BWSC plot thickens

The plot concerning the BWSC power station extension affair thickens. The political executive, all the signs suggest, knows exactly what itis doing.

It all turns on the fact that Austin Gatt, willingly or not backed by the Prime Minister and his other colleagues, does not want, in any circumstances, the Public Accounts Committee to question witnesses over the controversial contrast.

Certainly, not when such contracts include those who were intimately involved in the build-up to the tender specifications years in advance of the call of tender being issued in the context of an abrupt moving of the goalposts by the government.

The PAC and its workings seem to be arcane matters. Yet they are easy to understand, for they are part of the essence of parliamentary democracy in the way it works in the interests of society in general.

But not everybody is of a mind to follow what goes on in the committee, perhaps not to the extent that the European Commission, the Labour opposition, The Times and other members of the media have done.

Society at large, though, perks up and pays a bit more attention than usual when it sees Gatt and the government bending over backwards to prevent the PAC from doing its work in accordance with the rules that bind it and the good practice it has set in the past, not to mention precedent in other countries.

According to the easily accessible official sources, the roles of the Public Accounts Committee are to scrutinise and access the financial administration of the public sector and to promote improvements, where necessary, encourage the economic, efficient and effective use of public sector resources, and enhance the accountability of the executive government to Parliament and the public.

Quite a mouthful, all intended to ensure that taxpayers’ money, which is by far the main funding of the public sector, is well spent.

There is more. Reports submitted to the Speaker may be taken up by the PAC, which is empowered to examine reports and discuss their content. The committee is also empowered to call witnesses to enable it to carry out its duties.

The government, as represented by Gatt and his Nationalist colleagues on the PAC, has come out with a peculiar interpretation of the rules. Where the Auditor General has, in making an investigation or preparing a report, called witnesses, the PAC, in discussing his report, should not also call witnesses. It would be expressing lack of confidence if it did.

That is undiluted rubbish. The Auditor General’s investigative role and the PAC’s subsequent examination of his report are related but separate functions. The PAC, by calling its own witnesses, whether or not already summoned by the Auditor General, strengthens his efforts.

Nationalist MPs not only disagree, but are adding a further dimension to deepen the harm that is being done to the PAC.

Robert Arrigo, writing inThe Times (October 21), did not simply uphold and reiterate Gatt’s brusque position regarding the rights of the PAC. He added a dimension of his own, which he had first set out in the PAC itself.

Several times he wrote, in the context of asserting that committee can discuss the Auditor General’s reports but not call witness, that the PAC could call the Auditor General before it and “debate” with him.

Debate, the good man said, as if the Auditor General, the people’s watchdog intended to enhance the accountability of the executive government to Parliament, were an opposition MP or some member of a debating body like a local council. The MP’s understanding of the Auditor General is the same as that of Gatt who took furious umbrage at another report by the (previous) Auditor General, on Voice of the Mediterranean.

Government MPs are free to act as they feel it is in their best interests, in the PAC and out of it. But by undermining the established functions of the committee – ironically set up by another Nationalist government, under the guidance of Eddie Fenech Adami and John Dalli – they are doing a grave disservice to the public interest.

It is in the public interest to ensure, as much as possible, transparency in the workings of the political administration, to hold it to full account, and to see to it that the public sector at large spends the people’s money economically, efficiently and effectively.

That task also belongs to backbenchers as a whole, whether they sit on the government side or opposition benches. Lawrence Gonzi has badly injured that key backbench function by appointing his backbench MPs to quasi-executive roles. He did so without constitutional authority and without Parliament having allocated any funds to finance it because he needed to quell a growing rebellion, and quickly so.

Denuding the PAC by taking the agenda away from the hands of the opposition-appointed chairman and by denying it its right to call witnesses who may already have been interviewed by the Auditor General is a further step to muddying the picture and reducing the accountability of the executive government.

What next? Could be that there are those who want to make their life easier by provoking the opposition not take any more and leave the PAC?