PN Leader Bernard Grech said on Tuesday that he never stopped Jason Azzopardi from filing a case against Electrogas, a claim made by the former Nationalist MP.
Azzopardi has accused Grech of stopping him from putting his name on a court case filed by NGO Repubblika in relation to the controversial power station contract.
The former PN MP had told Lovin Malta that he and lawyer Edward Debono had worked for weeks on putting together legal arguments on the case, only for him to be stopped by Grech when he informed the party about it.
According to Azzopardi, when he informed party officials that he had everything in hand to initiate the case, he was asked to pull the brakes. In the court case, Repubblika is calling for the Electrogas power station deal with the government to be cancelled because of fraud that breached consumers’ fundamental rights.
Questioned on Tuesday outside parliament, Bernard Grech denied ever having stopped Azzopardi, adding that the former MP had never complained to him about being stopped from filing such a case.
“Not only did I not stop him, but he never even complained to me that he had been stopped from doing so,” he said.
Asked whether the PN would continue to insist on the Electrogas contract being stopped, Grech said the Nationalist Party had a duty to work on issues that were in the best interest of the country.
Grech stopped short of committing himself to carrying out a pledge to take the Electrogas case to court. He had made the pledge during the PN leadership campaign in September 2020.
“I had said that I would consider all actions. And in fact we did take action. We started an inquiry’ in the PAC (Public Accounts Committee). We presented motions."
Grech said it was unfair to say that the Opposition led by him had failed its duty about the issue.
And, he added, “it is not just what one person expects to happen” that was necessarily the right thing to do.
He said the Opposition had its agenda, even on the Electrogas case, and it must take decisions accordingly.
“We have said many times that the Electrogas contract is still mostly secret, and we do not exclude future action. I have also said many times that a government led by me would stop this contract,” he added.
Asked whether the PN members on the PAC would continue to pursue the issue as fervently as their previous counterparts had, Grech said we should “wait a few days”.
The new Public Accounts Committee will now be chaired by newly elected PN MP Darren Carabott, who is replacing Beppe Fenech Adami.
The first PAC meeting is yet to be scheduled, and its agenda is still unknown.