Labour MP Etienne Grech yesterday said he saw nothing wrong in using a parliamentary question to ask the Justice Minister to contact one of his constituents in relation to a pending inquiry.
The PQ was submitted last week and asked Owen Bonnici “to see to it that a person, whose details are being provided separately, is contacted on an issue related to a place about which there is a pending inquiry”.
There was no more information offered about the issue in question or the nature of the inquiry.
But Dr Bonnici did not play ball. He told Dr Grech there was no way he would do as suggested and he should direct his constituent to a lawyer to discuss the problem.
“I am sure that the Honourable member of Parliament can appreciate and understand that it is not appropriate in the circumstances that I show any kind of interest in any inquiry which is still pending.”
Asked by this newspaper to explain what prompted him to ask a PQ that invited the Justice Minster to contact someone involved in an inquiry, Dr Grech asked for questions to be sent by e-mail.
As an MP, I had a request to put this question to the minister and that is what I did, in order to be able to give this person the required answer
In his reply, he defended his “right” to ask such a question and said he found nothing wrong.
“As an MP, I had a request to put this question to the minister and that is what I did, in order to be able to give this person the required answer,” Dr Grech explained.
Did he not think his question was unethical?
Dr Grech did not give a direct reply to this question but said: “I fully agree with the reply given to me by the Minister and I will be passing on the Minster’s reply to the person concerned.”
Dr Grech, a medical practitioner elected to Parliament for the first time in the last general elections, is not new to controversial statements.
Last July, he suggested on Facebook that Greece’s financial woes would be solved in a short time if Prime Minister Joseph Muscat were to be lent to the Greeks for four months.
Describing Dr Muscat as “the best leader in Europe”, he said that the Prime Minister could solve all Greece’s financial problems “in the same way as he has solved the financial, economic and structural deficit that Malta had”.