Echoing statements he made during a press conference on Saturday, Dr Sant said that it was unacceptable that the chairman and secretary of the Foundation for Medical Services, responsible for the mismanagement of the project, had found their way on to the negotiating team that is now handling the cost over-runs issue with Skanska.

Speaking at a party activity held at the Balzan MLP club, Dr Sant said that not only had FMS chairman Paul Camilleri and secretary Jaqueline Camilleri been appointed to the negotiating team, but they are being paid ridiculously high salaries for it, Dr Sant said.

Quoting from correspondence from Parliamentary Secretary Tonio Borg to director of contracts Joe Spiteri about the matter, Dr Sant said that Mr Camilleri will be paid Lm43 per hour while Ms Camilleri will receive Lm20 per hour.

On Saturday, Dr Sant had revealed the contents of the letters Parliamentary Secretary Borg had sent to the director of contracts. On 6 August, Mr Fenech, on behalf of the Prime Minister, asked the director of contracts to verify whether the salaries contemplated for the negotiating team were reasonable. The negotiating team includes lawyer Richard Camilleri, Michael Ganado from Pricewaterhousecoopers and British expert John Barr, as well as Mr Camilleri and Ms Camilleri.

Dr Richard Camilleri will be paid Lm45 per hour, the PWC team Lm32 per hour and Mr Barr will receive Lm500 per day for his consultancy, together with a Lm300 travel allowance and accommodation, subsistence and car hire allowances.

Quoting passages from Mr Fenech’s letter, Dr Sant said that Mr Fenech told the director of contracts that in view of past experience, the remuneration packages envisaged were deemed reasonable. “He was basically telling him how he should answer,” said Dr Sant.

In his reply, Mr Spiteri said that he found the salaries in question generally fair and reasonable, in view of the complex nature of the consultancy and the high profile of the project. He explained, however, that he was giving his confirmation on the understanding that the engagement is short-term and in no way an open-ended one, said Dr Sant.

The salaries were agreed before the correspondence between Mr Fenech and Mr Spiteri, Dr Sant said, adding that the scandalous part was the fact that the members of the FMS who had given a bad service to the Maltese government had now been placed on this committee and were even being paid well for it.

Dr Sant pointed out that the government had the Management Efficiency Unit at its disposal – a team set up specifically for this sort of job. “There was no need to have this special negotiating team”, he said. “It’s just another case of the ‘I’ll scratch your back and you scratch mine’ policy that the Nationalist Party has adopted at the expense of the Maltese.”

This was yet another example of how the Gonzi leadership was shackled by the way the PN had always done politics under the Fenech Adami administration. The Prime Minister gave a preview of what was to come when he chose Dr Fenech Adami as Malta’s President, despite opposition, even from within the party’s own fold.

Making reference to the Dar Malta issue, Dr Sant said that over the summer, the Maltese people had had another opportunity to witness what he called the ‘friends of friends’-driven leadership of the Nationalist party. On his appointment, the Prime Minister said he wanted to rein in the budget deficit but at the same time he had had no qualms in spending lavishly on the Brussels embassy, he said.

To cover up the mistake, Dr Gonzi then tried to justify the purchase with flimsy excuses, Dr Sant said. In a recent interview, Dr Gonzi said that the government had had to make a quick decision about the purchase because another government was bidding, said Dr Sant. However when this claim was investigated it was found that the government in question had been really interested in the property but then was put off by the high price.

“The purchase of the embassy was nothing other that an exercise to satisfy Richard Cachia Caruana and the circle of friends involved in the purchase,” he said. Even the claims that two floors of the building could be leased were weak, he said, as this would probably exclude Malta from applying for EU tax exemptions because the purchase would no longer be strictly for official use.

He said that this was the same sort of mess as that made with the embassy the government bought in London a few years back. It is not true, said Dr Sant, that the value of the London embassy has soared since its purchase. The truth is that a lot of offices in the building are empty and the government had to push parastatal entities such as Air Malta to occupy the place.

“The most interesting part however is that a lot of the criticism levelled at the purchase of Dar Malta did not come from the MLP,” he said. “We made our comments but the decision was mostly criticised by traditionally PN-leaning quarters.”

The people are realising from experience that it is no longer possible for the country to keep going in this direction, he said. The country needs serious leadership, said Dr Sant. Some think that advocating serious leadership is unattractive but the country is going through a phase where serious leadership is indispensable and the people are conscious of this, he said.