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maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 10 APRIL 2019 9 LETTERS & EDITORIAL maltatoday MaltaToday, MediaToday Co. Ltd, Vjal ir-Rihan, San Gwann SGN 9016 MANAGING EDITOR: SAVIOUR BALZAN EXECUTIVE EDITOR: MATTHEW VELLA DEPUTY EDITOR: PAUL COCKS Tel: (356) 21 382741-3, 21 382745-6 • Fax: (356) 21 385075 Website: www.maltatoday.com.mt E-mail: newsroom@mediatoday.com.mt Mikiel Galea OPPOSITION leader Adrian Delia must be labouring under a delusion, if he really believes – as he told journalists on Sunday – that the meeting National- ist MPs Kristy Debono and Hermann Schiavone had with Tumas Group CEO Yorgen Fenech last week 'does nothing to prejudice the Nationalist Party's fight against corruption'. Indeed, it does quite a lot to discredit the PN's position on this front. In No- vember last year, Fenech was identi- fied as the owner of Dubai company 17 Black, which had been listed as a target client of the Panama companies opened by minister Konrad Mizzi and the Prime Minister's chief of staff Keith Schembri. Fenech is part-owner of the Tumas Group and, together with Gasan Group Limited and together they are 10% shareholder in Electrogas, the company that was awarded the tender to build the gas power station when Mizzi was En- ergy Minister. At the time, the PN immediately went onto the offensive: understand- ably enough, given that the setup of 17 Black indicates that it was alleged to be associated with offshore companies based in Panama. There has never been any explanation as to why this set up was there in first place; still less, where it originated from, and whether there is any connection with the Electrogas agreement. Rightly, then, the PN has been insist- ing on an investigation into this murky business for five months. Such suspi- cions are, in fact, at the very core of the PN's entire stand on governance. Adrian Delia had even forced an emergency de- bate in Parliament on the matter. It was his strongest criticism to date of Mizzi's and Schembri's failings to date. Within this context, it beggars belief how, so soon afterwards, two of Adrian Delia's most trusted MPs would knock on Fenech's door with their begging bowls in hand: undoing all the work their party had done in the preceding five months. At the very least it creates a problem of perception; at worst it erodes the PN's credibility to be critical of bad govern- ance, inculcating the feeling that it is no different from those it seeks to criticise. Debono and Schiavone may indeed have done nothing wrong; but the deci- sion to ask for reported support from a company who was at the centre of their own party's criticism, shoots their par- ty's anti-corruption credentials to atoms. Yet when news of this meeting was reported by the press, Debono was at first evasive… only to eventually confirm the meeting in writing. And though she at first denied that there was anything untoward about this meeting, she would soon find herself apologising for what she termed an 'error of judgment'. She did well to apologise, a rare occur- rence for a politician. Nonetheless, it is somewhat astonishing that two seasoned Nationalist MPs would not even pause to consider that, by meeting Fenech to seek sponsorship for a conference, they might be compromising their own par- ty's stand. For while the circumstances may even be as 'innocent' as described: surely Debono and Schiavone must have at least paused to question what impres- sion the man in the street would form from these unusual circumstances. It is also remarkable that they would have undertaken such an initiative without, it seems, consulting their party leader. Asked about the meeting point blank, Delia insisted he did not know about it until it was reported. If so, it was a disservice of his colleagues to spring such a surprise on him. But there is another issue at stake in this ill-fated episode. The meeting be- tween Debono, Schiavone and Fenech also casts a spotlight on the blurred lines between politics and business. The experience should therefore also serve a wider purpose to establish clear rules of engagement between politics and busi- ness. Stripped of its immediate political implications, it becomes just another in a whole list of unwholesome 'special relationships' between politics and big business. It underscores the perception that, for all their posturing on the politi- cal stage, both parties are deeply inter- twined with the same, broad commercial interests. Debono and Schiavone did not meet Yorgen Fenech, in his capacity as a business owner, as part of a listening exercise to understand the needs of local businesses. They did not meet to discuss policy, or to get abreast of some significant project his company is involved in. There was none of this in last week's meeting. It was a meeting to which the PN MPs went with a begging bowl, ask- ing for sponsorship for a conference room… and, in the process, creating a situation of mutual dependence between politics and money. This is where the situation gets messy. Debono and Schiavone are certainly not the first politicians to seek favour from business, and they will not be the last. This accounts for part of the problem: at the very least, these meetings should be registered for transparency's sake. In a small community like Malta where the worlds of business and poli- tics are intertwined, striving for greater transparency is one way of putting all one's cards on the table. If nothing else, this latest incident merely reinforces the long-recognised need for an overview of the rules of political/financial engage- ment. A problem of credibility

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