The news that the government has guaranteed Electrogas Malta Ltd's loan from the Bank of Valletta to the tune of €88 million has not yet sunk in with the general public. Nor has the Nationalist Party done anything much at all to make sure it sinks in. If the roles were reversed, the Labour Party would have Super One TV and radio blaring the message out every day, on the half-hour every half-hour: that the taxpayer will have to pay this private company's debts to the bank - up to €88 million - if the private company does not pay those debts itself.

The role of guarantor is outside the knowledge and experience of most people, but politicians tend to forget that, because in their line of business or profession they deal with such matters routinely. Going by what I have read, even some journalists are confused about what this actually means, or have missed its true significance. This confusion works to the government's advantage, because the last thing it needs is another scandal, and this time of mega-proportions, to deal with. Luckily for the government, people are more inclined to focus on things around which they can really wrap their minds, to which they can relate: like the Gaffarena/Michael Falzon/Clint Scerri/Valletta/expropriation scandal.

I imagine that this is why the Nationalist Party is running with it, instead of concentrating on the far bigger - enormous, actually - scandal of a government standing as a guarantor to a private company, which is bad enough, let alone for the barely comprehensible sum of €88 million. But the Nationalist Party should know that all of this has to be explained, not for its own political advantage, but in the interests of democracy and the public's right to know. The public has the right to know that €88 million of its money has been committed to make good for the private commercial debts of a company owned by two of the Maltese business families who the Labour Party used to refer to as 'Barunijiet', Siemens, the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan, and Gasol, the British company which was delisted from the London Stock Exchange shortly after winning the Malta power station contract, and which was technically insolvent at that point.

People understand the concept of putting up security for a loan, because it is in their direct or indirect experience. You take out a loan, using your own house or other real estate as security. That's fine; we get that. But the concept of a guarantor is not understood, because the average person cannot comprehend why on earth anyone would put up their own money or immovable property as security for somebody else's loan, which means that they will have to pay off the loan themselves if the borrower defaults - but that they will not get the money because the borrower has taken it already.

It seems like a crazy thing to do, and it is a crazy thing to do. People cannot understand the role of guarantor because it seems like an exercise in madness. In fact, it is usually parents who stand as guarantors for their sons' and daughters' loans, many of them losing their shirts and their homes in the process when the business that seemed like such a good idea goes bad.

So now we have the government of Malta standing as guarantor to a private company called Electrogas Malta Ltd, and not for a chickenfeed sum but for €88 million. Shall I spell it out? This means that if the Gasans, the Fenechs, the Apap Bolognas, Siemens, SOCAR and Gasol don't pay their debts to the Bank of Valletta, the Maltese government will use public funds to pay off the loan for them - up to €88 million. The actual Bank of Valletta loan is larger than that - €101 million - but the government is guaranteeing just €88 million of that.

The Electrogas Malta shareholders are not making good with their own property, money and holdings; they're hanging on to that - everybody else in Malta will be making good for them instead. This is offensive, particularly when we know that Azerbaijan, to mention the most disproportionately affluent of the lot, has just spent billions on the European Games. But beyond that, it stinks of corruption and of a government desperate to solve a mammoth problem of its own making.

It is quite clear now that the 18-month delay in starting work on the power station was due to nothing more than lack of funds. Yes, the government awarded the project to a group of companies which did not - with the exception of Siemens and SOCAR, who are in the shareholding minority, have the wherewithal to deliver. Gasol had about three pounds in the bank, if not a negative balance, and owed money all over the shop. Its published accounts, a few months after it got the government contract, were an absolute disaster. I had uploaded them on my website and people thought they were a mock-up I had done as a joke, or that I had somehow got the wrong company.

This power station business is the government's biggest scandal yet. The Opposition should not let it off the hook. It is beyond belief that Cabinet should have cavalierly put up €88 million in public money to guarantee a private company's loan. It did this only to save face, because otherwise the power station project would have fallen through. The bottom-line is this: that Joseph Muscat has put €88 million in public money at risk to save himself from embarrassment. Simon Busuttil and his people should not let the man get away with it. It is contemptible behaviour.

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