Jungle Rules and total disregard for the environment and planning are back in full swing at the Planning authority. Johann Buttigieg has been reinstated as Executive Chairman and other Labour Party appointees are also being brought back. Elizabeth Ellul who was infamous for approving developments in the Outside-Development-Zone, and resigned over conflicts of interests, has been reinstated once again to the Planning Authority. She will be chairing a new development commission on Gozo to speed-u pending development applications.
With these appointments, the Labour government is signaling its intent to increase the rate of planning permits while also exerting control over the Planning Commission to facilitate deals for its donors. A case in point was DB’s project on the former Institute of Tourism Studies site, in which Johann Buttigieg commissioned a private jet to transport board member Jacqueline Gili from Sicily to Malta to vote in favor of the project. Johann Buttigieg even engaged in insider property dealings himself with the likes of Yorgen Fenech.
Since archeology is the recent headline trend, it may be relevant to ask Johann Grech how many archeological sites he destroyed as Executive Chairman of the Planning Authority. Malta lost hundreds of archeological sites during Joseph Muscat’s Jungle Rules period where construction development was prioritised over everything else and many of these sites and archeological objects have also been recorded – before being buried in cement. The practice is still ongoing until this day because the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage only used its executive power to save archeological sites in exceptional circumstances with most of the cases giving absolute leeway to the property developers.
The Superintendence of Cultural Heritage was never meant to follow a Jungle Rules construction-policy. It was supposed to independently seek to safeguard national heritage in the interest of the public, but Johann Buttigieg simply rolled over everything without any care in the world.
I can feel Labour’s hypocrisy about its enthusiasm for archaeology from thousands of miles away.
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Historian and Publisher
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