Expropriation is a measure of last resort

Published: June 26, 2015 at 11:55pm
Marco Gaffarena

Marco Gaffarena

I have received the following email, which makes a very clear point.

I have listened to and read a lot about the Gaffarena issue, and what surprises me (unless I missed something along the way) is that nobody has pointed to what I believe is the crux of the matter, and what makes it so obviously shady

My understanding is that if the government decides/concludes that a property has a ‘public purpose’ then it has the power to expropriate (with due compensation).

For the purposes of my argument I have to assume that there indeed is indeed a justifiable public purpose. Then why does the government expropriate a quarter of the property and not the whole?

What could be a justifiable public purpose to expropriate only a (undivided) quarter of a property?

If there is a justifiable public purpose then expropriate the whole – that would have meant leaving Marco Gaffarena out of the expropriation deal on at least 3/4 of the property.

The fact that the expropriation is being done piecemeal certainly goes against the spirit of the law, but more importantly indicates in no uncertain manner that the deal was being done to accommodate an individual.

The writer of this email, who I know, is completely correct. The law on expropriation is there as a means of last resort when the government has absolutely no alternative: to expropriate land, for example, that lies in the path of an essential public road.

Providing the Building Industry Consultative Council with offices is not a public purpose that justifies expropriation. We have to start from that point.

The Building Industry Consultative Council can rent other offices or use any one of a number of other buildings which the government owns already.

So the expropriation is in itself highly abusive, even if it were not being done piecemeal.

But as the writer of this email points out, when buildings are expropriated, the whole building is expropriated, and not bits of it on an ad hoc basis. The government does not even need to track down the individual owners: it can simply publish a notice that X building is to be expropriated and then go ahead.

Piecemeal expropriation goes against the spirit of the law because it makes no sense: you either need the building pressingly enough to expropriate it, or you don’t.

It couldn’t be more obvious that the Government Property Division – which we must remember is in the prime minister’s portfolio with Michael Falzon reporting to him – has struck a corrupt deal with Marco Gaffarena to ‘expropriate’ – aka buy – bits of that house on Old Mint Street as and when he first buys them himself.

They’re waiting for Gaffarena to buy the various bits, otherwise they would simply have issued an expropriation order for the whole thing.

And that would be bad in a different way, because the expropriation law is not there to provide quangos with office buildings.