This Has Gone Too Far. Heads Must Roll At The Planning Authority Over This Private Jet Obscenity
Left: The PA board debating the Pembroke high-rise last week, Right: A photomontage of the proposed project
Thousands of people had objected to the db Group’s high-rise project in Pembroke and hundreds had taken the time to physically turn up and make their voices heard at last week’s Planning Authority’s public board meeting.
Yet tonight’s shocking revelation gives credit to the theories that this was all one big farce from the get-go.
Newsbook reported that PA board member Jacqueline Gili, who was appointed to the board by the Finance Ministry, was flown in from a family holiday in Sicily by private jet to attend the meeting. The news website’s sources estimated this manoeuvre to have cost as much as €15,000.
Gili remained silent throughout the meeting and eventually voted along with nine other members in favour of the project, outvoting the four critics.
The Planning Authority actually admitted that this was the case.
“The Authority made arrangements to ensure that all members are present for this board sitting,” a PA spokesperson told Newsbook. “In view that Gili was abroad on a vacation, instead of requesting her to cancel her vacation and reimburse her family’s holiday, the Planning Authority made the necessary arrangements for her to be present and then continue with her vacation with the family.”
PA board member Jacqueline Gli
Wait, what?
If Gili was on holiday, then surely the meeting could have proceeded without her. After all, it is very rare for all PA board members to be present for a vote and research conducted by The Times of Malta shows Gili herself was absent for 29 out of 75 votes last year.
Neither can the PA argue that a full house was necessary because this was a major project that would have a long-lasting impact on the surroundings. A few years ago, Environment Authority chairman Victor Axiak was absent from a Planning Authority vote on the Townsquare high-rise in Sliema. In that case, Axiak’s vote was critical as the project passed by a single vote and indeed the Environment Authority chairman said later on that he would have “crawled to the meeting against his cardiologist’s advice” had he known his vote would have made such a big difference. Nobody wheeled him in that time.
So what’s so different now? Newsbook’s source said that Gili was flown in to Malta “to appease those who wanted the project approved that the vote would pass”.
If this is true (db has not yet confirmed or denied whether the company was aware of the move by the PA) then it would prove beyond doubt that the PA is nothing but a farce, a mere rubber stamp to appease the powers that be.
This has gone way too far. Someone at the top of the Planning Authority must lose their job for allowing a supposedly independent authority to be manipulated like this.
What do you make of this story?
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