The Auditor General has amply demonstrated in a number of reports since he was appointed through bipartisan agreement that he possesses an excellent command of the English language.
He combines that with a track record as a first class civil servant. He knows when and how to make a delicate point. In his report on the Enemalta extension, made at the request of the Public Accounts Committee, he may be assumed, therefore, to have been very careful in what he said and how he said it.
The government feels the Auditor General found no corruption in the award of the tender whereby a Danish firm will supply the equipment required for the crucial Enemalta extension. The Minister of Finance released a whoop-la declaration to that effect immediately after he tabled the report of the Auditor General in the House of Representatives. The Prime Minister said it too, when questioned by the media as he toured Merchants Street on Thursday.
What the report recorded, very precisely, was that the Auditor General did not come across any hard and conclusive evidence of corruption in the inquiry concerning the tender issued by Enemalta.
In minimalist plain English, that does not exclude that the Auditor General did come across the possibility of corruption, but did not find enough hard and conclusive evidence to prove it. The words leave a cloud hanging over the tender, Enemalta, and Austin Gatt, the minister politically responsible for it when the tender was issued, controversially evaluated and more controversially awarded.
A less arrogant administration would, as a minimum, make no whoop-la claims about the absence of corruption, and simply declare that it would be evaluating carefully the detailed observations presented in the report. The government did the opposite, spinning the emphasis that no evidence of corruption was found.
From my part I will assume away the corruption factor and concentrate on the rest of the Auditor General's findings. By any standard it is a damning report. It finds every stage of the process riddled with corruption. For instance, Enemalta called for one type of tested product but ended up going for the opposite, accepting a prototype. It was approached by a firm offering to give "assistance" in the evaluation process before there was even anything to evaluate. At least, that allowed enough time for Enemalta and the responsible ministry to check out who exactly the firm was, to discover that it was blacklisted by the World Bank over a corruption charge (that word again).
That notwithstanding, with the implicit political approval of the ministry since the government has not deigned to distance itself from the decision, once it had proposals to be evaluated Enemalta hired that very same blacklisted firm. And, incredibly, it did so through a direct order.
On that point alone I consider the tender process to be tainted. The government does not share that view. Nor does it take into account that the firm itself at least had the decency to observe that what was on offer - a prototype - was not what Enemalta had called for - proved and tested technology.
On this point alone the contract should have not been awarded to the eventual winner of it. Once that was done, it is reason enough for the minister in charge to assume full political responsibility. In a well-functioning democracy whose engines are not corrupted with Malta's own type of corrosive ashes, the minister would have resigned as soon as he read that conclusion by the Auditor General.
If that was not enough the investigator dug up various other reasons why the contract was vitiated and should be scrapped. He attributed inexperience to some of the shortcomings. But which serious ministry, what sound corporation, allows such a massively expensive contract to be handled by people who are not adequately experienced?
There were many other shortcomings coldly listed by the auditor, which all bear out the criticism levied at the contract for several months, now. The government did not go into any of them.
Questioned about the fact that the Auditor General had lamented that some of those whom he wanted to question had not collaborated, the Finance Minister simply focused on the private agent named in the report. He said he was not a public employee. That is an argument weaker than chewing gum. Placed in context it is also self-defeating.
For the Auditor General did not refer to only one person. He used the English plural with English intent. The Minister of Finance is also too well versed in the English language to have missed that. So why try to fob off the media with a misleading answer?
Tonio Fenech, who had the misfortune to inherit this politically hot potato when the Prime Minister took it away from Gatt, the minister politically responsible for it all, came up with further sad show of arrogance. He declared refusal to make public the infamous contract, which even failed to make Malta the legal jurisdiction in case of dispute. He insisted that the contract and the bid by the controversially successful firm were of a confidential nature.
That, minister, was so before the contract was awarded. Now they are in the public domain because they are being financed with public money.
At the very least the Public Accounts Committee should demand access to all the documents pertaining to the contract award. And the government should stop this amazing display of arrogance, which is emitting bad light upon it by the minute.