I've visited, over and over again, the parliamentary debates web page to make sure that my hearing wasn't playing tricks on me.

I am referring to the sitting of 20 July, specifically a little after Question Time.

Parliamentary Secretary Michael Falzon rose and the House for permission to give a personal explanation, a request which went unopposed.

It was the little matter of the €260,000 he managed, against all odds, to convince Bank of Valletta that they were duly his for relinquishing temporarily his appointment at the bank in order to unselfishly render public service

One must remember that Dr Falzon wangled a deal with the bank that was described by the bank itself as "unique". He retained the right to go back to his post, if he so wished, as if nothing had happened.

A little background: that diamond handshake with the bank was to run for four years from 2014 to 2018, the year pencilled in for the next general election.

Having given the explanation, Michael Falzon was then obliged to answer questions.

To Simon Busuttil's question: "How much of the €260,000 are to be returned if you go back to the bank in 2018?" Dr Falzon answered that should he go back to the bank the day following that very sitting of Parliament, he would be bound to pay back all the €260,000, as the contract was on a pro rata basis.

What does this mean?

This means that if Dr Falzon went back exactly one year from the day he left the bank, he is entitled to keep one year of the €260,000 (i.e., €260,000 divided by four, i.e., €65,000) and return the amount remaining for the three years, i.e., €195,000. 

Simon Busuttil rebutted this by saying that that wasn't the question he put to Michael Falzon.

Dr Busuttil repeated the question: "How much of the €260,000 are to be returned if you go back to the bank in 2018?"

The answer Dr Falzon gave defies a non-lawyer's logic, a non-lawyer's common sense: He said that if he went back to the bank in 2018, he would have to give back all of the €260,000.

This final assertion of his flies in the face of what he had said minutes earlier, that the contract with the bank was on a pro rata basis.

If this means, as Michael Falzon himself contended, that he would have to return all of the €260,000 were he to return the day following that very sitting of Parliament because the contract was on a pro rata basis, surely this must also mean that returning to the bank in 2018, when the deal runs out, would entitle Michael Falzon to keep all the €260,000.

Michael Falzon is a self-proclaimed bird hunter. He can look a turtle dove or a quail straight in the eye without flinching, without batting an eyelid.

With nerves of steel and all the sangfroid in the world, his trigger-finger does its work and Michael Falzon has notched up another kill.

Thus I cannot understand how he contradicted himself in a statement he himself had asked permission of the House to give, a statement he must have gone over with all his lawyer's and hunter's instinct when working on it.

Could it be that he went weak at the knees and muffed his lines under the withering, doe-eyed gaze of Simon Busuttil?

Cut the waffle Mike and come clean.

 

Joe Genovese