PN MP Karol Aquilina said Tuesday that the PN has asked the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life to correct a report in which it was found that Energy Minister Miriam Dalli had committed an ethics violation, saying that she “should not be let off easily.”
In a statement, Aquilina said that in the report published on Friday, the Commissioner decided to close the case with a simple apology from Dalli because, according to him, Dalli was not a Minister when a report on the same abuse was published.
The PN sent a letter to the Commissioner to correct the report and forward it to the Parliamentary Committee on Standards.
“This is a gross error by the Commissioner. Dalli was appointed Minister on 23 November, 2020, while the report referred to by the Commissioner was published in January 2021. Dalli was already a Minister when the report referred to by the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life was published,” Aquilina said.
He said that Dalli was surely aware of the conclusions of this report and of her obligations as a Minister under the Code of Ethics for Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries.
“The Commissioner for Standards in Public Life has been asked to correct his report and, instead of closing the case with an apology from Minister Dalli, to forward the report to the Parliamentary Committee on Standards so that action may be taken on it according to the Public Life Standards Act,” Aquilina said.
He continued that it is not acceptable that Ministers who abuse their position are let off easily due to "mistakes" by the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life that could have been avoided with a simple online check via the Parliament of Malta's website.
“The Nationalist Party will continue to insist that the Prime Minister, Ministers, and Parliamentary Secretaries bear responsibility for the abuses they commit and will not allow anyone to cover for them or excuse them as if nothing happened,” Aquilina said.
Aquilina’s colleague Mark Anthony Sammut wrote on Facebook later in the day that he and fellow MP Ryan Callus had written to Speaker Anglu Farrugia to request an urgent meeting of the Parliamentary committee for Standards in Public Life.
Sammut noted that part of the committee’s function is to “survey and analyse the commissioner’s work” and noted that the Standards Commissioner had made a significant and factual error in his report.
“It’s unacceptable that the Prime Minister, Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries do not shoulder responsibility for the abuses they conduct because of mistakes like this, and it’s as if nothing happened,” Sammut wrote.
Meanwhile, in a statement, the Labour Party said that when the PN doesn’t get what it wants, it “stamps its feet and attacks whoever does not do what they try to dictate.”
This time, the party observed, it is the Standards Commissioner who is victim to such attacks as he “expressed a judgement which is different to what [the PN] wanted.”
“What was written that day still counts up till now. The Opposition is not interested in things being done well, but adopts two weights, two measures depending on what suits their partisan interests best,” the PL said.