The Public Accounts Committee descended into a farce-like shouting match yet again, as Konrad Mizzi and the PN MPs on the committee butted heads throughout the two hour meeting.

The committee is looking into a report drawn up by the National Audit Office about the awarding of the tender of Malta’s gas-fired power station to Electrogas.

Mizzi has been testifying for over two months now in a process which has been marked by the former government minister insisting on presenting 700 pages of notes on the Electrogas project, and also by him missing a number of sittings due to medical issues.

More recently, Mizzi refused to answer questions from the committee after feeling aggrieved about the behaviour of the PN MPs who were asking the said questions. He insisted on asking the Speaker for a ruling, with the Speaker ultimately ruling that questions asked must be fair and objective.

Mizzi in fact used this ruling as justification to sidestep most of the questions put to him throughout the sitting, saying that the bulk of them were not relevant to the NAO’s report.

The bulk of the first part of the sitting was taken up by the PN MPs on the committee – Beppe Fenech Adami, who is the chairperson, Karol Aquilina, and Ryan Callus – asking about Mizzi’s relationship with people such as David Galea and Brian Tonna prior to the 2013 general election.

The suggestion was that David Galea – who later went on to be a part of the government’s selection process when the tender was awarded – was a part of the a working group within the Labour Party which decided on what energy policy it would follow if it came to power.

However Mizzi refused to answer, saying that this was a matter which fell outside the remit of the NAO as it concerned the inner workings of a political party, although he did later mention that he had no relationship in the private sector with Galea.

The bulk of the meeting was punctuated by shouting and mudslinging, to the point that Mizzi almost lost his voice as the meeting came to an end.

Mizzi lobbed accusations at PN MPs, particularly at Fenech Adami – to whom he brought up the Capital One case, accusations relating to a restaurant called La Vecchia Dogana, and allegations that the PN MP had some sort of unexplained wealth – and at Callus, whom he accused of working with the government and not actually reporting for work.

Mizzi’s behaviour was a source of particular amusement to some of the Labour MPs on the board, as Alex Muscat and Jonathan Attard could be seen giggling between themselves as Mizzi lobbed accusation after another at the PN MPs.

The meeting at times came to a point of near farce, as the PN MPs repeated the same question – relating to Brian Tonna – over and over again while Mizzi read pages out of the NAO’s report verbatim; both seemingly oblivious to each other’s nonchalance towards the other.

Aquilina at this point asked the committee to condemn Mizzi’s behaviour, to which Glenn Bedingfield said that in that case the committee must also condemn the PN MPs’ behaviour as, he said, they were not being objective in their line of questioning and were being undignified in their behaviour.

Mizzi at one point mentioned how the swap from heavy fuel oil to gas power had reduced cancer rates in the area – a remark which drew ire from Beppe Fenech Adami, who accused the former minister of using cancer to gain political mileage from.

“You should be ashamed for trying to justify this project by using people with cancer,” Fenech Adami told the former minister.

Further arguing ensued when Aquilina said that Paul Apap Bologna had testified that Keith Schembri was present – with Mizzi – at meetings at Castille regarding the financing of the power station, with Bedingfield, amidst much table-banging from himself, insisting that the PN MP was misquoting Apap Bologna.

It later resulted that Aquilina had not quoted Apap Bologna exactly, and Bedingfield suggested that Aquilina should resign as a result – particularly as Aquilina himself had suggested that Bedingfield should resign if it were to turn out that the PN MP is right.

Aquilina asked Mizzi about messages supposedly sent by Yorgen Fenech to him, saying that Fenech had apparently lost his mobile phone while in America and that Mizzi had asked five times whether the messages between the two had been deleted.

Mizzi questioned where Aquilina had come across such information and who his contact within the Police is, while Mizzi’s lawyer called the questions a “fishing expedition.”

“You’re managing a circus,” Mizzi told Fenech Adami after he justified the question.

Other questions focused on an email which suggested that Mizzi had personally intervened in order to spare Electrogas from an excise tax payment which amounted to some €40 million.

Here Mizzi said that he did not intervene on individual items of negotiation and that there are negotiating teams who would work on such a matter.

He however did not answer on whether this €40 million in excise duty was ever paid, saying that it was not relevant as it was not in the NAO’s report.

 

Mizzi will return to the Public Accounts Committee next Tuesday.

The sitting may be viewed in full below: