Opposition leader Simon Busuttil is accusing the Prime Minister of “throwing mud and spinning stories” to divert attention away from the government’s poor record on meritocracy.
He was reacting to the controversy surrounding the legal office he formed part of, which had received a number of direct orders from the previous administration running into hundreds of thousands of euros.
Dr Busuttil insisted he had done nothing wrong and challenged the Prime Minister to take the case to the police. He was yesterday speaking during a visit to San Ġwann.
Whether he was amply competent to render this service is a judgement best left to the public
“I did not do anything wrong,” he insisted, saying the Prime Minister should refer the matter to the Police Commissioner for investigation.
Justice Parliamentary Secretary Owen Bonnici rebutted the challenge, insisting the issue was not whether the Opposition leader had committed a crime but whether he was credible in his criticism.
“This is a man who spent a whole year undermining institutions, criticising and insulting people who are working with the government and yet his company had received €1.1 million from the PN government over the past five years,” Dr Bonnici said.
In Parliament it was revealed that Dr Busuttil’s legal firm had benefited from a number of contracts awarded by the previous PN governments, some of them by direct order. Last week, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat accused Dr Busuttil of “lying” over the contracts.
But Dr Busuttil skirted the question when asked by this newspaper whether the controversy put him in an awkward position when criticising the current administration for awarding contracts to people close to it.
A spokesman for Dr Busuttil insisted the truth was that the Prime Minister, who had been elected on a platform of meritocracy, was now doing the opposite. “The Prime Minister is pocketing €7,000 in allowances for renting his personal car to himself, paying €60,000 to his wife’s business partner as an MTA representative in New York and €13,000 a month to Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi’s wife.”
Reacting solely to a part of the information tabled in Parliament from the time when he headed the Malta-EU Information Centre, Dr Busuttil’s spokesman said the contracts awarded between 1999 and 2004 related to services rendered in the run-up to the EU referendum.
“Whether he was amply competent to render this service is a judgement best left to the public, particularly those who voted in favour of EU membership.
“Lest it is forgotten, Dr Muscat was an MEP and is now, as Prime Minister, a member of the European Council, also thanks to these services that Dr Busuttil rendered as a result of this contract.”
This shows the “low level” of political standards to which the Prime Minister was able to descend, the spokesman added.
Dr Busuttil has filed a libel suit against PL newspaper Kullħadd after it claimed that direct orders were given to the company because of Dr Busuttil’s role in the company and not because of its competence.
But in a press conference at Labour headquarters, Dr Bonnici expressed doubt on Dr Busuttil’s claim that the tenders his legal firm won were on the basis of competence.
“The claim has to be taken with more than a pinch of salt,” he said.
Dr Bonnici said the payments Dr Busuttil had received from the previous Nationalist administration covered consultancies for the design of “a pig restructuring scheme” and research for the “setting up of a wine bar”.
“We have a very intelligent Opposition leader who is knowledgeable in many things,” Dr Bonnici said sarcastically.