The Nationalist Party on Wednesday again urged government MPs to vote in favour of an Opposition motion to block a controversial hospital privatisation deal, saying MPs who do so would be on the right side of history.

Its repeated solicitation for Labour MPs to vote against their own party prompted an endorsement from a former PN MP, who recalled how he was ostracised from the party for having done just that.

Through the parliamentary motion, scheduled for debate on Thursday, the PN is demanding the immediate cancellation of the contract of related to the privatisation of Karin Grech, St Luke’s and Gozo General hospitals and also the cancellation of the restatement agreement, which was signed last August.

Party leader Adrian Delia first made a call for government MPs to join the Opposition side in the vote on Tuesday. On Wednesday, party deputy leader David Agius echoed that call, saying taxpayers had paid more than €260 million for state-of-the-art hospital but the public had received absolutely nothing in return.

Franco Debono joins calls

The party leadership’s demands were music to the ears of former PN MP Franco Debono, whose vote against his own party in late 2012 had brought the then-PN government of Lawrence Gonzi down.

Debono had regularly clashed with party leadership, expressing frustration about a failure to reform the justice system and also clashing with the party over how it had managed the transfer of public transport to Arriva.  

Conflict reached a head when Debono voted against the government's budget vote. That had left him vilified and requiring 24-hour police protection at his house. Debono, a criminal lawyer by profession, has not contested a general election since then.

“This is one of the PN’s most important days in the past ten years,” Debono wrote on Facebook on Wednesday. “The PN is urging government MPs to do exactly what I had done as an MP in the past,” Debono wrote on Facebook.

Debono suggested that the PN had “maybe acted somewhat wrongly, with negative consequences on the party itself” on that occasion.

He acknowledged that the vote MPs would take on Thursday, regarding the hospital privatisation deal, concerned issues which were “far more important” than what had happened when he was an MP during the Gonzi administration and said he therefore joined the PN leadership’s calls for government MPs to vote in the national interest, rather than along party lines.

Concerns about hospital deal

Concerns about the hospital privatisation deal, which was first signed with Vitals Global Healthcare and then passed on to Steward Healthcare, have led PN leader Adrian Delia to file a court case for the hospital to be returned to the people.

Investigations are also under way into former ministers Konrad Mizzi and Chris Cardona and Finance Minister Edward Scicluna in connection with the privatisation contract. That inquiry is currently at the appeal stage, after a court had found sufficient basis for a criminal inquiry to begin. 

Speaking on Wednesday, PN spokesperson for Gozo Chris Said said that Gozitans were disappointed with this deal because what they were promised was not fulfilled. Vitals and Steward had to build a 450-bed hospital but despite having already been paid, it was not done, when it was due to be ready by June 2018. He said the local plan had not even been changed to accommodate this development as Vitals and Steward never provided the necessary information to the Planning Authority. 

PN finance spokesman Mario de Marco said the PN has repeatedly stated that it was holding former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, former ministers Konrad Mizzi and Chris Cardona and Finance Minister Edward Scicluna politically responsible for this “dirty deal”. 

He said that as minister responsible for public procurement and finance, Scicluna was responsible for these shortcomings. He had to see to it that the tender process was rigorous and in the national interest. 

So far, only a redacted version of the contract was published in October 2016, with the government justifying its decision to keep parts of it blacked out on grounds of commercial sensitivity.