Opposition spokesman Leo Brincat continues, in periodic tantrums, to try to set a partisan agenda by asking banal questions so as to spin artificial stories, the foreign ministry said yesterday.
He was continuing to ask whether anyone knew beforehand about the issue of the son of Ambassador Richard Muscat, a question which has already been answered many times.
The Foreign Affairs Minister has on innumerable occasions consistently said that he had no prior knowledge of this case.
As to the Voice of the Mediterranean offices, the ministry said, Mr Brincat was once more trying to create a detective story where none existed: no one can reasonably expect the ministry to start footing the bill for the rental of premises for a station which has shut down.
Naturally, in the normal course of things, before packing and restoring the assets of the radio station, until it is liquidated, the ministry has taken a detailed inventory of the items in the building before arranging for storage elsewhere. Mr Brincat’s attempts at creating some conspiracy theory are ludicrous and quite pathetic, it added.
As for the Central Mediterranean Economic forum, which Mr Brincat persists on calling the Mediterranean Economic Forum, Minister Frendo has stated on record that this will be launched towards the end of the last quarter of this year. Mr Brincat, while endorsing this initiative taken by the minister, keeps saying that there is not enough support from countries for this idea.
In fact this project relates to collaboration not between countries but between economic and civil society operators, and the ministry, as it has consistently said, will act as a catalyst for these economic and civil society operators from Malta, Italy (Sicily in particular), Libya and Tunisia. Mr Brincat cannot therefore miss the point, the ministry said.
However, it added, the top placing for banality was reserved for Mr Brincat’s insistence that the minister make public where he has been with regard to lobbying in relation to Malta’s official candidature of its foreign minister for the post of Secretary General of the Commonwealth.
Mr Brincat, the ministry said, was aware that there were other contenders for this post and that therefore it was naive to expect Malta to publicly reveal its strategy by giving a detailed account of the countries and persons visited by its foreign minister.
The minister has already requested a meeting, in camera, with the Foreign and European Affairs Committee at the earliest opportunity when Parliament is next in session to discuss his visits. “This is the sensible way to approach this matter,” it said.