Observations made in the last Public Accounts Committee meeting to discuss the BWSC Delimara power station extension tender show that the exercise is now bordering on the farcical and is nothing more than a waste of time and money.

The real questions people are asking are as follows. Is BWSC a dirty (sic) company? Were kickbacks involved? Why was the law changed at the last minute to favour the BWSC bid? Will we be favouring a plant that uses a fuel that is dangerous when exhausted? How will that sludge be transported? Why are we getting no answers?

There might be a great many more questions, but on the whole, these are the ones that count.

So then why on earth is a committee set up to investigate gross allegations of corruption by the highest institution of the land (the House of Representatives) stuck at square one?

One can scarcely believe it, but in a case where hundreds of millions of euros are involved, yesterday’s session was taken up with trying to establish whether the name of a company allegedly involved was Sumitomo or Sumimoto.

One cannot believe that someone as respected and intelligent as Evarist Bartolo could paint himself into such a tight corner by not verifying his information. Of course, the PN had a field day.

The government, led by the wily and sometimes underhanded Austin Gatt, meanwhile continues to procrastinate and nitpick. Gatt, for all the antipathy of watching him do it, is an expert at procedure within the PAC and has, time and time again, successfully fended off questions simply by beating his opponents on matters of procedure.

The government is, of course, perfectly within the parameters of PAC procedure. But, morally, it is way out of line. People want answers. The government has a duty to answer them. Wrangling procedurally just reinforced the impression that the media and the general public have of the power station extension. That impression is that it was a dirty deal that the government is doing its best to hide, fronted by the heaviest of government heavyweights, the born-again apostle Austin Gatt.

On a side note, it is interesting to analyse Gatt’s jostling for position once he leaves politics. It has already been pointed out in some sections of the media that it makes no difference whether he resigns from parliament or not (even though he has already announced his intention to step down). If he does, he will be replaced by a PN candidate anyway. So it will not be parliament that will lose Gatt. It will be the PN that loses Gatt, and how utterly terrible that would be with the PAC business up in the air.

The lines blur more and more as days go by. Politicians with ulterior motives are getting away with proverbial murder at every opportunity… No wonder this country is going to the dogs.

All the while this is happening, the PL tells us that it is to fight tooth and nail against corruption. Yet, it cannot even get the name of a company right. What a state of affairs. While the government bends the rules, the opposition cannot even be trusted to get them back into line. Please give us back the likes of Fenech Adami, de Marco, Borg, Galea and, yes, even Alfred Sant. At their worst, they still outperformed the current crop on a good day by a country mile.

Parliament – the fast track to somewhere if you’re either bent, intellectually challenged or jostling for a future job. It is such a shame for those very few who are really there to give a service to the country. They make the Empire of Rome’s Senate antics look like schoolboy pranks.