Verbal hostilities between the government and the opposition over a huge computers tender continued yesterday, with opposition spokesman Leo Brincat accusing Minister Austin Gatt of arrogance and failing to answer questions, and the latter countering by saying that the opposition thought it had a veto over what the government could do.

The war of words is over a computer leasing tender for the public service and government schools. The traders association, the GRTU, has said that small operators in the sector will be wiped out as a result.

On Tuesday, Mr Brincat posed various questions and yesterday accused Dr Gatt of demonstrating that he is against transparency by not replying to them. The minister’s “arrogant” reply, he added, showed that the opposition was right to suspect that the decision to issue the tender could have been based on purely political criteria.

The questions he had asked, Mr Brincat added, were being asked by small and medium operators in the informatics sector and by the public.

If the minister believed that for the opposition to ask questions amounted to being hostile to information technology, he was risking having a country where arrogance reigned instead of a country that was a centre of excellence.

Dr Gatt replied by saying that Mr Brincat thought that the wish for political consensus on an information society meant that the Labour Party had a veto over what the government could and could not do in the sector.

The opposition had no grounds for serious doubts and Mr Brincat should substantiate his allegations.

Dr Gatt went on to repeat accusations he had made that Mr Brincat was against

families having the opportunity to purchase computers at knock-down prices, against equipping community technology learning centres, and against the government

purchasing computers at the least total cost of ownership possible.