The Nationalist Party has branded former Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi as a “coward” and a “chicken” for refusing to face Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and field questions on the Electrogas power station. 

Mizzi was due to attend the PAC meeting on Wednesday afternoon to face questions about his role in the controversial power station project, which PN MP Beppe Fenech Adami labelled as the Labour Party’s “monument to corruption”, but announced on social media that he would not be participating in the meeting. 

The former Minister, who resigned his post in November 2019 and has since been booted out of the Labour Party as well, said that “The Electrogas project has already been scrutinized by the Office of the Auditor General, which has completely dispelled the Opposition's allegations.” 

“That is why I regard the call of the Public Accounts Committee as nothing more than a partisan political exercise pushed by the Nationalist Party,” he said. 

Fenech Adami, who chairs the PAC, said that the committee had the intention of asking Mizzi to shed light on his involvement in the power station project and in bringing the main players behind it together. 

“But Konrad Mizzi – who has boasted that he has nothing to hide and nothing to be afraid of – today, as the coward and chicken that he is, refused to come to the committee to defend the biggest project he was responsible for,” Fenech Adami said. 

He questioned what Prime Minister Robert Abela will do following Mizzi’s refusal to defend the project. 

“Will you keep defending this project, or will you wash your hands of it as well and not answer questions?” 

He also said that there is a level of responsibility which has to be shown from the police force in that they must examine the conclusions of the NAO report, the testimonies given in the Daphne Caruana Galizia public inquiry, and the testimonies heard in the PAC itself. 

PN MP Karol Aquilina, also a member of the PAC, gave a laundry list of questions which the Opposition MPs were going to ask Mizzi. 

Among them were questions on what agreements existed between the Labour Party and the investors behind the power station Yorgen Fenech and Paul Apap Bologna prior to the 2013 general election. 

Aquilina said that they were also going to ask Mizzi what agreement he had struck with former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat in order for him to end up as Energy Minister.

Aquilina added that they were going to ask Mizzi what he had been doing on trips to Dubai and what his interests there were. 

“How many millions did you receive in corruption from Electrogas” and “How much money have you laundered in the past few years” were also among the questions dictated by Aquilina, as were “Did you ever speak to [Nexia BT’s] Brian Tonna about Egrant” and “Do you know who Egrant belongs to.” 

PN MP Ryan Callus – the Opposition’s other member on the PAC – said that Konrad Mizzi’s failure to appear before the committee was another action against the average citizen who continues to be overcharged in their electricity bills. 

Asked by The Malta Independent what the next step for the PAC is and whether there are any other mechanisms which the party can fall back on in order to bring Mizzi before the committee, Fenech Adami explained that Mizzi had invoked a parliamentary regulation – something he can do as he is still an independent MP – in order to refuse to testify before the committee. 

Fenech Adami didn’t say it directly, but because of this regulation, there is nothing the PN can do to bring Mizzi before the committee. 

“We need to make the distinction – an MP has a right not to come; but he has a duty to come.  Konrad Mizzi has a duty to come and explain the project he gave birth to.  If he had a shred of decency, he would have decided to come and answer the questions which have the be answered,” the PN MP said.