News | Sunday, 12 July 2009

PRINT THIS ARTICLE

A conflict of interest is not a crime

Reference is made to your opinion piece titled “Pay your bills and shut up” (Saviour Balzan, where you alleged that Minister Austin Gatt “sees no problem with the conflict of interest of Claudio Grech being both head of the Malta IT Agency and chief executive of Smart City; or Alex Tranter with being chairman of Enemalta and a director with Zaren Vassallo.”
The Government can avoid your criticism by doing one of two things: appoint people to positions of trust who know nothing of the job they are given, or, alternatively, appoint you. For very similar reasons we make neither of these choices.
Instead we look for people whose talents have made them successful in life private. We ask them to make the counter-intuitive choice of giving up much of their time during which they could be earning much more money for themselves, and instead provide a public service for a pittance. In the process they expose themselves to your envy and wrath.
Accepting to work a lot for very little does not give them the right to abuse their position. But you do not even allege that much. You merely proclaim it ex cathedra and everyone is supposed to believe it. Claudio Grech as CEO of Smart City has no conflict of interest with his position as Chairman of MITA simply becasue Smart City has absolutely no business relationship – direct or indirect – with MITA! Prove otherwise and you would be right. Not proving anything merely shows the stark reality that your opinons are hardly worth the paper they are written on.
Alex Tranter had a potential conflict of interest on one particular tender declared it immedietly. He was aware of it and did not involve himself at all in the award of that particular tender. That is the accepted way of doing things anywhere in the world – except that Saviour Balzan thinks otherwise, an opinion that can be safely ignored.
A conflict of interest in and of itself is not a crime. Hiding it and profiting it from it at the expense of the public entity to which they are appointed would be. You do not even suggest they do that.
Of course Alex Tranter and Claudio Grech are subject to your scrutiny. That is the way of public office. When and if they do wrong it is your job to point it out. But you have no valid objection to make against them, so instead you you make the invalid objection that no one in your eyes is eligible to be appointed to public duty. No one but you, of course.

Amanda Ciappara
Communication Coordinator
Ministry for Infrastructure,
Transport and Communications

Saviour Balzan replies:
As usual, Austin Gatt’s tone is abrasive, intolerant and silly. Whoever said that for something to be unacceptable it has to be a crime? The matter of a conflict of interest has not been construed by myself – it’s an inherent ethical concern accepted in all normal democracies. Just because Austin Gatt and his aide Manwel Delia ignore conflicts of interest does not mean they are commendable. I have ever accepted any offer of public office made to me by this administration. If I have achieved anything I only have myself to thank and no one else. I can assure Dr Gatt and Manwel Delia that I do not envy politically appointed officers – I have never envied lackeys.

Any comments?
If you wish your comments to be published in our Letters pages please click button below.
Please write a contact number and a postal address where you may be contacted.

All the interviews from Reporter on MaltaToday's YouTube channel.

EDITORIAL

INTERVIEW