Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/630594
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 24 JANUARY 2016 15 the PN laid the foundations for at a time when oil was well over $100 a barrel. Muscat continued this success, surely. But he makes a cardinal mistake – man does not live on bread alone." Azzopardi then recounts how the 1987 election win that the Na- tionalists clinched by a few thou- sands of votes, was based on basic priorities that in the eighties were indeed life-changing decisions. "If you talked about good govern- ance, transparency or the envi- ronment, people would have sent you packing. What was important then was freedom from police brutality, freedom of expression, and a secure job in the private sector. Labour thinks today that it's only the economy that counts. The people, especially floating voters, have better standards." But it is also unlikely that the PN will ever be immune to its tradi- tional and long-standing relations with the business class or big ben- efactors who also propped up the former administration and their electoral machine. Azzopardi says Muscat's god is money while Busuttil is being clear on "high-rise in Mriehel" and boathouses in Armier, men- tioning two bugbears of the envi- ronmental lobby. "Take a look at direct orders. They are obviously being disbursed to a few compa- nies, and small businesses are not confident that this money is being distributed fairly." Azzopardi has not been left un- touched by the allegations inves- tigated by the IAID, given that the expropriation of the Fekruna res- taurant was only finalised at the end of March 2013, on the eve of the election. "In contrast with the Premier and Gaffarena cases, I never met Ray Vella or his representative or his family members; nobody ever spoke to me about Ray Vella. I can look at Muscat and Falzon and tell them that I never met any of these people personally. "The PN had made an electoral promise to expropriate private property that was of scenic beauty and historical value for the public to enjoy. We created a property evaluation committee with vari- ous civil servants to expropriate the Riviera Martinique, the Ul- ysses Lodge, the former Festival Apartments in Mellieha, Tigullio, and Fekruna. "In 2010 the committee met the owners. Why was Fekruna con- cluded before the election? The land was valued at €5 million by three architects, having appreci- ated after it was deemed 'devel- opable' by a new local plan. I ap- proved the arbitration committee settlement between the owners' value and GPD's value. The ap- proval from the finance ministry came in January 2013 and we fi- nalised." Azzopardi gives short shrift to the fact that the IAID identified an administrative error of €20,000 in the €5 million pay-out. "If the criticism is that the decision came before the election, will the PM agree to stop tenders being issued during an election campaign?" It's an unrealistic proposition, but maybe the problem for Mal- tese political governance is its lack of transparency on public property transfers that accord nobody the facility to scrutinise such operations. "Which is why Simon Busut- til is proposing to publish every land transfer. When we come to transparency, Muscat now plans to do a reform by creating a lands authority and he is saying that the MEU was stopped from car- rying out a reform at the lands department back in the day. "The biggest reform I had started there was the land estate management information system (LEMIS) in 2010, which Mus- cat stopped. It was a five-year €900,000 investment to digitise some 135,000 files of 25 mil- lion pages in total, some dating five centuries old, so that every employee would have access to the single document without it being lost in the process, and to have an audit trail for everyone who accesses these documents. After the election this process stopped." Interview Shadow justice minister JASON AZZOPARDI has been on the government's case ever since Labour clinched power with a 36,000 vote majority. He is convinced Simon Busuttil is clawing back floating voters with his pledges on good governance. PHOTOGRAPHY BY RAY ATTARD