Word for word account

The media does not have the space to report a speech or an interview word for word. But when a series of words is wrongly attributed to someone as a quote, is repeated once, twice and more and enters into the public consciousness as if it were Biblical truth, then it needs to be corrected.

In a two-hour interview with Di-ve, the print media chose just two short sentences to quote and in both cases got them wrong or - in some cases - selectively edited them to turn them on their head. As Alfred Sant recently said in front of a parliamentary committee, it is impossible nowadays to correct each wrong quote but when the likes of Lino Spiteri starts taking as gospel truth what one is supposed to have said, then it is incumbent on me to correct that impression.

The first point concerned my supposed change of stance regarding when the tariffs should have been implemented, where half of what I said is conveniently edited out. This is what I said word for word (the interview was in English):

"I think we should have taken a longer period. I think, with hindsight, what we should have done - although it was suggested but it was shot down - on October 1 - when the surcharge revision was due - we should have changed the surcharge and started discussions to go with the intention to implement on January 1. The reality is that we would have been through the same problems because the surcharge would have gone up from 95 per cent to 190 per cent.

"The new tariffs that eventually came in basically are 185 per cent (here I was wrong because actually they were equal to 125/130 per cent) so bottom line we would have ended up with the same tariffs (interruption)... yes but psychologically people (interruption)... yes, agreed, the surcharge would have gone down again. (Interruption) No, what would have happened is on January 1 you would have these tariffs, it would have been easier to sell."

The second misquotation is even worse because it is a total invention. I am quoted as having blamed the party for the tariff revision!

Simply ridiculous because the reference to the party came some three minutes later and in a different context, so much so that the question was: "Are people's consumption patterns changing?"

Part of my reply to this was, word for word:

"Of course, they changed... Unfortunately, we do not seem to realise that subsidies come out of the general budget. If you subsidise electricity, or if you subsidise the drydocks, or if you subsidise somewhere else, those subsidies are coming out of every tax payers' money... I think that's the wrong system (subsidising electricity consumption for consumers who are not social cases) and we have to have the courage to say, let me blame my party, first of all, we took too long to come to this system and that is the criticism that my party should admit to ..."

I do not believe I need to add anything to the above. As usual, no medium will admit to having purposefully quoted me out of context, selectively edited what I said or even disjoined parts of the same sentence in order to quote me fully but make no sense of the disjointed parts.

Still the above is a word for word account of what I said and there is no way that truth will change simply because it is convenient for someone to twist it.

Dr Gatt is Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Communications.