Businessmen criticising the White Rocks sports village and comparing it to a previous tourist complex tender issued by the government were motivated by personal interest, the Prime Minister charged yesterday.

"Somebody who tells us in a simplistic way that what we are doing today is the same like when the government had issued a tender for a tourist complex at White Rocks is motivated by personal interest and profit," Lawrence Gonzi said in his first public reaction to criticism last week by a director of the company that had won the White Rocks tender in 1999.

The recently-announced White Rocks Sports Village project also includes 300 apartments and negotiations with a British consortium started without the government issuing a public call for tenders.

Speaking on Radio 101 in a recorded interview with a Nationalist Party journalist, Dr Gonzi said the profits from the project would be invested in top-class sports facilities that would benefit athletes and encourage sports tourism.

"We could have decided to build the sports facilities ourselves but it would have taken us 30 years to see them get off the ground. We took the wise decision to invest in sports using this financial model. Somehow, our athletes have understood this message but those interested in making money have not," Dr Gonzi said, insisting negotiations with the British consortium were still ongoing.

Paul Abela, a director of Costa San Andrea Ltd, last week criticised the government over the White Rocks project saying it gave the British consortium a concession to build 300 apartments when this was denied to Maltese investors who were to build a tourist complex there.

Negotiations had started with Costa San Andrea consortium, made up of Maltese businessmen and Spanish hotel operator Sol Melia, after the company was chosen as the preferred bidder by the government following a public call for tenders in 1999 for the development of a tourist complex in White Rocks. The brief had excluded real estate development.

Moving on to Air Malta, Dr Gonzi said the airline had a strategic role but it had to be viable. "Restructuring will happen over the coming weeks and months to ensure that Air Malta overcomes the hurdles it is facing," he said, pointing out that the financial difficulties the airline experienced were partially caused by high fuel prices and unfavourable exchange rates.

Dr Gonzi said a study was also needed on how best to maximise the routes operated by the national carrier.

Dr Gonzi said energy provision was one of the challenges the country faced and he insisted the government was moving ahead with the interconnector project to have an electricity cable link with Sicily.

"When I recently met with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi I asked him to facilitate the administrative process on the Italian part when the installation gets under way," Dr Gonzi said, adding this was the first time in the country's history that it would have an energy supply not generated domestically.

Dr Gonzi described Labour's education spokesman Evarist Bartolo's criticism of pass rates in Matsec exams as "a vile attack".

Mr Bartolo compared the number of students who passed the exam with the total number of Form 5 students eligible to sit for them and said too many students failed to even register for the exams. Subsequently, he quoted pass rates that were substantially lower than those published by the Education Ministry.

Dr Gonzi also criticised Labour deputy leader Anġlu Farrugia's parliamentary criticism of magistrates, insisting it was not on.

In the aftermath of a court decision last week clearing a businessman from charges including that of threatening employees to vote Nationalist in the last election, Dr Farrugia, who had made the claims after the 2008 election, hit out at the magistrate's decision.

"The Labour Party never learns. They never change. For them politics is not about substance but a thirst for power," Dr Gonzi said.

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