Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1484591
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 20 NOVEMBER 2022 OPINION 10 Raphael Vassallo OPINION And for its next trick, the PA will make ODZ disappear… forever! OUT of curiosity: has TVM's online news portal decided to compete with Bloomberg, for coming up with the most 'fa- mously bizarre and inscrutable headlines' in media history? If so, I feel I have to warn the national broadcaster that it faces some pretty serious com- petition. After all, Bloomberg enjoys a much-cherished rep- utation, for teasing its readers with spectacularly mind-bog- gling headlines – such as, for instance: • 'Feeding Naked Chef's Chickens Killing Biggest Bond Rally' • 'Harvard Women Freed From Urinal 50 Years Af- ter First Female MBA' • 'DSM's Flirt With Red Hot Mamas Cuts Investor Love for Plastics', and (my own personal favourite) • 'Giraffe Mulling Suicide, as Terrorists Chant in Cairo' Indeed, Bloomberg's pen- chant for such gobbledygook is so widely-known, it has even inspired a blog called 'Strange Bloomberg Headlines' (which helpfully explains that: "The headlines usually make sense once you've read the article…") But still: 'tvm.news.mt' got off to a flying start, in this race towards the truly bizarre and incomprehensible. This, for in- stance, was how it reported a recent announcement by the Planning Authority, about an imminent revision of the coun- try's planning and development regulations [Note: and if I feel compelled to explain, from now, what the news story was actually about … well, it's be- cause you'd never have guessed, just from the headline.] 'Proposals to marginally am- plify the lack of conformity on development regulations'… Huh? Who? What? Where? Honestly, though… what is any of that even supposed to mean, anyway? Well: like that blog had sug- gested earlier, it does make a tiny bit more sense when you read the rest of the article. And the more you read AROUND this particularly story: you'll find that it might actually make even more sense, than TVM it- self originally intended. So let's take a closer look. The first thing we are told is that: "The Government has request- ed the Planning Authority to propose amendments to Reg- ulations on the Regularisation of Existing Development"; then a little further down: "The Au- thority is now proposing to amend the regulations so that existing unsanctioned and not in conformity developments […] may also be considered for regularisation"; and lastly: "the regularisation of developments with an existing enforcement notice by the Authority before 2016." In other words: the Planning Authority has just announced that it fully intends to crum- ble under the pressure of some 19,500 private land-owners, who: a) own properties that are par- tially – and illegally - developed on ODZ land; b) have successfully lobbied with government to extend the (already contentious) 2016 Lo- cal Plans revision, to also cover their own, 'not-in-conformity' properties, and; c) would – if these amend- ments go through - be able to safely ignore any existing PA enforcement notices, regarding their illegal developments. Naturally, the State broadcast- er chose to word all that slightly differently – and fair enough; it's an editorial decision, at the end of the day - but it's all un- deniably there (at least, once you get past all the barricades of sheer gobbledygook, that were clearly designed to disguise it). What we are NOT told, on the other hand, is… well, all the details that would later emerge from the statements of NGOs such as Flimkien ghal Ambjent Ahjar: > That the Planning Author- ity itself had cited, as its main justification for these amend- ments, that: "certain property owners are not able to place on the market, or acquire a bank loan for their property, due to an irregularity which is non sanctionable, and took place before 2016." (Prompting FAA's Astrid Vella to retort, quite justifiably, that: "Since when is it the Planning Author- ity's remit to help private busi- nesses in the property market? Its function is to ensure that developers fall in line with pol- icies meant to safeguard the environment…") > At just 14 days, the con- sultations period was far too short to conform with with either the Aarhus Convention, or European Union transpar- ency rules (or any of the other international conventions that Maltese governments are al- ways so eager to ratify… only to routinely infringe, at every opportunity.) > And above all, that a plan- ning policy overhaul of this magnitude – which would ef- fectively consign the entire con- cept of ODZ (not to mention 'enforcement orders') to the Planning Authority scrapheap, once and for all - must, by in- ternational law, be subject to a 'Strategic Environmental As- sessment', at minimum. Now: if I place such emphasis on the last of those considera- tions, it is not so much because Malta can be seen to be – once again – in breach of Europe's most basic environmental pro- tection laws (not to mention its own). No, it's more because the need for an SEA also highlights the sheer scale of this latest revision of Local Plans: which portends, among other things, the instantaneous, retro-active sanctioning of anywhere up to 19,500 illegal developments[!], all of which encroach upon ODZ areas. Leaving aside all the other questions that automatical- ly arise: like, um, who actual- ly owns all those illegally-de- veloped properties, anyway? Who stands to benefit most, from this extraordinarily gen- erous 'blanket amnesty'? And is there is any truth to the on- going rumours, that among the 19,500 applicants are certain 'high-ranking government offi- cials'…? Even without any of that, how- ever: these proposed amend- ments still constitute the single largest extension of the building zones, since the infamous 2006 'rationalisation scheme' (and its more recent 'revision' in 2016.) And yet: how did that TVM headline go again? 'Proposals to MARGINALLY [my empha- sis] AMPLIFY THE LACK OF CONFORMITY [my emphasis, again] on development regula- tions'… See what I mean, about 'mak- ing more sense' than the news portal originally intended? For starters, the word 'marginally' is uncomfortably reminiscent of former Prime Minister Law- rence Gonzi's own justification, for originally extending the de- velopment boundaries back in 2006. (Remember? He had ar- gued that 'people were caught up in a legal anomaly'; and that