Two major projects and two major divergences
It is somewhat curious that two of the country’s biggest projects unveiled by the Labour government since it took power in 2013 were, in actual fact, nothing new and both were the results of recycled sales pitches that had both been refused by the previous Nationalist government.
Here we are referring specifically to the Individual Investor Programme and the Delimara power station – two projects that have cast a rather unflattering spotlight on Malta.
And, be they right or wrong, both projects are working wonders in turning Malta into the bête noir of Europe, for different reasons.
Much of Europe had recoiled at the concept of selling European citizenship and despite the overwhelming thumbs down, the project received from the European Parliament, the European Commission approved it, with one of the caveats – the effective residency period - being completely ignored by the Maltese government.
This newspaper earlier this week reported how passport sales concessionaires Henley & Partners had approached the previous government with the same blueprint plans for passport sales but former Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said they had been shown the
Editor’s pick
door because: “I disagreed with the very concept of selling Maltese citizenship.”
But it seems that once Labour was swept to power, the concessionaires found quite another audience at Castille, and fertile ground for their ideas, even though such an initiative was to be found nowhere in the party’s electoral manifesto.
Some, of course, will argue that this was a case the Nationalist Party having been short-sighted and having failed to seize the opportunity, while the Labour Party had the vision to realise it.
It also turns out, as this newspaper had reported last year, that the Nationalist Party, when in government in 2009, had received a near-identical proposal for the construction of a new LNG-fuelled power station in Delimara that was eventually implemented by the current government.
The sales pitch in 2009 bore a number of striking similarities to the project brought to fruition by the current government, and which had been a cornerstone of its election campaign.
Such similarities include the floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU), otherwise known as the LNG tanker, which is to be permanently berthed alongside the power station at the Delimara quay, and the involvement of Gasol plc, the company that in 2015 cashed in its shares in the consortium for an undisclosed amount.
Again, some will argue that this was a case the Nationalist Party having been short-sighted and having failed to seize the opportunity, while the Labour Party had the vision to realise it.
And, in actual fact, the whole argument here could be reduced purely to an academic one were it not for one central component: the prime minister’s chief of staff.
Somehow, he appears to be the cog that makes the whole wheel turn when it comes to some of the government’s more controversial projects. Both of the projects, and the chief of staff’s, shall we say, special, interest in them are now the subject of magisterial inquiries with respect to both the power station wheelings and dealings as well as kickbacks from passport sales after those special interests were exposed in the Panama Papers.
Were these special interests the reason that one administration accepted such business while another had not? This one burning question certainly needs answering, at least for those who are asking it. And while answers and explanations from the man himself are more than flimsy, perhaps the magisterial inquiries, which have been ongoing for close to a year now will provide the answers sought.