The agreement reached between Malta and China last Wednesday will make Malta lose its independence in the generation of energy, PN leader Simon Busuttil said this morning.

Referring to this agreement when interviewed on Radio 101, Dr Busuttil said that the country’s institutions were under attack by a political party.

“This is what is happening after just six months and we are there to show that we are against it...,” he said.

Dr Busuttil said that the Opposition was asking questions because it did not have all the information.

Why was the agreement reached behind the people’s backs, he asked noting that while the EU was informed, the Maltese Parliament was not.

Dr Busuttil said that while Dr Muscat call the general secretary of the General Workers’ Union to tell him about the agreement, he did not likewise call him to let him know about it as leader of the Opposition.

This agreement, Dr Busuttil said, would enable China to enter the European market with its solar panels, which was a hot issue in the EU.

“Is the Prime Minister aware of this? Does he know how big the PV market is in Europe,” Dr Busuttil asked.

He said that he was not comfortable with the idea that China would have a say in Malta’s electricity generation.

“What control will we have on energy bills?”

Half the generation, he said, was already being privatised to the company that would build the new power station.

And although the government denied that a 20 per cent stake was being given to China, it was more or less that amount.

Dr Busuttil said that with the PN’s Government investment in an interconnector, Malta would still have had full control.

He said he had already requested a full ministerial statement on the details of the agreement once Parliament reconvened.

He insisted that the Government had no mandate to privatise Enemalta because it specifically ruled this out in its electoral programme.

“We are in favour of privatisation but we never considered privatising such essential services. Why is the GWU in favour of this instead of sticking up for workers,” Dr Busuttil asked adding he suspected the agreement had been in the pipeline for a long time.

Dr Busuttil also spoke on the AFM commander asking why he was being replaced.

“Is there something he did that was wrong? They did the same with the Police Commissioner who no one complained about before. We have the political appointment of the new Police Commissioner and now we will also have the new AFM commander appointed for political reasons.”

Dr Busuttil said there were questions on why others had been skipped for this set of fast-track promotions. One of them did not even have security clearance, he said.

The Nationalist Party, he said, had always been fair and it was often criticised but it always led by example.