Labour-bashing is sexier than answering on Fairmount

The conclusions drawn from the report on the Shipyards’ Fairmount affair were eclipsed last week by the high-level resignations of Minister Austin Gatt’s erstwhile right-hand man, Claudio Grech from SmartCity CEO and Labour Party (PL) secretary general Jason Micallef. Serious issues highlighted in the said document were further obfuscated by Dr Gatt’s rantings, in typical the-best-form-of-defence-is-attack mode, on past Labour governments. The last time Labour was in office was 11 years back and, before that, 22 years ago.

But we know that putting time spans in perspective isn’t exactly one of this government’s strong points. For instance, the minister had declared on May 10, 2008 that the Fairmount report was “in an advanced stage”. This “advanced stage” rolled on to a year and four months, as the report was published in September 2009 after much pressure from the PL in Parliament.

Now that we finally have it, it is obvious that the minister’s invective on Labour was doled out in the hope that it would divert attention from the report and possibly absolve the government of its responsibility on the Fairmount issue. Well, it doesn’t .

The shipyards’ former chairman, John Cassar White, admitted that there were failings across the board. One newspaper pointed out that according to Mr Cassar White “the report highlights fault lines at all levels and even people, including himself, who were closely involved at the time did not understand all that was going on. In fact, it was only through the report that he found out some things”.

In contrast to this, the minister skirted around the report and used the opportunity for a bout of Labour bashing, his favourite sport. But, by pointing out that the shipyards made losses under Labour governments as well, does that make it OK to embark on projects that are loss-making ventures from the outset? How can one justify this unless there was some secret agenda? Does it make sense to ignore the fact, as highlighted in the report, that “subsequent events in the execution of the venture contributed to further in­crease the scale of the loss”?

Shouldn’t we, for instance, know who will carry the responsibility for paying a contractor before the commencement of work and who soon after fled Malta and the work had to be carried out at the Shipyards’ expense? I guess it is also pertinent to ask whether action was taken against the perpetrators.

No answers were forthcoming on whether the government had approved the Fairmount contract. Ditto for questions as to why was the marketing executive who negotiated the Fairmount contract allowed to leave Malta just six months after he was contracted, when he was supposed to remain here for three years. As it transpires, the rat could be smelled from the very beginning.

How about the publication of the actual contracts? Who else was involved in the main contracts and those of the foreign sub-contractors? Who approved these same contracts? Were budgets, set out initially for this project, officially communicated to middle management so that there could be proper monitoring? Why were management members with experience on past large projects left out in the early stages of the contract?

It seems that the contracts involved were grossly undervalued and the report makes it clear that the in-house lawyer given the responsibility to vet the contracts was not specialised in this area and, thus, unable to point out the risks the shipyards were taking on. Other questions revolve around the calls for quotations, the comparisons exercise and the approval and signature for the sub-contracts.

Evidently, the report has opened a can of worms and given rise to many queries.

Instead of looking into and answering these questions, the minister washed his hands and chose to speak on Labour’s sins of the past and, even here, one has to decipher myth from reality. What is interesting, though, is that a day before the publication of the Fairmount report, Minister Gatt, when speaking on the case of the Enemalta power station tender, declared that the minister and the ministry are responsible before Parliament and the citizens to see that all that goes on in public entities is done properly. Does this not apply to the shipyards as well? Not in this minister’s book, it seems.

Dr Dalli is shadow minister for the public service and government investments.