Labour government gives John Dalli full development permission in Outside Development Zone

John Dalli applied for full development permission for his ‘farmhouse’ near Girgenti in February last year.

The building is in an Outside Development Zone (ODZ).

Permission was granted three months later, in May.

Much of the development took place before he applied, so the permit is actually not a permit so much as a retrospective sanction.

In 2008, Dalli had applied for, and got, restricted development permission in this ODZ. He was a cabinet minister at the time. This was around the time that the Labour Party and Astrid Vella and her FAA were leading marches with megaphones and placards on a much smaller building in Fawwara, which was owned by the then Nationalist Party president Victor Scerri. But they didn’t bother about John Dalli’s.

In 2002, WHEN HE WAS A CABINET MINISTER, the MEPA issued an enforcement notice against John Dalli for this illegal development. The cabinet minister was listed on the enforcement notice as ‘contravenor’.

His breach is given as: Demolition of existing building, alterations and additions and further excavations without permit.

The subject was briefly covered in the newspapers at the time, but Dalli was not made to resign by Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami. In fact, he contested the party leadership election two years later, confident that he would win.

Shortly afterwards, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi – who beat him to the leadership (with a fall-out that would devolve into still-seething paranoia and malice) – forced his resignation when he was discovered to have been buying flight tickets for travel on official business, when he was Foreign Minister, from his daughter’s travel agency.

You can see a behavioural pattern here and as we know now, it only got much worse. Damn shame the man wasn’t stamped on at the start.

The other Dallis, Patrick and Helena, are probably seething with fury at all the press attention on their farmhouse and its MEPA infringements, when John Dalli’s bumper ‘ghorfa’ has gone past unnoticed until published here.

Now Joseph Muscat and his train-bearer Robert Musumeci will emerge to say that there is nothing illegal about it because John Dalli has full development permission from the MEPA. And neither of them knows or acknowledges the distinction between wrong/right and legal/illegal.

The point is – how and why did John Dalli get full development permission for his massive ‘farmhouse’ in an Outside Development Zone, and why did he wait until 2014 and a Labour government to apply when he has had that place for years?