Listening the other day on TV to a recording of former Finance Minister Tonio Fenech sounding shrill, defensive and at once agitated and irritated in the House the moment I proposed an NAO audit into fuel procurement and hedging, I noticed that his outburst suddenly became two-dimensional.
It offered an eerie flashback while bringing out a sharp contrast between his rearguard action then and the shocking findings of the NAO report that saw the light of day quite recently.
Coming on the heels of the oil scandal revelations that played a central role during the recent election campaign and surfacing only a few hours after the Whistleblowers Act was approved by Parliament, such a report gained added importance.
It highlighted the ever-yawning gap between the former government’s boastful claims and its real notion of good governance.
The report shocked me on two counts: for its appalling contents as well as for the totally unacceptable manner in which the Opposition party reacted to it.
The same way in which I recently had occasion to complain when exposing major shortcomings in the running of State-owned corporation Wasteserv, one finds it hard to attribute such wrongdoing merely to sheer incompetence and/or political ineptitude.
I am saying so because one finds it hard to lump in one exercise so many ingredients as the following: lack of proper procurement guidelines, inadequate research, a total lack of strategy, deals that went against the basic tenets of transparency and accountability, an incomplete documentation trail, skimpy minute taking, minutes scribbled on pieces of paper; discrepancies between the few guidelines in existence and the way in which they were adhered to and hardly any documentary evidence regarding the methodology used to test the quality of the oil purchased.
In addition, one cannot ignore or gloss over such other major shortcomings as the lack of clarity with which the risk management committee operated for quite some time, the missed opportunities to purchase oil on favorable terms and strong whiffs of political interference compounded with sudden, abrupt and unjustified changes in the hedging strategy adopted.
There seemed to have also been instances where the committee finally ended up meeting when, apparently, certain decisions had already been taken.
As expected, not only did nobody within the former government assume any direct responsibility for this shameful behaviour but we had the type of political contortionism that reminded me of a top performer of the Cirque Du Soleil at his/her best.
One moment we were told that since the Nationalist Party had lost the election it had already paid a price for these political misdeeds. The next we were told that not only had they cleaned up their act after a period of time but, even worse, that the report in fact commended the former Administration for certain new elements of ‘good governance’ it had introduced into the oil procurement business.
The Opposition blew an opportunity to come clean and turn a completely new leaf
A particular deputy leader of the PN not only tried to absolve a former minister colleague of all his shortcomings but he even had the gall to claims that the government was wrong to ‘politicise’ a damning report by the NAO.
This at a time when the whole island was still in a state of shock about such major shortcomings.
The attitude of former Minister Austin Gatt that he could not be bothered with the report’s findings simply because he is now a private citizen is totally unacceptable.
While I am in no way implying that he should at this stage be charged with corruption before police investigations are even concluded, it seems that when it comes to good governance Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Lahore seem to have a stronger notion of good governance than some of us might do.
If my memory serves me well, the whole process had started some two years ago when I had made a call for such a probe in Parliament itself.
The NAO deserves to be commended not only for having done such an excellent job but also for having gone to extensive lengths to draw up such a detailed report that was widespread in the literal sense of the word – running almost close to 350 pages of detailed research and investigation into what must have proved to be a highly technical subject. This particularly when it came to hedging, an area in which we do not have such a high level of expertise.
Some of us who filed our declaration of assets – arguably yours truly included – could have resorted to a more legible handwriting style but it was far more worrying to come across barely legible minutes scribbled on what appeared to be a ruled copybook, without even having the decency to make any reference to the people present for the meeting and what was discussed.
This report gave the present Opposition an opportunity to come clean and turn a completely new leaf. Judging by the reaction of some of its key members, if you pardon the expression, they simply blew it.
Once the PN was so quick to accept and justify Gatt’s otherwise unacceptable claim that he had no obligation to own up on this saga because he had retired from politics, it became even more the duty of the PN itself to shoulder the responsibility for the mismanagement revealed by the Auditor General.
Someone recently dismissively claimed that I tend to run away from the truth.
The fact that I – modesty apart – unearthed the covert rise in ministerial salaries in 2008, the MOBC scandal and most of the wrongdoings in Wasteserv as well as in the Family Park running should obvious prove how unfounded such claims may be.
I will let the people judge on this unfounded claim.
The same way that I invite them to judge on the fact that the hedging committee did not meet for 10 months as our island braced itself for the highest ever utility tariffs in 2009.
Brincat.leo@gmail.com
Leo Brincat is Minister for Sustainable Development, the Environment and Climate Change.