Maybe the delaying tactics Austin Gatt is employing in the Delimara power station contract saga will have the effect he is hoping for.

People soon move on to the latest interesting topic and tend to lose interest when something drags on for too long.

The Public Accounts Committee is still struggling to find where the smoke, the Auditor General Anthony Mifsud detected, was coming from and Minister Gatt is deploying all the sprinklers to prevent witnesses, who can possibly provide where the sparks originated, from being interviewed.

Replying to the Minister, at the last PAC meeting on Tuesday Mr Mifsud repeated his original statement that the “NAO found no hard evidence of corruption but it saw many coincidences which made one wonder. There was smoke but no fire was found.”

So we have a mystery to solve folks! Is the smoke a stage prop, a political gimmick, or something more serious?

The PAC is meant to be a parliamentary watchdog that monitors, inspects and examines that the government is spending our money wisely and diligently.

In The Times last Sunday, Minister Gatt stated, “the Public Accounts Committee is not an investigating committee”. Now is that not chewing the word “investigative” about like gum?

To investigate means to explore and analyse, which falls neatly into the PAC’s remit. But Austin Gatt is comparing it to the notorious US Mc Carthy Hearings in the 1950s because it wants to question key witnesses.

The reality is that despite Austin Gatt’s insistence that no corruption has been proven; there are still unanswered questions on whether the taxpayer’s money was spent judiciously.

That is precisely what should come under the PAC’s scrutiny and how can it do that without hearing evidence from key people?

I know that “no hard evidence” has been flogged, or chewed, to death, but it does imply doubt.

Had there been no evidence of corruption at all, the word “hard” would be redundant. It was the “many coincidences, which made one wonder” that made the PAC chairman want to interview the witnesses that withheld vital information from the Auditor preventing him from getting to the bottom of the case.

Defining what he meant by “smoke”, in response to Helena Dalli’s (LP) question, at Tuesday’s PAC meeting, Mr Mifsud said, “there were a series of coincidences throughout the tendering process, which favoured the eventual tender winner, the Danish company BWSC.”

A coincidence he mentioned was that in a series of technical meetings, Maltese agent Joseph Mizzi, a former Enemalta employee, managed to “arrange for BWSC to always have the last meeting, between the Corporation and the bidders, after Enemalta met the other bidders”, reported, The Times on Wednesday.

The implication is that favouritism had been acquired through Mr Mizzi’s contacts at Enemalta.

Now Mr Mizzi (BWSC agent) is the person who the auditor singled out as being the most uncooperative witness. So it is understandable that a Public Accounts Committee would want to question him.

It was also strange how (consultancy firm) Lehmayer (a World Bank blacklisted company) initially offered its services as advisor and was turned down, and then Enemalta itself sought its services a month later, said the auditor.

Yet, another example of a lack of due diligence was admitted by Former Enemalta chief executive officer Spiteri Gingell on national television (May 18): “I admit my mistake by choosing Lahmeyer International because I assumed that, since the Malta Resources Authority had worked with them in the past, they had already been vetted... I got it wrong. I only knew about their (Lahmeyer) blacklisting when the news broke out in Malta.”

Well, he could not be fired because Former Enemalta chief executive officer Spiteri Gingell’s tenure of the adjudication committee for the power station extension terminated on 4 April 2009 when he presented the recommendations for adjudication.

He also admitted that with hindsight he should have “never accepted to continue chairing the committee once I resigned as CEO of the corporation.”

Yet, Austin Gatt is objecting to both Mr Mizzi and Mr Spiteri Gingell, as well as all the other witnesses, from being questioned.

From reading the media reports, it seems that Minister Gatt ran the last PAC meeting.

On 24 October, I wrote that he had told reporters he “would have no difficulty answering any questions. But the PAC had no function to force reticent witnesses to speak up.”

What Dr Gatt means is that he knows how to field awkward questions but is anxious that not all the witnesses would, I opined.

At Tuesday’s meeting the minister was not answering questions to the PAC but cross-examining the Auditor General.

He is also using questionable tactics to back up his opposition to the calling of witnesses like “The PAC had no function to force reticent witnesses to speak up”.

How would the PAC “force reticent witnesses to speak up”? Has it resorted to water boarding?

And in his interview with The Times last Sunday “I disagree that the PAC should be turned into a McCarthy style scenario”.

Comparing Malta’s PAC to the US McCarthy Hearings is ludicrous. The man cannot be serious!

He delves deeper into the mire by bringing up the “former Ġakketta Blu, Charles Demicoli case during the Labour regime,” which was completely different in both political scenario and content.

He was obviously using the emotional card by appealing to the people who had suffered under that administration to support his stand.

“...It is not right to give licence to parliamentarians to do what the hell they like because they’re sitting in that chair... It’s not right for democracy and it’s not right to hang someone publicly – even if it means I will end up looking bad in the media, ” he said in the interview.

So in Minister Gatt’s opinion getting people to help the PAC analyse what exactly went on is being undemocratic and getting people to answer to questions pertaining to the possible incorrect use of public funds is hanging them publicly.

He exhibited his grilling expertise very well on Tuesday, and told the AG “you found no evidence of corruption, no evidence of any of these persons having been corrupted, no evidence of trading in influence, and no evidence that anyone accepted to use his influence, right?”

To which the AG replied “that was the case, in view of the information available to the Audit office” and he again pointed out, “there had been lack of cooperation from some people who the NAO had questioned.”

And this is the crux of the whole shebang. The AG’s investigation result was misty, hazy and grey due to crucial people withholding vital information and it will remain so if the PAC is not allowed to question those same people.

As I have opined before Ministers should not even be on parliamentary committees.

Especially, when they have been involved in the affair being scrutinised.

Otherwise, it would seem that they are the parliamentarians who “do what the hell they like because they’re sitting in that chair”.

The power station came under Minister Gatt’s portfolio at the time the contract was being worked on and finalised.

Although our PAC structure is based on the UK’s Public Accounts Committee, Cabinet ministers in the UK are expressly excluded from sitting on the Committee.

Whereas here, Ministers Tonio Fenech and Austin Gatt, the former now Energy Minister, are on the PAC. Tonio Fenech was not at the meeting on Tuesday.

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