Mr Chetcuti talks aesthetics

It would be nice to think of the realestate developer Sandro Chetcuti as a reformed man, but really, that would be a bit of a joke. Mr Chetcuti is president of the Malta Developers Association, but beyond that, he’s quite famous in his own right.

He loves the limelight and starred in a television soap opera for a while, one of those overly dramatic things in which everybody seems forever to be frowning or crying or beating their chest in anguish. And for a while back there he was fond of lending out his Ferrari, especially if it involved television. The comic ‘Fader Gordin’ (who was anything but funny unless you had an IQ of 12) turned up to visit Joseph Muscat, then leader of the Opposition, for a Labour Party television special, driving Mr Chetcuti’s bright red car.

I was reminded of Mr Chetcuti and his car when I saw a photograph of the Jordanian man – somebody who works for the hotelier who will own ‘the American University of Malta’ – who is the registrant and administrator for the ‘university’s’ website (sole page: COMING SOON). It’s a picture of which he is proud, because he uses it for his Twitter profile. It features him wearing your typical casual outfit, leaning against the bonnet of his bright red sports car in a look-at-me pose, with a camel in the background. “Sandro of Arabia,” I thought to myself. “Truly there is a universal type, only that other one will have to borrow his camel from another developer, the one with the illegal zoo at his Monte Kristo Estate.”

Mr Chetcuti is apparently suffering anguish over the use of ODZ land at Zonqor Point for the construction of what purports to be a university campus (for “upper and mittelkless ta’ pajjizhom li mhumiex it-tip li jaqlawa u jiekluha” students, as our prime minister put it so elegantly). If he really is bothered by it, then it might be because he has noticed, like others have done, that this is more likely to be a large hotel with a campus attached than anything else. Or perhaps Mr Chetcuti and his friends just want a piece of the action, because he called on the government, whose ear he has anyway so he really didn’t need to go public with that, to find an alternative site in the area. This was for environmental reasons, he said. Oh, right.

Then yesterday he spoke about aesthetics. Yes, really. Mr Chetcuti and aesthetics don’t really mix well in the same sentence or in any other way, though perhaps what we’re looking at is one of those situations in which he’s made his stash and now wants to reinvent himself concerned with matters of a higher order, like the environment and aesthetics and such. It’s hard to believe, but it’s eminently reportable, so he gets the would-you-believe-this attention of newspapers (and this column).

He has advice for the architects who will be working on the Arab University of Zonqor Point. They should give special attention to the aesthetics and design and make sure they blend with the natural surroundings, he said. I am quite sure that Ray DeMicoli, one of the architects who is putting forward a proposal for this project (he was quoted in the newspapers), truly values Sandro Chetcuti’s advice on aesthetic harmony. But there you go.

I can’t shake off the growing perception that public life in Malta is increasingly populated by ‘characters’ rather than people, all of whom seem to have been imagined by the author of a Sicilian novel and to have stepped right off its pages. They don’t have the self-awareness or insight to understand how they come across, but then if they did, they wouldn’t be that way in the first place. Either way, there’s never a dull moment, is there. The loss of public serenity is a columnist’s gain.