Konrad Mizzi was in the news again this week, and again for the wrong reasons.

A report submitted by the National Audit Office sharply criticised the deal reached by the government, when Mizzi was responsible for the health portfolio, for the transfer of three hospitals to the private sector.

The NAO spoke about its concerns “on the negotiation process between the government and the VGH, which process remained opaquely concealed to the NAO due to the lack of documentation kept and conflicting accounts provided by those involved.”

“Graver still was the government representatives’ failure to consult with critical stakeholders. This resulted in the concession failing to meet its objectives, be it the health infrastructure improvements and the classification of the concession as off-balance sheet, with the VGH’s capital expenditure on the project registered on the government’s accounts,” the NAO said.

These are, in short, some of the major shortcomings found by the NAO.

But what is perhaps worse is that the NAO was ignored by Mizzi in its investigation.

“Several attempts to meet with Konrad Mizzi… remained unaddressed,” the NAO said.

“The gravity of this failure was rendered evident in the NAO’s report through the pivotal role played by Mizzi in this concession. His failure to attend to the several requests made by the NAO was deemed a serious shortcoming in terms of the level of accountability expected of a former minister of government and in terms of the standard of good governance that ought to have characterised a project as material and as important to the national health services as was this.”

It is not the first time that Mizzi has been criticised for this kind of behaviour. He has built a reputation of delays, no-shows and, when he does turn up, non-answers.

Fans

In spite of all this, Labour supporters still love him and, given the chance, they would still vote for him.

Judging by reactions on the social media each time he speaks up, Konrad Mizzi is still revered by many diehard Labourites.

They consider him as an important part of the team that, in 2013, ousted the Nationalist Party from Castille. For them, it’s enough to be considered as a hero for a lifetime.

Never mind that, some years later, he was kicked out of the Labour Party parliamentary group. For political reasons, we were then told. We are judging him on a political level, not from a legal point of view, Prime Minister Robert Abela had said at the time.

In other words, Mizzi was seen as a burden for the Labour Party, politically-speaking. They no longer wanted to carry his baggage.

And, yet, the PL and its representatives still rise up in his defence each and every time, including during Public Accounts Committee meetings held in the latter part of the year.

Mizzi is no longer officially part of the PL parliamentary group, but he is shielded by Labour exponents as if he were one. In a twist, he has been given more protection than Rosianne Cutajar who, after losing her place as parliamentary secretary earlier this year, saw her colleagues in the Standards Committee vote to endorse a report that found her in breach of ethics. She must not have been happy about this.

Mind you, what Labour did on Cutajar was the correct decision, but it also shows that the PL is treating Mizzi with kid gloves.

He probably knows too much about too many to be thrown to the dogs.

Star

Mizzi had been presented as one of the rising stars in Joseph Muscat movement before the 2013 election. Actually, he was made to appear as the brightest among the list of candidates that the PL put forward on the ballot sheet. He was put on the frontline more than others, and had already built a name for himself long before the day of the election arrived.

He had all the solutions for the energy sector, one that Labour wanted to revolutionise to dismantle what it then described as the “cancer factory” and give Malta cleaner power. Mizzi still boasts of his achievements, as he did in his forays at the PAC.

He was first named as Energy Minister when Muscat was elected, but one year later his portfolio was expanded to cover also health, becoming a super ministry. Such was the trust Muscat had in Mizzi’s capabilities.

Mizzi’s popularity within the Labour fold increased to such an extent that he was also elected as deputy leader. No doubt, it was a step towards taking over the headship of the party and government when Muscat called it a day. The intentions were clear enough.

Downfall

But things do not always go as planned.

The Panama Papers were published. At first, it was thought that Labour could ride out the storm. It was believed that it would go away quickly and it would soon be back to business as usual.

The pressure, however, kept on mounting. Mizzi had to give up his seat as deputy leader, and Muscat officially took away his responsibilities for energy and health. Officially is the key word, as deep down, as Minister at the OPM, Mizzi was still overseeing the sectors. Mizzi did not lose the title of minister, another sign that Muscat did not want to relegate him.

A confirmation of this was when Mizzi was, again, given the role of minister, this time of tourism, when the PL was re-elected to power in 2017. Muscat’s confidence in Mizzi had no bounds.

But it was short-lived, again.

Mizzi handed in his resignation in November 2019 a few days before Muscat announced he was to quit as PM. It was the week in which the third part of the triumvirate, Keith Schembri, resigned as chief of staff. It was the month when Yorgen Fenech was arrested and later charged with the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Mizzi had said – and continues to insist to this very day – that he had no connection with Fenech or the murder. He said he was stepping down in the light of the political situation at the time.

For the second time, Mizzi lost his ministerial portfolio, an unenviable record.

Soon enough we learnt that Muscat, before leaving Castille, had given instructions to give Mizzi a contract as a consultant with the Tourism Ministry. The uproar about the appointment led the government, now led by Robert Abela, to order its termination. Later, the Standards Commissioner had ruled that Muscat’s instructions constituted an abuse of power and a breach of the ministerial code of ethics.

Muscat’s protection

It has always been said that Mizzi was Muscat’s right hand man, together with Keith Schembri who, like Mizzi, was caught having secretly opened a company in Panama. Muscat made a conscious choice to offer them all the shelter they needed when they politically got him into a mess with their Panama affairs.

The three were joined at the hip in their public life, and it soon became clear that if one was to go down, the others would go down with him. This is what actually happened in November two years ago. All three ended up leaving office – or announcing their departure – within a few days of each other.

Without Muscat’s protection, Mizzi’s star quickly faded, and it took Robert Abela only six months to have Mizzi dismissed from the PL parliamentary group. The top echelons of the party, including those who had defended Mizzi to the hilt and voted in his favour in Parliament, did not need much to be persuaded to change their mind.

They must have known that Mizzi’s presence in their fold had become more of a disadvantage. When Muscat was in power, some of them had found some courage to hint at their displeasure, but they had always toed the party line when it mattered most. Without Muscat, and with Abela taking a different stand, Labour found the way to push Mizzi aside.

Officially, that is, because when they have the opportunity, they still defend him.

PAC

Unlike Muscat, Mizzi has stayed on as an independent MP, pledging to continue to support the Labour government. And, like Muscat, in spite of no longer being part of the Cabinet, he remains in the limelight, as he was this week with the NAO report.

The Public Accounts Committee then continues to investigate the Electrogas power station deal, which came to be at the time that Mizzi was Energy Minister.

A court case instituted by former Opposition Leader Adrian Delia on the concession given when Mizzi was Health Minister to Vitals for the running of three public hospitals – a deal that was later transferred to Stewart Health Care – is still in progress. Delia is requesting that the hospitals are returned to the public.

In a court sitting last February, Mizzi had not answered questions on the matter, citing magisterial inquiries that are still to be concluded.

It was the same position he took three months earlier, in November 2020, when he appeared before the public inquiry investigating the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia. Then, he had not answered any questions about the Panama Papers, the Mozura wind farm in Montenegro, the Electrogas deal and the Vitals concession, saying investigations were still open.

He procrastinated to appear before the PAC, rejected the summons for a number of weeks before he finally turned up in early November to start what is until now an unfinished presentation about the Electrogas project. A hospital stay for Mizzi further delayed its conclusion. It is now expected to be continued in January.

Mizzi will then have to face questions from the PAC members. Whether he will reply to them remains to be seen. Whether the whole process will be completed before Robert Abela calls an election is also in doubt.