Opposition targeted messenger to hide the message - Gonzi

The Prime Minister told Parliament yesterday that the issue at the heart of the controversy raised by the Opposition on the National Statistics Office was not its director-general but the figures which were being published.

The Opposition realised that the message from the NSO belies what it has been saying for the past three years on economic performance, so they shot the messenger. But the message will not change, Dr Gonzi said.

He was replying to questions after making a statement in which he again accused the Opposition of making personal attacks on Gordon Cordina, leading to his resignation as NSO director-general.

Dr Gonzi said that through its actions, the Opposition had denied the country the services of a highly competent person in a key position.

In his statement Dr Gonzi underlined the important role of the NSO and the respect Dr Cordina had long enjoyed as an economist and consultant to the MCESD before being appointed to the NSO last August.

It was important, Dr Gonzi said, that the NSO was kept away of political controversy. Criticism had to be fair, constructive and within the parameters of democracy. In line with the EU acquis and to safeguard the NSO's autonomy the Maltese Parliament had enacted legislation and set up the National Statistics Authority and it was this, not the government, which was directly responsible for the NSO. It was for this reason that the resignation letter was addressed to the authority's chairman.

The EU membership process had also seen the NSO adopt EU methodologies and integrate itself with Eurostat and other European institutions.

It was significant, Dr Gonzi said, that in his resignation Dr Cordina said he was stepping down because the events of the previous few weeks had gone beyond mature technical discussion and did not permit him to perform his duties with the serenity they demanded.

Dr Gonzi said he was tabling various articles in the newspapers KullHadd and It-Torca to show the low and personal attacks levelled at Dr Cordina, which included references to Flash Gordon and Gordon Urdiena as well as "blue-eyed boy", "friend of friends", and "friend of Dracula". Personal criticism had also been made by, among others, Leo Brincat.

Also significant was the expressions of confidence made in Dr Cordina by the authority's board and the managers of the NSO, who insisted they were never subjected to any political or other pressures, internal or external, to manipulate statistics, which was what the Opposition had implied.

Dr Gonzi said the official statistics were as accurate as humanly possible. Mistakes did happen sometimes and revisions were an ordinary process which had long been carried out. His appeal to the Opposition was that when it questioned the statistics, it should do so in a correct manner using the tools available to it, such as the Public Accounts Committee.

Opposition finance spokesman Charles Mangion asked Dr Gonzi whether he had known of the resignation three days before it was announced. He also insisted that the technical report prepared by the MLP on the NSO's GDP figures was purely technical and did not include any personal attack on Dr Cordina. Nor had he or Dr Sant been personal. And the GRTU too had criticised the employment figures.

Dr Mangion said he assumed official statistics to be accurate, and it was therefore unacceptable that figures were reviewed after a period of years.

Mario Galea (PN) asked Dr Gonzi whether he viewed the Opposition's attacks as a means to undermine the euro adoption process. Did he see similarities with the attacks made on the Governor of the Central Bank and Kenneth Wain, who, like Dr Cordina, had both spoken in favour of EU membership?

Carmelo Abela (MLP) asked if, by the same yardstick, the government criticism of the Ombudsman and the Auditor-General was acceptable. He insisted that Mr Brincat had not been personal in his criticism of Dr Cordina.

In his reply Dr Gonzi said he never said the MLP technical report included personal references. That report had been replied to by the NSO. It was not the report which led to the resignation.

Dr Gonzi observed that the MLP had never said who wrote its report. Dr Mangion was indicating they were scared. It was the MLP that had said it would follow a police of eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth and what had happened in Dr Cordina's case was a manifestation of this policy.

But the Opposition was not just Dr Sant and Dr Mangion. Labour MP Joe Sammut had written that Dr Cordina showed his colours when he addressed a PN meeting before the EU accession referendum and he could therefore never trust such a person, even if he was the best statistician.

Mr Brincat wrote that as soon as Dr Cordina was appointed he had had his doubts that he could be independent and above politics. His sources, Mr Brincat wrote, had been right to voice serious concerns when Dr Cordina was appointed to this supposedly independent post.

Dr Gonzi said Dr Sant's allegation on Sunday that he (Dr Gonzi) had the resignation letter three days before it was announced on Friday, coinciding with the consecration of the Archbishop, was not true.

Dr Sant's remarks were also insulting because they implied that the chairman of the authority had kept the resignation letter under wraps until Friday while telling him about it. Who had come up with this invention?

As for revisions, statistics were fine-tuned over a period of years, but it was worth recalling how, at the time of the Labour government, the employment statistics for many years had needed a thorough review and were dramatically changed.

Reacting to Mr Galea's questions, Dr Gonzi said the real problem for the Opposition was not Dr Cordina but the fact that if the official statistics were shown to be correct, they would belie what the Opposition had been saying about the economy for the past three years. Therefore, instead of admitting that the economy was doing well the Opposition tried to shoot the messenger. But that would not change the message.

Dr Gonzi said he did suspect that the Opposition was trying to undermine the euro adoption process. The Opposition was repeatedly showing that its u-turn on euro adoption was a matter of convenience, not conviction. In trying to undermine the NSO, however, the Opposition was harming its own credibility by trumpeting figures which were negative while casting doubts on statistics which showed progress.

Dr Gonzi said government criticism of the Ombudsman and the Author-General was nothing like what the Opposition had meted out against Dr Cordina.

Opposition leader Alfred Sant raised the subject again during the adjournment, saying Dr Gonzi's statement on the supposed resignation of Dr Cordina was shameful. He had focused on Dr Cordina's resignation while ignoring the real issue, which was the revision of official statistics made over the past few months in areas such as GDP, tourism, employment and the debt figures. Dr Gonzi had a duty to react to the technical questions raised by the Opposition on the way official statistics were present. His failure was fuelling a crisis of credibility in the country, Dr Sant said.

How could the NSO be said to be autonomous when appointments there and at the authority were made by the government?

Dr Gonzi had not given a direct reply when asked when he had learnt about Dr Cordina's resignation. The Opposition had known beforehand and Dr Gonzi knew three days before but would not admit it.

Furthermore Dr Gonzi had not proved that Dr Cordina was personally attacked, producing only an article called "On a string" penned by Dr Sammut last September, an article five months ago by Mr Brincat, another article on January 8 called Flash Gordon also by Dr Sammut, three articles by Lino Cassar and a small article by Joe Debono Grech. If Dr Cordina had resigned because of this, he had no case. This was only an excuse to hide the real problem which was the manipulation of statistics.

Dr Sant said the flash point for the Opposition were the concerns raised by persons monitoring official figures within the NSO itself. The Opposition was not prepared to reveal their identity because everyone knew what happened in the past to persons who worked with integrity. Their integrity would be respected however.

Dr Sant said the technical debate would continue, independently of the resignation. He said the NSO's reaction to the MLP's technical report on the GDP figures was hollow, weak and ignored imprtant elements of the MLP's study. The Prime Minister should declare whether he agreed with it, but the MLP would issue its own reaction this Saturday.

Malta needed integrity in its governance, Dr Sant said and the Prime Minister needed to address the issues.