbours’ supply or else illegally siphon off the government’s supply to the area through street lights and other points. The same goes for water.
Dr Busuttil pointed out that the planning authority would not allow the provision of electricity to buildings not covered by permits. “So a young couple that happened to buy an unfinished apartment and suddenly discover there was something wrong with the permit end up without electricity supply but then the owner of an illegal boathouse gets electricity. This is madness,” Dr Busuttil said.
This is a form of corruption; it’s buying people’s votes
He fended off criticism that the saga of the Armier boathouses never got solved under the previous administration. Admitting the problem was “ignored” under a Nationalist administration, he said the government was going a step further than the Nationalist Party ever did by “legalising” them.
Furthermore, the way the PN did things in the past was not the way they would be done in future, Dr Busuttil said. In contrast, rather than addressing the mistakes of the past, the government was making them worse.
“Here there is a clear difference between the Opposition and the government and even if we were not perfect when we were in government, I am not here to commit the same mistakes. I’m a new leader and if we got something wrong I want to do it right,” he said.
He insisted his role was not to defend past mistakes but to provide new solutions.
Asked what he would have actually done differently to address the situation, he said he would have settled the issue “once and for all” in a manner that would not reward people who stole public land. He referred to a plan submitted to Mepa by the previous administration.
In 2005, Armier Developments Ltd, a company set up by the Armier boathouse community, submitted a development application to turn the village into an organised cluster of beach houses.
The government had proposed a similar plan in 2001, which was incorporated into the Marfa Action Plan. Following a public outcry, the project was placed on the backburner until the boathouse owners filed their own plans for the construction of 1,500 boathouses, a third being allocated to people who do not own a boathouse there.
Mepa could not implement the Marfa Action Plan because it was never approved by the Prime Minister over the years.