PN challenges Prime Minister to publish Sai Mizzi’s contract

The Nationalist Party has called on Prime Minister Joseph Muscat to publish Sai Mizzi’s contract, “in its entirety”.

Last August, Sai Mizzi was appointed to a trade envoy post to China and was reportedly earning somewhere in the region of €13,000 monthly. Mizzi herself, in comments to the press during the Prime Minister’s trip to China this week, refuted these claims and claimed to be on a €3,000- a-month salary.

Meanwhile, during the same trip, PM Joseph Muscat told the press that the appointment had not been “not handled well”. And today, the PN issued a statement in which it said that after months of “perfect silence”, Muscat’s admission justified the party’s opposition to her appointment.

“By making such a statement, Muscat revealed that the Nationalist Party’s criticism of the appointment of Minister Konrad Mizzi’s wife was a justified one,” the statement read. “Months ago, the PN had criticised the appointment because it, like many others before it, had gone against Labour’s principal electoral pledge of meritocracy.”

Furthermore, the PN said that Sai Mizzi’s appointment had no element of transparency about it. “Things like these do not happen elsewhere in Europe,” it said. “And government made matters worse when, for a whole year, it refused to listen to the public’s concerns and refused to publish the contract in question. This breaks all the promises of transparency which it made prior to last year’s election.”

The Nationalist party said that government was “embarrassed to admit” that Sai Mizzi’s contract was costing tax payers no less than €13,000. “The PN challenges the Prime Minister to publish Sai Mizzi’s contract with immediate effect. The Maltese have a right to know what the contractual conditions are,” it said, pointing out that Mizzi appointed with no call for applications made.