Opposition Leader Alfred Sant yesterday kept up the pressure on Competitiveness Minister Censu Galea, arguing that the minister had no place at the ministerial Cabinet of Lawrence Gonzi’s government.

The minister, he charged, did not have political integrity and should resign.

Addressing a news conference, Dr Sant said that on Tuesday evening, Mr Galea replied in parliament to comments made by Dr Sant in parliament on Monday. But the situation, Dr Sant said yesterday, was that the facts had remained the same.

Dr Sant said the facts were that Mr Galea in 2002 had lied in parliament because in an answer he had given to a parliamentary question, he had said exactly the opposite of what he was admitting in private. In a private meeting with his canvassers and consultants, Mr Galea had admitted knowing, among others, that there was in the Transport Authority a “spider” of abuses, and some employees were prepared to testify falsely to cover up each other’s wrong. Mr Galea had added that he was more than certain that there were employees who did not report for work but who signed in just the same.

At the same time that the minister in private was making these serious admissions, Dr Sant said, the minister in parliament in an answer to a parliamentary question by MP Carmelo Abela, had said that no employees had been found to be not at work.

This was misleading parliament. On Tuesday, the minister had tried to edge himself out of the corner by saying that the question had referred to departments falling under his responsibility but the Transport Authority was not a department. This was a banal excuse, Dr Sant said. No one would believe it and it confirmed that the minister did not have political integrity.

The minister should be responsible for his actions if he truly believed in transparency, accountability and efficiency, Dr Sant said. But instead of getting the minister’s resignation, they had a person who had been arrested and held at the police headquarters for investigation because Mr Galea had got it into his head that this person had recorded him in private.

Dr Sant also pointed out that in parliament on Monday, he had referred to a person who was jailed for drug trafficking. A company with clear links to this person had been contracted to do cleaning work at the private secretariat of justice parliamentary secretary Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici. This person, Dr Sant said, had been given bail against a deposit of Lm25,000 which in the past days had been paid in hard cash.

Dr Sant said that a person going to a bank to deposit Lm5,000 would have to answer questions such as about where the money came from. He had asked in parliament if anything was going to be asked about the payment of these Lm25,000 in hard cash

To date, he added, he had been given no reply. And the ministers in Lawrence Gonzi’s government, he said, wanted to act as if they were champions of accountability, transparency, and efficiency.