Eleven youth and student organisations have jointly called for Johann Buttigieg to resign or be removed as head of the Planning Authority following the publication of his exchanges with Yorgen Fenech.The organisations, brought together by Front Żgħażagħ għall-Ambjent (FŻA), wrote to Prime Minister Robert Abela and Infrastructure, Planning and Employment Minister Jonathan Attard today, arguing that Buttigieg’s position has become “untenable”.Their intervention comes five days after Times of Malta published in full exchanges dating back to 2019 between Buttigieg and Fenech.According to the organisations, the messages show Buttigieg discussing Fenech’s planning matters with him and telling the businessman that he would go into business with him “wherever he wished”.They also pointed towards exchanges in which Buttigieg allegedly disclosed information concerning another developer’s project on the same day it appeared before the Planning Authority board.“A regulator who offers his partnership to a businessman he was appointed to regulate has shown whom he serves,” the organisations said. “And it is not the public.”The groups also challenged Abela’s response that the messages had already been in the public domain for years and revealed nothing new.They noted that parts of the correspondence had been reported in 2021 but argued that the exchanges were only published in full last week.“Even if every word had been known since 2021, time does not wash conduct of this kind clean,” they said.The organisations also turned their attention towards Buttigieg’s return to the top of the Planning Authority in January 2025.“If the Government knew, it must explain why it reappointed him. If it did not know enough to judge them, it must explain how he was vetted. There is no third answer.”FŻA Chairperson Bernard Galea said the controversy goes beyond disagreements over development and planning policy.“Eleven organisations representing students across every faculty have signed this letter, which tells you that this is not a dispute about development,” Galea said.“It is about whether public office in this country is held in trust for the people or for the most powerful among them.”The organisations said young people have a particular stake in the way Malta’s planning system operates, describing themselves as the generations who will “live in the buildings this Authority permits, walk the streets it shapes and look out on the land whose development it sanctions”.They argued that efforts to reform Malta’s planning system cannot be credible while Buttigieg remains at the helm of the authority.“Serious reform of the planning system begins with the people entrusted to run it,” they said.The letter was signed by FŻA, KSU, SDM, Students for Liberty, JEF Malta, SACES, GħST, ESA, HoASA, MIRSA and CASA.“Mr Buttigieg cannot remain at the head of the Planning Authority,” the letter concluded, “and a Government that leaves him there has made his conduct its own.”What do you make of this?•