It was once said that excuses are tools of the incompetent used to build monuments to nothing. For those who specialise in them shall never be good at anything else.
After the canard blurted out by the top brass of this government, including the Prime Minister and the latest Parliamentary Secreatry for Lands, that the Old Mint Street-cum-Gaffarena scandal was the result of “failed systems left by the former PN government”, those words ring so true. This latest Lands scandal, which took place right under the nose of the present Prime Minister, shook to the core the feet of clay of this government.
I never thought it would lead them to utter pure inanities as to try to shift the blame for the umpteenth time. This government cannot keep on thinking it can fool people all the time.
When the scandal was being brewed in 2014 and Gaffarena instigated government, which accepted with open arms, to buy from him a useless one-fourth undivided property in Old Mint Street, Valletta, Muscat had been more than a year in office as minister for lands. He wants to make you believe that it was the fault of a PN government that the valuations of the two properties given in exchange for the second, useless, one-fourth undivided share owned by Gaffarena were ready even before Gaffarena had purchased this second one-fourth undivided share.
It must have been the fault of the PN government that when Gaffarena in 2014 approached, met and instigated the government, represented by the politician responsible for the Land Department, this latter politician, directed him to the Land Department, accompanied by his trusted officer, instead of sending him packing.
Gaffarena instigated government, which accepted with open arms, to buy from him a useless one-fourth undivided property in Old Mint Street
It was the fault of the PN government that the NAO declared that it found no evidence that Muscat’s government considered any other alternative to buying half a building. It is the fault of us Nationalists that Muscat’s government accepted, no questions asked, Gaffarena’s charitable proposal for the half of the building being purchased from him to be used, as a “ministry or museum”, without the NAO finding any iota of an attempt by the Minister for Lands to verify whether government was in need of a ministry or museum in Old Mint Street.
Shame on the PN for Muscat’s ministry to buy, twice in a row in less than two months in 2015 bang in the middle of the outcry following the Cafe Premier NAO report, two undivided portions of the same property from the same person, instead of from each of all the co-owners.
It’s the flaw of the PN that the NAO dedicated almost an entire chapter to the complete and absolute lack of any public purpose behind the gilded Old Mint Street expropriation. It is the fault of the PN that the new Lands Parliamentary Secretary has already shown an abysmal lack of any awareness of the scores of case law since 1935 defining, explaining and amplifying what is the public purpose which underpins each valid expropriation at law, as opposed to public interest.
Surely, it was the PN’s frailty that led to the NAO tearing to shreds the unprecedented counterfeiting of the Lands minutes in 2014 relating to this scandal, just as it dedicated eight reasons justifying the collusion underpinning this scandal.
The PN’s deficiency led the NAO to lambast the unexplainable haste and urgency of this useless expropriation. Definitely it wasthe PN’s maligned systems that led the NAO to dedicate two full pages to the written, and repeated“grave concerns” and “strong reservations” flagged in 2014 to the Office of the Prime Minister during this corrupt expropriation process by two experienced Lands officials, to no avail.
It’s the PN’s fault as well that the new Parliamentary Secretary for Lands is blissfully unaware, as she confidently declared last week, that in 2009 we legislated to grant, for the first time, the right to judicial review of any public purpose both in any expropriation and also in any termination of any agricultural lease for a public purpose. I am proud to have authored that amendment which shows that a PN government never shied away from being subject to scrutiny.
The Office of the Prime Minister would do well to heed Abraham Lincoln’s admonition: you cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
Jason Azzopardi is shadow minister for home affairs and national security.