Exactly a week after the parliamentary debacle caused by the vote on the BSWC contract, the Leader of the Opposition highlighted a number of initiatives Labour would take against corruption, should it be elected.
A number are worthy of serious consideration such as a Whistle Blower Act inclusive of an immunity for pentiti involved in acts of corruption, the prohibition of blacklisted companies from participating in public tenders, a Freedom of Information Act, the tightening of the code of ethics for "chairmen" of parastatal bodies, the introduction of a Parliamentary Standards Commission and the introduction of a law governing public funding of political parties.
This is the former Euro MP speaking in a constructive mode. Unfortunately, the "Mr Hyde" persona of Joseph Muscat also made its appearance when he made a generic threat against any permanent secretary from destroying any public files and in wanting to remove any time-barring of crimes involving corruption. What prompted Dr Muscat to say so?
The reason is that he openly states that when elected he will re-open the investigation on the BSWC contract by asking the Auditor General to review the report that same person has just presented to Parliament. This to my mind is a strange proposal.
Is Dr Muscat implying that the Auditor General will come to any different conclusion depending on who is in government? God forbid! Dr Muscat even fails to mention what the new powers he plans to grant the Auditor General would consist of. May the opposition be suggesting that the conclusion is a faulted one because the Auditor General lacked the means to find out more?
Allow me at this stage to make one important point. At no stage did the Auditor General state that he or his staff lacked the means of reaching the truth on the allegations made by the opposition on corruption. In fact, the opposite is the truth. The report concludes: "Having scrupulously analysed all information acquired in connection with these allegations, the overall conclusion reached by the NAO (National Audit Office) was that no hard evidence is available to substantiate these allegations", referring to the allegations made by the opposition.
The Auditor General, therefore, used the phrase "no hard and conclusive evidence" only in the chapter dedicated to the evidence presented by the opposition, which when investigated by his office did not materialise in anything that proved the existence of corruption in the granting of the BSWC contract.
The word "corruption" or "bribery" appears in no other chapter of the report.
We are not naive, of course. The Auditor General had to report that the leads given to him by the opposition, made up mainly of press reports from foreign newspapers, had met a dead end, suggesting clearly that the trail had gone cold in the manner in which, say, happens to a police investigation whereby the report made to them leads to nowhere.
The opposition, therefore, had presented a possible scenario made up of a number of unrelated factors, which, theoretically, if joined together could or could not explain in terms of corruption the administrative irregularities detected. The Auditor General replied that after having scrupulously examined the evidence and carried out its investigations the "corruption-bribery" scenario presented by the opposition could or could not have happened. In other words, 1+1 could equally make 2 as 11.
If the opposition wants to suggest how their preferred scenario of corruption may be re-activated, well, more power to their elbow but why wait for at least another three years for this to be done when the already cold trail will get colder and by then have vanished into dust? What use would the removal of prescription be in three years' time?
The system needs, today, to look back with a very critical eye on the procedures adopted in the adjudication process. One cannot but admire the frank admission made by David Spiteri Gingell that appointing Lehmayer International as consultants was a "mistake". He deserves the appreciation of us all because we need more and more of the persons involved to make a serious re-appraisal on the "administrative irregularities" detected by the report.
Herein lies the dysfunction of the opposition's insistence on the existence of corruption. It is making a fact from an unproven hypothesis, thereby complicating to no end the process of honest but brutal re-appraisal the system needs to make to avoid any repeat of this mess.
It must be noted that in 1997, the government and the opposition had unanimously agreed to amend the Constitution and the law to provide for a more powerful Auditor General. That is the spirit which wins the war against corruption.
Does it still exist today?