|
Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi accused former Sea Malta chairman Marlene Mizzi of having breached an agreement on the timing of her resignation.
In the interview appearing in this edition of MaltaToday he said: “As far as I know our agreement was to wait until the company’s next annual general meeting.
“Even though we had agreed to wait until the annual general meeting, all of a sudden I found this letter addressed to me and sent to the media at the same time (on 20 June). That meant that she changed effectively the agreement we had and she decided to make things public the way she did. I’m just saying that we had an agreement. I didn’t breach that agreement. She did.”
When contacted yesterday, Marlene Mizzi said the prime minister was “taking one sentence out of a whole book”.
“The impression I get is that he’s not sure of what he’s doing,” Mizzi said. “When I went to submit my resignation personally to the prime minister on 8 June, he told me he was shocked and surprised by my decision. I told him of the problems facing Sea Malta and he reassured me he would get back to me. I also told him I was fed up of working with Austin Gatt, that he is not a people’s man, that he treats people like obsolete computers. Gonzi actually insisted that Cabinet was fully satisfied with me and asked me to withdraw my resignation. I told him I would not withdraw it but only withhold it, out of respect towards him, and that’s when I mentioned the annual general meeting, on the understanding that he would get back to me by then. Instead, what happened was that two days later government was all of a sudden making public statements about Cabinet’s decision to sell Sea Malta. I got to know of this through the press.”
In her as yet unpublished covering letter submitted with her lengthy resignation letter, Mizzi told Gonzi: “This attitude says much for the lack of consideration in my regards as chairman of the board from the shareholders I have served to the best of my ability.”
Mizzi told MaltaToday: “I was totally ignored, then all of a sudden I was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement with Grimaldi (the Neapolitan company about to buy Sea Malta) by the privatisation unit; finally I was acknowledged as chairman. Far from breaching an agreement – I’m a woman who would die to keep an agreement – it’s a question of my own integrity and dignity. When I got out of Gonzi’s office on 8 June I came out convinced he would act on what I told him. Instead, he did the opposite. I don’t know how to explain this; that privately they tell you one thing and then they publicly try to destroy you, but in any case I’m not interested in these political tactics.”
Karl Schembri reporting
|
