Abela ‘shocked’ by developer’s boast as Gozo tower row erupts

Robert Abela ‘shocked’ to hear Alex Borg’s comments on towers in Gozo
By Hot Malta Newsroom

VALLETTA – Prime Minister Robert Abela has declared himself “genuinely shocked” after Gozo Minister Clint Camilleri read aloud, in Cabinet, a private WhatsApp voice-note in which developer Alex Borg boasts that “every crane in Gozo is mine” and jokes that “the island will soon look like a hedgehog with all those towers.”
The remark, recorded last month and leaked to Times of Malta on Tuesday, has detonated across the two islands like a festa petard, reopening the perennial wound of over-development in Malta’s sleepy sister isle and exposing the rift between Labour’s grassroots and its big-donor class.

Speaking to reporters on the steps of Castille, Abela said he had “no prior warning” of the audio and insisted that “no one—not Alex Borg, not anyone—is bigger than the national interest.”
Yet the timing could hardly be worse. The government is already under fire for a fast-track permit granted to Borg’s Ta’ Muxi project in Xewkija: two 16-storey towers that would dwarf the village church dome and cast afternoon shadows across the square where elderly men still play briscola under the jacarandas.

Gozo, population 31,000, has seen more new residential units approved in the last five years than in the previous twenty. Locals joke—darkly—that the ferry to Mġarr should start charging by the crane. But the humour masks anxiety. Traditional farmhouses are being snapped up by speculators, their limestone walls gutted to make way for plunge-pool rooftops marketed to digital nomads. Rents in Victoria have doubled since 2019; young Gozitans increasingly migrate to Malta or abroad, accelerating the very demographic decline the government says the towers are meant to reverse.

“Alex Borg’s voice-note is the smoking gun we’ve been waiting for,” said Sandra Depasquale, spokesperson for Moviment Graffitti, which last weekend draped a 20-metre banner from the Citadel reading “Cranes ≠ Community”. “It proves what we’ve always claimed: Gozo is being treated as a Monopoly board for a handful of tycoons.”

Borg, 38, built his first apartment block at 24 after converting his father’s small construction yard into a development empire. He is not shy about his success—his Instagram feed is a carousel of champagne toasts, helicopter commutes and foundation-stone selfies. Until yesterday he enjoyed cosy access to the highest echelons of power: he accompanied Abela on a 2021 trade mission to Dubai and donated €50,000 to Labour’s 2022 election war chest. In the leaked audio he laughs that “a quick call to the ministry” can solve any planning snag.

The fallout has been swift. By Wednesday evening, #CraneHog had overtaken #Eurovision as Malta’s top Twitter trend, and a satirical TikTok super-imposing Borg’s face onto a hedgehog racked up 300,000 views. More damagingly, three backbench Labour MPs from Gozo—all facing re-election in 2027—have publicly urged a moratorium on high-rise outside the existing Mġarr harbour zone. One of them, Maria Farrugia, told NET TV that “if we concrete every field, we’ll have nothing left to sell but concrete.”

The Nationalist Party, sensing blood, has tabled an urgent motion in Parliament demanding publication of all correspondence between Borg’s ABC Developments and the Planning Authority. PN leader Bernard Grech toured Xewkija on Thursday morning, posing for photos with villagers serving ftira and insisting that “Gozo’s soul is not for sale.” Even President Myriam Spiteri Debono, usually above the fray, issued a rare statement reminding stakeholders that “the Maltese Islands’ cultural landscape is a UNESCO-tentative asset we hold in trust.”

Cultural guardians fear the erosion of Gozo’s unique identity. Professor Arnold Cassar, anthropologist at the University of Malta, points out that the island’s terraced fields, dry-stone walls and baroque parishes have survived Phoenicians, Romans and Napoleon, “but they may not survive the crane”. “Gozo has always been Malta’s antidote to frenzy,” Cassar said. “If it becomes a smaller Malta, we lose the yin to our yang.”

Business leaders are split. The Malta Developers Association warned that “demonising entrepreneurs scares away the investment that keeps Gozitan youths in jobs,” while the Gozo Tourism Association countered that boutique farmhouses generate €120 million annually—more than high-rise ever could. Hoteliers worry that postcard views of church spires will be replaced by glass balconies, deterring the very tourists the towers claim to house.

Abela now finds himself squeezed between the electorate’s green awakening and a cash-flush construction lobby that bankrolls campaigns. Sources inside Castille say the Prime Minister has ordered an internal audit of all pending Gozo high-rise applications and instructed Clint Camilleri to draft a “Gozo Skyline Policy” within 60 days. Whether that calms the storm—or merely parks it until the next voice-note—will determine if Labour can retain its historic Gozo majority.

Meanwhile, villagers are planning a silent candle-lit march from the Xewkija rotunda to the Ta’ Muxi site on Sunday evening, organisers urging participants to bring nothing but “a candle and a love for our island”. In the leaked audio, Borg scoffs that “protesters will move on; concrete is forever.” This time, Gozitans say, they intend to prove him wrong.