The Prime Minister said yesterday that the opposition turned everything upside down in moving a motion of no confidence in Roads Minister Jesmond Mugliett.

The opposition was attacking the minister when it was he and the authority under his responsibility who had actually launched proceedings which led to the arraignment of five persons over alleged bribery, including the conviction of two of them.

Speaking in Parliament on the opposition's motion, Dr Gonzi said that what the House was witnessing was a case of warped thinking by the opposition. Instead of discussing how to further strengthen measures against corruption, the opposition was "corrupting the truth" and attacking those who fought corruption.

Dr Sant had even gone so far as to practically blame the government in the alleged bribery of judges, when it was the government which had taken the decisions to proceed against them.

What he suspected, Dr Gonzi said, was that this was another gimmick by Dr Sant, a move to distract public opinion away from the major progress being made in the country as evidenced by the opening of Mater Dei Hospital, the decision on euro adoption, the launching of the Lufthansa Tecknik project and the decisions on the €855 million operational programme.

Dr Gonzi said it was worth noting that no one had accused Mr Mugliett of stopping the investigations against the driving examiners, or of covering up this case. No one was accusing Mr Mugliett or anyone of trying to get these people off the hook.

The ADT board decided to dismiss these people and the minister never acted to reverse it. In February, the workers were informed by the CEO of the board's decision and they were dismissed.

Then the workers' lawyer requested a presidential pardon and he wrote to the CEO to inform him about it. It was not the government that requested the pardon, Dr Gonzi said, and if the opposition wanted the system to be removed, one could discuss it. But the members of the opposition needed to be consistent because he had several requests from them pleading for such pardons.

In a precedent, the Public Service Commission, in which the opposition was represented, decided against dismissal but ordered a transfer.

The only thing the minister had done was to speak to the CEO and the authority's legal counsel, asking them to hold the dismissal until the presidential pardon was decided. What was wrong with this to justify a no-confidence motion? One could not accuse Mr Mugliett of being an accomplice in corruption because of this! Once the presidential pardon was archived, the workers were immediately dismissed and the minister did nothing to stop it - after all it was he who had launched the court proceedings. So how could he be accused of wrongdoing?

The ADT board itself had confirmed that the minister never interfered in this issue.

Referring to the John Dalli case, Dr Gonzi said there was never any case or hint of corruption. The issues at the time had been over the Iranian shipping line and travel ticketing and he had confirmed that the allegations made by the opposition on the Iranian shipping line were unfounded.

When the allegations were made against Mr Dalli and others regarding hospital medical equipment, the case was referred to the police and it was quickly shown that this was an invention. The person concerned had been arraigned and convicted and the case was pending appeal. But it was worth recalling how the opposition had tried to profit from those lies. That was a lesson of how, while all allegations should be investigated, some were prepared to lie.

It was unacceptable, Dr Gonzi said, that the opposition motion claimed that the government was not acting against corruption. This very case against Mr Mugliett was an example of how the government had acted against corruption. People had been investigated, arraigned, convicted, and the Attorney General even appealed to seek a tougher sentence.

Similar investigations and arraignments had been made in other cases involving the hospital, the MMA and the ADT, among others. But it seemed that it was those who fought corruption who were criticised. And then they said they wanted a Whistleblower Act.

Dr Gonzi said he did not accept Mr Mugliett's resignation because he acted according to the truth and was not swayed by the current.

The Prime Minister said the government and the opposition should be working together to strengthen the measures against corruption. They could, for example, form a committee to discuss how the Commission against Corruption could be better resourced and made more independent.

Home Affairs Minister Tonio Borg said the opposition had based its motion on the fact that Mr Mugliett in Parliament had said the decision by the ADT to put off the decision to dismiss the workers followed a collective discussion.

The opposition had taken the minister's reference to "collective" to mean a reference to the board, yet, the minister had been replying to a question in which he clearly said that he had not given any orders to the chairman or the board. Therefore, it was very clear that the reference to collective did not include the board. This was also confirmed by the board itself.

No one had denied that the issue was discussed with the CEO and the ADT's legal adviser.

The motion also criticised the Prime Minister for turning down Mr Mugliett's resignation. But how could Dr Gonzi accept the minister's resignation when there were not even allegations of corruption? Mr Mugliett would have been an accomplice to corruption had he known about the case and tried to stop the investigation. But this had not been done.

What he had done was to ask for the dismissal of the employees to be put off until all proceedings were completed. Then the workers were dismissed.

As for the accusation that the government was not fighting corruption, Dr Borg said all the cases discussed recently had actually been discovered and investigated by the government itself, including this one. This showed that the government was true to its word when it said it wanted to fight corruption.

And if the opposition was complaining about a person having been reinstated after being interdicted, perhaps they could recall a case under the last Labour government when a policeman was interdicted after perjury and inhuman treatment, dismissed from the force yet still employed at the Water Services Corporation and retained even when he lost his appeal.

Dr Borg warned that if governments were going to be attacked for bringing corruption out into the open and taking people to court, some people would be tempted not to do so, which would be a serious loss for society.

Corruption existed everywhere; the important thing was to fight it and not to tolerate it.

Winding up, Opposition Leader Alfred Sant said the majority did not agree with Dr Gonzi's view of the facts. The case being discussed centred around a minister who went around regulations to benefit a friend. No one was saying that Mr Mugliett had tried to stop the accusations against the workers, but if there was really zero tolerance, this should mean that the people, once convicted, should have been made to shoulder their responsibility. It was useless of the minister to try to draw parallels with what he saw as a precedent. The first case involved a civil servant while these two workers were not.

The government had not convinced anyone when it tried to defend the minister over his statement that the decision was a collective one. The minister had told the House that the decision was a collective one and not that he told others what to do.

On the Attorney General's decision to appeal, Dr Sant said the AG was not a government official and his decisions were not subject to government direction. This meant that no credit was due to the Gonzi government for the AG's decision to appeal.

Dr Sant said the people at Swallow Garage who had bribed the two ADT workers were also friends of Mr Mugliett and had sometimes provided free transport for activities held by the minister. It stood to reason that once people had been bribed, others were guilty of bribing them and they too were corrupt. But the case was still pending at the courts.

How could the government expect to be believed that it had zero tolerance for corruption when an ETC call for bus services included a requirement that applicants were not convicted of misconduct, yet this was awarded to Swallow Garage?

Lawyers would argue that Swallow Garage had not been convicted of anything, but where was the zero tolerance? The people were not believing the Prime Minister who said one thing and did another.

Dr Gonzi said he was not swayed by the current. But had the Prime Minister been carried by the current when he accepted Mr Dalli's resignation?

The opposition had strongly criticised Mr Dalli on several issues but it had never spoken about the hospital contract which had been mentioned by Dr Gonzi. This case had been a Nationalist plot from beginning to end. On a point of order, Mr Dalli said that he wanted to remind Dr Sant of the press conferences Labour used to hold in front of Mater Dei Hospital.

Dr Sant stressed that he had not known anything about the Zahra investigation.

Dr Sant referred to a television programme on Tuesday in which, he said, PN general secretary Joe Saliba had remarked that among the reasons for Mr Dalli's resignation was a case, involving travel tickets, which was being investigated by the police and Mr Dalli had felt he should resign so as not to influence anyone. How had this never been made public?

Mr Dalli said that Mr Saliba had referred to the Zahra case as that which had instigated his resignation, and the issue of travel ticketing was being investigated by the Auditor General, not the police. What was a disgrace was that this investigation had been going on for three years.

Interjecting, Dr Gonzi said Mr Saliba had corrected himself. The ticketing case was never referred to the police as this was not a criminal issue but it was referred to the auditor, as was promised at the time.

Dr Sant said that once the Zahra report (on Mater Dei Hospital) was false and once the ticketing case was not sent to the police but to the auditor, how was the Prime Minister in this case carried by the current and had accepted Mr Dalli's resignation, but not Mr Mugliett's?

Concluding, Dr Sant said the country was lacking direction. The Prime Minister was being judged by his actions which were neither transparent nor accountable.

The country needed change and if this was not brought about by the government, it would be brought about by Labour as soon as possible.