Leo Brincat said it was useless for Minister Austin Gatt to flaunt the qualifications of his secretariat’s head in evaluating tenders worth millions of liri relating to information technology.

Mr Brincat, the Labour Party’s spokesman for foreign affairs and IT, said his reservations were not about the person but because a person who was so close to the minister should not sit on a tenders evaluation team related to IT, for which the minister was directly responsible. Especially, he added, when he recalled how Dr Gatt’s party used to create a hullabaloo when members of Labour ministers’ secretariats served on some minor board or other.

The explanation the minister gave that the information relating to the involvement of the secretariat head had been public did not at all weaken his point that this could be against administrative ethics and transparency, Mr Brincat said, denying he had tried to intimidate anyone.

Dr Gatt, replying to Mr Brincat’s statement, said rules on ethics were not created by Mr Brincat, but were there in writing and published. He challenged Mr Brincat to mention where these ethics had been violated or one instance where the secretariat head had acted wrongly.

If neither was done, he could not but conclude that Mr Brincat had ulterior motives to interfere in tenders which had not yet been evaluated.