The government is giving a guarantee it will go on with corrupt practices by celebrating a National Audit Office report on the power station as a “certificate of best practice”, Opposition leader Adrian Delia said on Sunday.

The NAO report found various shortcomings in the 2013 selection process that saw Electrogas winning the contract to build the new power station. Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi, who was responsible for the contract as energy minister, said after the report was issued that there was “no evidence of wrongdoing” against him, adding that “every process could have certain shortcomings”.

By praising the report, the government was giving a guarantee it would go on with the same things, Dr Delia said in a Net TV phone interview, adding that contracts such as this showed how bidders were not being treated equally.

Normal people, who could not offer any favours, were treated as second-class, Dr Delia said. “Corruption is costing the country and money made from it is going to some people and not others,” he added.

Dr Delia was also asked about his view on the debate held in parliament on Thursday on a motion seeking a public inquiry into the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

“When a journalist is murdered, her murder is an attack on the media and on allowing people to speak their mind,” he said. The inquiry he argued, was needed to establish if her murder could have been avoided and to safeguard freedom of expression.

Turning to the Nationalist Party fund-raising marathon being held on Sunday, Dr Delia said the PN was not a party that took land or property from people for its own use. 

"We want to be a party of the people for the people, he said.

Insisting that he did not give much importance to surveys, but to what the people said, Dr Delia recounted how in the past few days he met a group of Labour party members who handed over their membership to him because they were sick and tired of the government, he said.

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