PM questions cause of Tuesday's widespread power failure

Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said yesterday he was surprised by the "series of coincidences" that surrounded Tuesday's electricity blackout and admitted he was still in the dark about what exactly happened.

Questioned by PBS journalist Reno Bugeja on the Nationalist Party's radio station Radio 101, Dr Gonzi sounded suspicious about the incident and said he still did not have the necessary technical explanations as to why the outage occurred.

His comments came despite the fact that Enemalta chairman Alex Tranter gave a detailed technical explanation the day after the power-cut, when he said that a boiler at the Marsa power station tripped in the morning, having a domino effect on the remaining machines that could not take the added load. The situation was exasperated by the fact that two boilers were undergoing a scheduled overhaul and another two had been subject to maintenance.

Dr Gonzi's suspicions also jar with what Communications Minister Austin Gatt said in Parliament after the incident where he ruled out foul-play.

Still, Dr Gonzi yesterday said Enemalta's experts have begun an investigation into the matter but he did not think it was the result of Enemalta not having enough capacity for the demand.

Dr Gonzi said it was unacceptable for the country to be without electricity for a few minutes let alone a whole day. However, the fact that electricity demand had increased substantially over the past 10 years was a clear indication of how much progress the country had achieved.

In order to continue transforming Malta into a "centre of excellence", the country needed a diversified energy plan that included a link to the EU power grid via Sicily, an amount of alternative energy supply and the beefing up of the Delimara power station.

"We did not have a fall-back position," he admitted, explaining that Malta could not keep all its eggs in one basket when it came to electricity.

Dr Gonzi warned that, in order to increase government efficiency and carry out the necessary reforms in various sectors, the public had to be prepared to make certain sacrifices.

He said many people demanded reforms but then complained about the "bulldozing" attitude of the government as soon as those reforms began to take place. EU funds could not pay for everything and people's taxes needed to be used for certain projects.

Speaking about the controversial farmhouse development in Baħrija, owned by PN president Victor Scerri, Dr Gonzi said that if the permit was issued in an irregular manner it would be revoked as had been done in the recent past. However, he stressed the permit was granted in 2000, so if such a permit could be revoked, a precedent would be set by which permits that were not supposed to be issued could be revoked, even once the buildings had been constructed.

"Which permits are we going to investigate? What about those that were granted 10, 15 or 20 years ago? Are we going to revoke those too," he asked, stressing that everyone had to be treated equally.

Asked about the political responsibility aspect of the case, Dr Gonzi said the planning authority was not there to make "moral" judgments but to follow rules and be a "slave of transparency".

Without referring to the Baħrija case, he said he was against construction in "outside development zones" but certain exceptions had to be made, such as to repair a damaged ceiling of a farmhouse or to build a proper reservoir for agricultural use.

At the end of the interview, Dr Gonzi was asked about the financial situation of his party's media enterprises and whether he would consider a reform of party financing. Despite speaking on the PN's radio station, Dr Gonzi took the opportunity to lash out at partisan media, saying these had done a lot of damage in the country and had actually "poisoned" the political atmosphere.

cperegin@timesofmalta.com