When politicking crosses the red line

There is no other way of putting it: getting a public entity to pay for a report that is then used for party political purposes is just not on.

We are referring to the analysis conducted by international consultants KPMG on the energy plan presented by the Labour Party at the start of the electoral campaign.

The findings of the report – taxpayers do not know yet how much it cost even though they had to pay for it without their knowledge – were communicated to the public by Finance Minister Tonio Fenech during a press conference that was called by the Nationalist Party as part of its electoral campaign activities.

As if ‘ordering’ Enemalta to commission the report and then making full use of it for partisan ends were not enough of an effrontery to the public, Mr Fenech said, rather ironically, that it was in the public interest to know what Labour’s proposals would cost them. He made the statement when asked why Enemalta and not the PN had paid for the study.

Mr Fenech was, of course, right that the people are interested to know how much the energy plan that the PL is proposing will cost them.

Some experts have expressed doubt over Labour’s claims; in particular with regard to the time frame, but also in relation to the costs as well as the wisdom of investing in a gas plant when a gas pipeline may be a more viable option. These are all questions that need to be answered.

Enemalta too should have been interested in evaluating the plan to see whether it was doing anything wrong or, at least, whether it could do things better and whether other options did, in fact, exist.

The State corporation would have been perfectly justified in commissioning such a report. But one would have expected it to evaluate the findings, decide on a course of action to take and then inform the public how it planned to proceed.

Nobody would have pointed any accusing fingers had the PN subsequently decided to make use of information already in the public domain to attack its political rival at the height of an electoral campaign.

The manner in which the PN in government has acted in this case leaves it wide open to accusations of abusing the power of incumbency.

It also cast a very dark shadow on the board of directors and the senior management at Enemalta.

It is not yet clear whether it was Enemalta that first thought of commissioning the study, which was then ‘hijacked’ by its political masters, or whether it was the PN, through the Finance Ministry, which is responsible for the State energy agency, that ordered the report to be carried out.

The Auditor General should look into the matter.

Given the delicate stage of the political calendar, the Auditor should treat the issue with urgency and publish his findings before we get too close to polling day.

Though we have not heard much about it so far in the electoral campaign, the issue of transparency and accountability is the mainstay of the sort of governance the people of this country rightly expect.

Just as important, if the Auditor finds that the report was improperly commissioned or used, the bill should be footed by who exploited its findings: the PN.