The biggest joke last week was that while everybody was up in arms against the inefficiency of Enemalta, nobody from the Nationalist side said a word about political responsibility and accountability. To make matters worse, the minister concerned asked Enemalta to apologise to the public, thus shifting responsibility from his ministry entirely to the corporation concerned.

It was less than a fortnight ago that in another newspaper’s business supplement the chairman of the corporation boasted that: Enemalta is getting its act together;

We started strengthening the management from top levels down;

A board of management, including a CEO, is now running Enemalta while the board of directors and the chairman decide on policy and direction.

It would be pertinent to find out whose head has rolled for the inefficient manner in which the island was allowed to run short of gas cylinders, ironically at a time when the cold weather was at its worst.

Driving past the queue at Luxol Grounds two Sundays ago, I suddenly imagined myself in war-torn Yugoslavia with people queuing up for their ration of food before the bombing struck again.

Once, according to the chairman, Enemalta is in the process of getting its act together and it also has its board of management in place, it is in the public interest to find out who is being held responsible for this gross mismanagement.

The chairman must have definitely been made to eat humble pie when only a few days before the gas shortage peaked he stated in the local press that, although Enemalta took a long time to design the middle management structure they are now going to be decision-makers and they are going to be accountable. He also told us that they are on a three-year contract and if they do not perform they will be out.

There is no safety net – hollered the corporation’s chairman.

In spite of all these reassurances it seems that there is more than one safety net and that the first person to make recourse to it was the minister himself.

I still vividly recall how the Nationalists used to claim that with the Delimara power station there would not be any further need for the Marsa power station.

It now seems that the government has performed another U-turn in the energy sector.

We had always been under the impression that the Marsa power plant was the most inefficient of the two.

We have now found out that according to the corporation’s chairman, although Marsa has around 19 per cent efficiency it ran on $180 per metric ton fuel oil, while Delimara which has an efficiency of 33 per cent runs on diesel that costs $400 per metric ton.

We have also been told that the pollution from Marsa power station is now negligible, so much so that according to the chairman everything has improved.

“Just look at the cars,” he exclaimed. “There is no black any more, no dust, no sulphur. We are now using the right fuel, the right filtration and we can maintain it all.”

Although the chairman described himself as an environmentalist he even had the cheek to finally admit that the Marsa power station is now here to stay!

In spite of having cautioned the government during the EU negotiation process that the oil stock requirements will be too onerous for us, at that time our criticism had been dismissed lightly.

This time round the chairman stated that Enemalta now faces the headache of having to store strategic stocks, according to an EU imposed schedule which is increasing incrementally until it reached 90 days supply.

While a few months ago we had been told that the government almost had a headache choosing from among the numerous bidders for MOBC we have now found out that the government has abandoned the MOBC’s privatisation, primarily because it was not offered the amounts it was hoping for. So much so that the highest bid was $12million.

We have now learnt that gas supplies will be distributed in various retail outlets.

What do the health and safety authorities have to say about this proposal?

There are a couple of questions which I hope the minister will answer unless he has answered them in Parliament already (when this article appears in print I will be in Poland on parliamentary business).

It is in the public interest to find out what happened to the MOBC CEO who also used to serve as main consultant to Enemalta on fuels.

Did he resign, was he made to resign or was he dismissed?

A clear explanation is solicited from the minister concerned.

Syria and Lebanon

The recent Hariri killing has shifted the focus once again on Syria’s presence in Lebanon. It is reported to still dominate Lebanon’s foreign policy and has effectively occupied large sections of its smaller neighbour for nearly 30 years.

There are currently 15,000 Syrian troops in Lebanon and Hezbollah has long operated in Southern Lebanon.

The Syrian troops have been there since 1976.

It is a pity that Hariri’s death came at a time when Lebanon was still under occupation, since the war ended in 1990 it had been rebuilding itself in the literal sense of the word. Before the civil war started, many used to refer to Beirut as “the Paris of the Middle East”.

I do not in any way intend to imply that Hariri’s leadership was spotless. Many stories of graft and corruption were in circulation.

However, it is to his credit that the skyscrapers and luxury hotels in the city’s down town had come to reflect “an economic resurgence that steadily erased some of the evidence of the devastating war”.

Since Israel pulled out in 2000, attention has been focused again on Syrian troops. UN Resolution 1559 passed in September 2004, is the latest Security Council action on foreign presence in Lebanon.

The signals Syria has been sending that it intends to withdraw from Lebanon, have not been taken seriously by all foreign countries. But I personally feel that they should not be dismissed lightly.

Putting them to the test is far better and far more reasonable than writing off such promises from the outset.

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Leo Brincat is the main opposition spokesperson on foreign affairs and IT.