Gatt throws accusations back at the opposition

Public Investments Minister Austin Gatt yesterday denied Opposition accusations of having attempted to bypass Parliament in the Maltacom privatisation agreement or having ever implied so in remarks he made in Parliament.

He tabled documents in the House showing that the Maltacom agreement included clauses that the transfer of a site at Qawra and other properties between the company and the government was subject to Parliamentary approval. He also tabled a Labour Cabinet memo dated January 1998 when Labour ministers proposed that the transfer of a Qawra site to the then Telemalta could take place through a procedure that would "obviate the need for a parliamentary resolution".

Speaking in the House during the debate on a no-confidence motion, Dr Gatt said this debate centred on the long-standing practice followed for the transfer of government properties and comments he made in the House on May 31.

In most cases, he said, the practice was for such property transfers to take place after approval of a parliamentary resolution.

This meant that the government could make a promise of sale agreement which was then presented to the House to authorise final signature. This was the practice which the Labour government itself had followed in the case of the Cottonera marina project, where it eventually lost the vote and lost the government.

In the Maltacom case it was agreed that an undeveloped site at Qawra would be transferred by Maltacom to the government in exchange for full title to the sites of telephone exchanges. It was made repeatedly clear in the documents that this transfer of land was subject to approval by Parliament and other relevant authorties. Dr Gatt said he had tabled these documents well before this controversy broke out, but the Opposition, which said a lot about transparency and accountability, never bothered to read them. And then he was accused of breaking the law, he exclaimed.

Dr Gatt insisted that contrary to what the Opposition was claiming in its motion, in the comments he made on May 31 he never admitted that laws had been broken and or that, in view of its five-seat majority, the government could break the law and retroactively remedy matters. This was falsification by the Opposition which was selective in what it quoted.

Dr Gatt read the whole official text of what he had said, pointing out how the Opposition never said that he had pointed out that what existed was only a promise of sale. What he had said was that this land exchange would need parliamentary approval, but no one in his right mind could imagine that a government with a five-seat majority could not give a guarantee that approval by Parliament would be forthcoming.

It was Labour MP Joe Mizzi who was wrong when he claimed that an agreement had been reached without parliamentary approval. He (Dr Gatt) had agreed that the agreement had to be subject to parliamentary approval, but he had also said that the government could commit itself to that deal.

But, Dr Gatt said, there was even more to this story. He had discovered that in selling a 40 per cent stake in Maltacom, the Labour government had not carried out a proper due-diligence agreement, and the buyers were, therefore, not told that Maltacom did not hold full title over the sites where some of its telephone exchanges were sited. Those sites were still under expropriation procedures and the owners had not been paid compensation.

Now the present government was having to remedy the wrongs of the Labour government, while it was being accused of breaking the law, he said.

But the cherry on the cake really was how Mr Mizzi, who had accused him of bypassing Parliament, had acted when he was minister responsible for Maltacom himself.

Dr Gatt said he had discovered a Cabinet memo dated January 15, 1998 between Mr Mizzi and then housing Minister Freddie Portelli proposing the transfer of the title of a Qawra site administered by the Joint Office to Maltacom via the Housing Authority. Mr Mizzi and Mr Portelli had opted for the transfer to take place under a procedure which did not involve Parliament.

Mr Mizzi himself wrote that this procedure "will do away with the need for a parliamentary resolution".

Dr Gatt said that while he was not saying that the Labour government had followed an illegal procedure, the way how it had acted spoke volumes about the people who were now accusing him of bypassing Parliament. And it was worth noting that the site, worth Lm1.2m, was to be sold for a considerably lower price.

Concluding, Dr Gatt said the transcript of the May 31 exchange showed he had never broken the law, had never abused of his position as an MP, had never been disrespectful to the House and had only followed a long-standing parliamentary procedure on the transfer of government properties.