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Karl Schembri
The government has asked the Attorney General and the Speaker of the House of Representatives to look into what it believes to be a Labour MP’s conflict of interest.
Government sources say the AG and the Speaker are expected to give their opinion on the role of MP Roderick Galdes in the coming days in the light of his dual role as Opposition spokesman on the environment as well as an employee at the Malta Environment and Planning Authority.
Sources say Environment Minister George Pullicino is pushing for “a solution” to Galdes’s “peculiar situation,” which they say is even more sensitive because of the Labour MP’s regular speeches, parliamentary questions and opinion articles about MEPA’s policies and the environment.
Only last week, the former mayor of Hal Qormi wrote an opinion in The Sunday Times about the government’s “history of dilettantism” in the field of waste management – an area which falls under the remit of MEPA. In a previous opinion piece he expressed his disagreement with his boss MEPA Director General Godwin Cassar about land reclamation, and last July he asked Pullicino in Parliament whether proposals made by the Qormi council (when he was still mayor) to MEPA’s Central Zone Local Plan would be taken up, provoking a query from the minister about whether he felt he had a conflict of interest.
But Galdes dismisses talk about conflict of interest and defends his right to speak and criticise government policies about the environment.
“I am not in a position of authority within MEPA and I’m surprised why all this fuss is being created when government says MEPA is transparent and accountable,” Galdes told MaltaToday. “I have a right, like everyone else, to speak about the environment in my personal capacity and as MP. I mean, look at the arguments I made not at the person, there is nothing personal in my arguments. My job at MEPA is only limited to producing maps of the southern part of Malta. It has nothing to do with drafting answers to my own parliamentary questions, as some tried to imply.”
The situation is further complicated by the fact that there do not seem to be any clear ethical rules regulating MPs in this regard, who are all part-time members of the House anyway and who depend on other jobs for a living.
Lawyers, architects, doctors as well as MPs involved in the tourism industry have at times used their privileged position to speak with impunity about their own clients or personal interests.
“If the minister is so keen on stopping conflicts of interest he should have a look around him in parliament and see what other MPs are doing,” Galdes said. “There are, for example, architects who are parliamentary secretaries or ministers and who can determine or influence certain MEPA decisions on behalf of their clients. There are lawyers who speak about their clients’ cases in parliament. Those are real cases of conflict of interest.”
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