The Metropolis tower that’s still a crater in Gzira two years after Muscat’s big ceremony

On 6 April 2015, just before a big round of local council elections, Prime Minister Muscat summoned the press and the television cameras to a big ceremony next to a large hole in the ground in Gzira, which for many years had been left undealt with after plans for a tower of flats failed.

The Prime Minister stood there with the Libyan magnate Husni Bey, who had bought the land, and beneath large media screens gave the gathered reporters a fancy and self-serving spiel about how the tower would now be built, because he’s in government and he works miracles. Or words to that effect. Meanwhile, Husni Bey smirked.

Then a crane was mobilised before the cameras, to haul into place a ceremonial stone bearing a plaque on which was inscribed the immortal words:

DIN L-EWWEL GEBLA TQIEGHDET ILLUM 6 TA’ APRIL 2015 FIL PRESENZA TA’ JOSEPH MUSCAT, PRIM MINISTRU TA’ MALTA

METROPOLIS PLAZA
HB GROUP

Two days later, on 8 April, the crane quietly returned with a couple of labourers and hauled away the ceremonial stone and plaque.

It had all been done just for the cameras, a political stunt with the cooperation of Husni Bey, who probably needs more than a few favours from Muscat.

Two years later, the large crater is still a large crater, and journalists and politicians have significantly failed to molest the Prime Minister on the matter of his lies that night of 6 April 2015. Both he and Husni Bey knew that the work was not going to begin on that site – that’s exactly why they removed the ceremonial stone just 36 hours later.

6 April 2015: the set-up for the big press ceremony later that evening

8 April 2015: the ceremonial stone is gone already.