It was Minister Varist who gave the game away.

On Monday, during the debate asked for by the Opposition on the power station delays, Minister Evarist Bartolo spoke well before Minister Konrad Mizzi did.

Now, properly speaking, energy and the power station are not exactly within the minister's remit, even though, as a senior minister and politician he is free to intervene on any matter under discussion.

I reached my assumption when I compared Minister Bartolo's speech with that of Minister Konrad Mizzi. There is one element which binds them together and which differentiates these two speeches with the rest of the speeches made on Monday by the government side. The two alleged corruption on the part of the preceding PN administration.

Had Minister Konrad Mizzi's been the only speech made, which claimed corruption by the preceding administration, one would have found that understandable in the circumstances, given the heat of the debate and the fact that the minister was under attack due to the perceived delays in the construction of the power station.

In fact, as anybody who was following the debate can vouch for, the attack on George Pullicino came out almost as an afterthought, at the end of the argument. We do not know, and perhaps we never will, what spurred the attack. For even though Mr Pullicino had been one of the last PN speakers in the debate, his speech, anyway as I remember it, did not include any new line of attack and was not particularly vicious.

Or was it really a spur of the moment thing? That is where Minister Varist's speech becomes suddenly more significant. It points away from spur of the moment and in the direction of a pre-planned tactical decision, taken for a strategic purpose, the aim being, as in many such cases, to deflect attention away from the subject under discussion - i.e. the late delivery of the new power station - to open up a discussion along a different route which it is presumed people would jump on.

There the thrusts of attack diverged: Minister Bartolo claimed a report on the corruption in fuel procurement had been drawn up, but then the Security Services were ordered by someone on a minister's team to trash the evidence.

The reactions to this claim were two denials by former Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and one by former minister Austin Gatt. Mr Bartolo has not added anything, so far as is known, to his original claim. His claim, having been made in Parliament, cannot be the subject of a court case so Mr Bartolo's claim remains hanging in mid-air.

Minister Konrad Mizzi's claim with regard to George Pullicino is still half-investigated.

On Tuesday, Minister Mizzi seemed eager to explain the context but his words were cut short by the Speaker who only wanted to know if Dr Mizzi was ready to apologise (he was not).

Mr Pullicino has reported the matter to the police and asked for an investigation, so the case may have a coda. There may also, of course, be a coda of sorts in Parliament according to the House's rules and procedures.

This half-allegation, and the other half-allegation may, or may not, have some substance in them, and equally may not have any substance at all. The overall impression one gets, however, is there was a concerted, planned, effort to divert attention from what is, or is not, happening at Delimara where the promised new power station is so far just a scratch in the ground.

Originally, it seems, Minister Konrad Mizzi intended to make a statement in the House. Then the Opposition came up with its motion of censure and the minister obliged by rattling all sorts of developments and new decisions and details in that rapid-fire voice of his (getting all sorts of oaths from newsmen who tried and did not succeed in keeping up with him), spruced with the irrelevant and inconsequential attack on Mr Pullicino.

I still cannot get it, this current fad by ministers, (and now the Opposition as well) of holding stand-up press conferences mainly in public spaces and of course with no documentation at all. To my probably old-fashioned mind, nothing beats a sit-down press conference with supporting documentation and time allocated to questions and clarifications. There may, of course, be other reasons, but I always think those who hold such stand-up press briefings have something to hide or obfuscate. A newsperson that is standing up is more prone to get his scribbles wrong or to go along with the spin being offered.

In this particular case, my assumption is there was a strategy behind the two allegations of corruption and this was to divert attention from focusing on the delays in the gas power station project and then to obfuscate the listeners with the minister rattling a whole series of new developments and decisions each of which would need a press conference all on its own. The over-all impression given would thus be of a government moving ahead to implement its electoral programme even if some things have been delayed.

Then again, this sets you thinking: why all this obfuscation and diverting of attention? Unless there is a greater disarray than meets the eye. For all we know is what we can see or not see - i.e. the non-appearance of the new power station. Then other details started to creep out and come out in the wash: the tri-partite negotiations are not concluded, the purchase of Enemalta shares not done yet (there probably are huge legal steps to be taken before that takes place for Enemalta, though a public limited company, and wholly government-owned, needs significant action just to quantify it and turn it to shares). Unless there is a simpler explanation, no one seems to have explained the disappearance of the Azerbaijan component and its substitution by Shell.

In other words, this whole business is so complicated that maybe not even those involved can understand all its ramifications, let alone the wider public. So what's better than wave the tried and tested red rag of PN corruption that served so well in the pre-electoral years?

That must have been the reasoning at the core strategy group which Minister Bartolo may now have rejoined (if he as ever out of it). Something tells me there are Minister Bartolo's fingerprints on all this.

 

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