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Matthew Vella
Gordon Cordina has packed his bags and left the National Statistics Office, just months since the economist was appointed to the post last summer. The heat was just too much for him to take.
In his resignation letter seen by MaltaToday, Cordina admits that the events that threw the sedate statistics department into political controversy had been too much for him to retain his post and conduct his work with the “necessary serenity”.
“I have arrived at this decision because the events in the last weeks, which went beyond a mature discussion of a technical nature, showed me that I cannot continue carrying out my responsibilities with the serenity required in this position,” Cordina said of the pressure he encountered in the last month of his position.
A revision of GDP figures right up to 1995 which depressed previous economic performances and bolstered the gross domestic product in the last three years since Lawrence Gonzi became prime minister, became the source of controversy when the Labour party called into question Cordina’s and the statistics office’s credibility.
“My professional field is exclusively academic and technical,” Cordina wrote in his resignation letter, which was not published by the Malta Statistics Authority.
“As you know, I always carried out my responsibility in good faith and with professional integrity as the National Statistics Office has done since its founding. The Malta Statistics Authority recognised this many times.”
Contacted Friday evening, hours before his resignation was announced, Cordina said he would not comment until the statistics authority made its official announcement.
“I can’t confirm anything at this stage,” he said. “It’s the national statistics authority that has to give any official statements.”
Attempts to contact him yesterday proved futile.
Yesterday the statistics authority said in a statement it regretted Cordina’s resignation, and reiterated its utmost faith in the former director general.
Tried as he did to explain the boring and technical reasons for the statistical revisions in his calm, composed technocrat’s drawl, Cordina surely felt the noose getting tighter as the pressure mounted from the Labour camp.
He had already made it a point not to respond to politicians, keeping firmly within his remit as an uninterested public officer. But former finance minister Leo Brincat’s accusation that Cordina was a “political animal” clearly stemmed from the perception Cordina himself nurtured when in 2003, he took to the podium at a Nationalist Party mass meeting to offer his economist’s spiel in favour of EU membership.
Since then, Cordina’s choice as director-general of the NSO became the subject of more political accusations.
In the heat of the moment, Cordina got a taste of public scrutiny when l-orizzont’s Joe Sammut penned two scathing reports dissecting not just the GDP revision but also revealed details of Cordina’s lucrative consultancies before having to relinquish all private and public work on consultancies when he was appointed director-general.
Cordina’s appointment to director-general was announced on 25 August 2006. Days later on 30 August, the company E-Cubed Consultants Limited was established. Its directors, Nadia Farrugia and Stephanie Vella, two former Central Bank employees, were part-time lecturers at the economics department at the University of Malta were Cordina lectured. The registered company secretary was Cordina’s wife Patricia.
To Joe Sammut, writing in l-orizzont about whether E-Cubed was a front for more consultancy work, given that Farrugia and Vella assisted Cordina on his consultancies for the Central Bank, the presence of Cordina’s wife as company secretary gave rise to further speculation.
Cordina’s packet as NSO director-general comprised of a Lm16,000 salary, a Lm500 expense account, a maximum bonus of Lm2,400 yearly, car, mobile and fixed line phone, and a maximum of seven hours leave every week for his university lectures.
He received Lm20,000 from the Central Bank in consultancy fees, Lm22,500 from the Gozo and environment ministries, and Lm7,000 every year from the MCESD.
In a statement, the government said it condemned the “personal attacks” from the Labour party on Gordon Cordina, accusing it of turning a technical discussion into a personal persecution which led to the loss of the director-general from the NSO.
But the statistical revision, a clamorous series of tweaking of figures that painted a worse economic picture of the country while politicians talked of a sound economy, became the source of much doubt into a relatively uninspiring government department that finally made it to headline news.
mvella@mediatoday.com.mt
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