‘PN in clear breach of party financing law’ – Muscat

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat upped the ante on Simon Busuttil to publish the invoices that the PN’s media company had issued to companies part-owned by hotelier Silvio Debono, claiming that the Opposition is in clear breach of party financing laws.

MaltaToday revealed today that Media.Link has received around €560,000 since 2013 from two catering companies part-owned by Debono – the airline catering company Sky Gourmet and Malta Healthcare Caterers, which provide catering to homes for the elderly and hospitals.

This money was allegedly used to cover the salaries of the PN’s secretary general Rosette Thake and MediaLink’s CEO Brian St John.

Addressing the party faithful in Zurrieq, Muscat questioned why these two companies forked out money to Media.Link when they have absolutely no need to issue adverts.  

“Busuttil had instructed the PN’s companies to issue false invoices for non-existent adverts for Air Malta’s bread rolls and the soup served at hospital,” Muscat quipped. “This is in clear breach of the party financing law and Busuttil now has no other option but to publish the false invoices.”

This was Muscat’s only reference to the Opposition in a half-hour speech dedicated on pinning Malta’s record-low deficit level on his unashamedly pro-business approach to politics, and on projects that are in the pipeline for the near future.

Most notably, he announced that the government will in the coming weeks issue a tender for the conversion of the former military hospital in Mtarfa into a private school for international students. The school will offer International Baccalaureate programmes and the tender will specify that it will have to award annual scholarships to a number of Maltese students every year.

Muscat said that the need for such a school has become more pressing as the Malta-based European Asylum Support Office is set to be upgraded into an agency, meaning that it will practically triple its workforce from 168 to 500 people.

“These people will be paid by the EU but they will live in Malta and will spend their money here, which will mean more wealth for the country,” the Prime Minister said. “Many of these workers have children and want them to follow an IB curriculum but this is only available in two schools in Malta [Verdala and St Edward’s].”

He also said that the government is carefully analyzing studies that had been commissioned on the possible construction of a motorsports racetrack.

“Car enthusiasts are now asking us when we’ll give them what they want. In our manifesto, we had promised to launch a study [on the possibility of a racetrack] and if we wanted, we could tell them that we have already carried out what we had promised,” he said. “However, we are not like other people and although we fulfilled our promise, we must now act on that study but without building over fields and green spaces. We are analyzing ways and means through which this project can be sustainable.”

‘Equal pay for equal work’

Muscat also announced that the government will in the coming months seek to address the wage disparity that exists between government workers and their peers in the private sector.

“Every contractor that renders its services to the government is now obliged to provide its workers with the exact same conditions as those directly employed by government,” he said. “However, although a security guard employed with a private company now gets paid around €5 for services offered to the government, he still gets paid around €4 if he is sent to work at a private event. Why should that it be the case if he is doing the same work in both cases?” 

‘Labour the only party in breach of party financing law’ – PN

The Nationalist Party countered Muscat’s accusations by claiming that the Labour Party is the only political party in Malta who has broken the party financing law.

“It hasn’t registered itself with the Electoral Commission, it hasn’t presented a list of its donations, its highest officials are being paid through public funds, and it has party clubs built on land that was stolen from the people,” the PN said in a statement. “Not only is the PN in line with the party in line with the law, but Simon Busuttil’s criticism of the ITS land transfer proves that he will not be conditioned by any donations to the party.”