The tapes of wrath

Taped unknowingly by a disgraced transport authority officer, CENSU GALEA is in the midst of a long-running Labour campaign fronted by Alfred Sant himself alleging a “web of corruption” By Karl Schembri

It has been a long, exhausting month for the Minister of Competitiveness and Communication, and the signs of tiredness are starting to show in his face and voice. It has nothing to do with his present ministerial duties, which revolve around a portfolio most of the people hardly know anything about.
In fact it is about his previous portfolio as minister for transport, and his own voice has returned to haunt him in what the Opposition is turning into a fully fledged pre-electoral character assassination campaign, fronted by Labour leader Alfred Sant himself.
Recorded unawares on tape by a sacked transport authority officer some six years ago at his St Paul’s Bay office, an angry Galea can be heard on the tapes played at the Labour party headquarters during Sant’s press conferences with a big cobweb in the backdrop, expressing his utter helplessness about widespread inefficiencies and glaring mismanagement at the authority.
“If there are 50 people, there is not one doing his job,” he is heard saying in one of the clips. “They are all wasted salaries. … Lm200,000 annual salaries for nothing!”
The quote that provided much of Labour’s fuel and which has been used to cry corruption is a phrase that was actually said by the sacked officer, Angelo Debono.
“You have to isolate the spider. You have to isolate the spider, otherwise we’ll remain always in the same situation,” Debono is heard saying.
“I think we have the kill the spider, not isolate it,” Galea replies, adding: “But to kill the spider you need the poison.”
These metaphors were enough for Sant to conclude this is all about a “cobweb of corruption”.
“After a month hearing my name on the media, on one particular station actually, I keep meeting people who keep mentioning the case, so there is that kind of pressure,” Galea tells me as I put my tape recorder clearly in front of him. “I have to say, however, that most of the people I have met, from both political sides, show me that they are not convinced so far by what is being said. I’m not saying it has no political effect. From the first moment I was asked about this case I immediately referred to the tapes, I was aware that someone who used to come to my office to speak to me on personal issues had recorded me years ago. The person interviewing me, or rather the journalist chasing me to ask me questions, tried to feign ignorance about the tapes. I told him I knew what he had in hand because I had been tipped years ago that I was recorded in those conversations. It was only after I mentioned the tapes that they started broadcasting them.”
Since 1 May – the day the Labour Party published the book Arriverderci by One journalist Charlon Gouder – Galea has been the prime target of this relentless campaign which saw him being chased around by Gouder himself to answer about spiders and cobwebs, while the tapes were being released in bits and pieces by Sant, who said that just like the tapes of the Watergate scandal, names of people and bad language were being censored.
“I also challenged them to play the cassettes in their totality – not edited or serialised without letting you know the context,” Galea says. “The way they’re playing them we can’t say if they’re taking clips from illegal recording number one or illegal recording number two. So I ask them again to play the full tapes, unedited, with the names and everything that they’re censoring. Let me tell you I’m not one who swears or uses foul language, neither privately nor publicly. Far from it. At most I’d say haqq ghall-madoff, and the names are of those who were in my office so I know them. One of them is definitely Angelo Debono – the man who recorded me.
“The pressure is there, of course, but as long as my conscience is clear, that I did no wrongdoing, in fact I am convinced I took all the steps I could to redress the problems – such as people not turning up for work, skiving during working hours, not turning up on time and such issues – these were issues we were addressing. So despite all the pressure this is putting on me I’m trying to forget this issue and come to work normally, attend Parliament to get on with my job, and I have no intention of stopping this in the coming weeks.”
Debono has been referred to by Sant as a canvasser of Galea – something denied by the minister. In his next press conference last week releasing another set of sound clips, Sant said if not a canvasser, Debono must have been an advisor.
“With all due respect I would be really pathetic if I had people of such a low calibre as Angelo Debono as my advisors,” Galea retorts.
In fact, Debono was a senior enforcement officer at the public transport authority who faced disciplinary action for insubordination and discrimination against his subordinates, and was eventually sacked.
“I knew all these years that he had those tapes but as long as he was keeping them for himself I could do nothing about them,” Galea says. “These meetings were basically visits that I get from Joe Public to my office on Saturday mornings at my office in St Paul’s Bay. Anyone can come to my private office without appointments. In fact there must be thousands of leaflets which I had distributed to people’s houses stating that I’m at my private office meeting people without an appointment every Tuesday morning between 8am and 9am, Thursday afternoons between 4.30pm and 6pm and Saturdays from 8am to 11am. Debono was one of many who came to talk to me about his own problems at work. I knew Debono used to previously work for someone else within the party, but he was never my advisor or canvasser. He used to come and wait in the queue just like everyone else and then leave. These tapes basically document the conversations I had with Angelo Debono. In some meetings he came with his wife, and from what I recall on one occasion there was another person who also works at the transport authority.”
Sant’s insistence that the tapes prove there was a web of corruption at the authority when it was under Galea’s responsibility has already earned him a libel suit by the minister.
“Even here, everyone would realise the conversations are taken out of a wider context, and if we had to listen to all the tapes we would understand what was meant by the famous ‘spider’,” he says. “From what I can recall after all these years, the ‘spider’ is linked to the fact that despite wanting to take steps so that certain disciplinary measures are taken, you cannot rely on anonymous phone calls and unsubstantiated reports as long as nobody is willing to speak out. The reference is definitely not to corruption because, from what has been published and broadcast so far, the word corruption is not used once by me. The only reference to someone described as ‘corrupt and a turncoat’ is made by Debono, and the name of the person he referred to has been censored. So there can be no conclusion about corruption in my regard in any way, still less any corruption that I could have known about and ignored.”
Corruption aside, there is still much to be said about incompetence and the minister’s inability to remove the bad apples that he knew about.
In the tapes he can be clearly heard ranting furiously about some Lm200,000 of taxpayers’ money being spent for nothing. That does not prove corruption but it is undoubtedly an admission of his own impotence in the face of the squandering of public funds.
“Those expressions betray my frustration, as I was trying to take certain steps to redress the situation,” Galea admits. “Sant didn’t tell us the date when the conversations were held but I’m sure parts of them happened when ADT was not yet in existence; it was just the Public Transport Authority. One big step we took was to scrap the PTA to set up ADT. It was not just a name change, much more than that, otherwise we would have solved nothing. PTA became just one part of ADT.
But Sant is insisting that the same people remained.
“No, not all of them; only some of them remained. If there were 100 employees with the PTA we couldn’t just sack all of them. It would have been a mistake on our part had we done that, and God knows what they would have said about me. Even in this regard, the expression that they were being paid for nothing and that nobody gave his day’s work betrays my anger, as I was not happy with their delivery. In reality I wasn’t angry at all the workers, in fact at one point I refer to dispatchers and the particular sector that was in charge of enforcement. The frustration at that time was related to reports I would receive that, say, a bus would have missed a route at a certain time, or that a bus did not leave on time. Then when I would try to verify the claims I would not find one single person who was ready to testify that bus number so and so did not leave on time or whatever, and nobody who could reliably check for me. This was happening when you supposedly had a network of enforcement spread around the islands to assure there were no abuses, that’s why I was so angry and frustrated.”
And you admitted you could do nothing about it, that’s what you say on tape.
“Maybe that’s the wrong wording,” Galea says. “If you ask me what steps were taken, there were steps taken the most evident cases, against people who would repeatedly skive from work or abuse. In fact, Debono himself is one of them. He was charged with insubordination and discrimination and was eventually sacked. But he was not the only one to have had disciplinary proceedings against him. There were disciplinary actions taken against some bus drivers who in one way or another were caught skiving from work. So saying that no steps were taken would be incorrect, but whether one is clearly and severely disciplined is something else.”
Sant said the most damaging statement Galea made was that employees would even give false testimony to cover up for each other. That if A did something wrong, he would have B testify that he did right.
“That is another piece where they edited out the names. In fact I said that in the context of one officer covering up for the other. In fact Angelo himself would come complaining that he was being persecuted, but he could never prove it. But I would have no problems if Sant told us the names so that I could remember about their performance and what action was taken in their regard.”
But this is a clear admission that you had absolutely no control over the authority.
“If only I could be reminded the names of the people we were talking about, if only Sant plays the tape uncensored, I would be able to tell you what steps were taken in their regard. I know that action was taken not only against Debono. At least another one was also sacked – I’m not sure if he was mentioned there. At one point I refer to 50 workers – they were not all the PTA workers, because there were many more, in administration and what have you. I was angry about the people who were directly responsible for enforcement in public transport.
“I remember once I had received an anonymous report from someone claiming that a particular bus driver in Ghajn Tuffieha had beaten up tourists who had asked him for their due change. But when you dig deeper and try to check whether there was any truth in it, you find nothing, absolutely nothing. So there are supposedly officers on a particular route to check things. In Valletta, for example, there is the biggest number of enforcement officers. Someone would call and say that a bus left before its scheduled time. You try checking what really happened and you would find that it’s true but whoever should have checked them would somehow cover things up or just wasn’t there. We’re not talking about high level abuse, rather low-level abuse within the hierarchy of the system, but if every level of enforcement is assured to be in place, public transport would improve tremendously.”
The minister is also heard complaining that nobody would accept to become chairman of the authority, presumably because it was in such a great mess.
“Chairman Alfred Triganza had resigned half-heartedly because he had a very heavy work load privately,” Galea now says by way of explanation. “Another who was deputy chairman in Triganza’s time was Piju Fenech, who had resigned after a few weeks writing in the press that he did not find my support. I can’t understand what kind of support he was expecting except maybe for his pressure to become chairman, but I didn’t feel he should become chairman at that point in time, when we were going to expand the PTA into ADT. We spent some months without a chairman and it was a tough time for the authority; it wasn’t easy to find someone, I can’t remember how many people I approached but for a number of months there was nobody ready to take the responsibility to chair the PTA. When we set up ADT then we had lawyer Joe Zammit McKeon who stayed for a few months but then resigned purely for health reasons, nothing to do with work. For some four or five weeks we remained without a chairman again until Charles Demicoli was appointed, who remained for as long I was minister responsible for the authority.”
I ask Galea if he felt bad about having embarrassed the party by inadvertently providing Labour with a “scandal” on a silver plate that is providing an excellent digression from the MLP’s insider backstabbing chaos.
“Whoever listens to those conversations will realise they were definitely not intended to damage anyone; maybe there’s more shouting and screaming than conversations, but they are in reality words exchanged with someone who confronted me with the belief that I should have stuck my neck out for him by bending the rules, but I could not and I did not want to. I would never do that for anyone. He came asking me for help on illegalities he had committed and I could not support him. Far from it. Of course, if one is recorded one would perhaps be more cautious in his choice of words, but there is nothing about corruption. If anything I was being too honest in expressing my frustration and anger on certain situations while someone who was pushing me to do incorrect things. In fact I was also angry at Debono, and in certain clips I can be heard accusing him too, telling him he is one of those whom I could not rely on.”
Galea remains vague about what was said between him and Gonzi regarding this case.
“I speak to Gonzi almost every day. We had a discussion about this case, not just on this one but on all the issues we face in our political life. The prime minister has already expressed himself publicly.”
Not really. He neither defended Galea, nor criticised him.
“The prime minister has his opinions and I won’t be the one to express them for him,” Galea says.
Meanwhile the minister currently responsible for the transport authority, Jesmond Mugliett, has remained totally silent about the same officers even though they now fall under his charge, and Sant keeps alleging that the same abuses and corruption persist. At the same time, the PN media, so often used for damage control purposes, has hardly been mobilised to give a helping hand to Galea, who was left abandoned by the party machinery.
Nevertheless Galea rules out submitting his resignation.
“I absolutely don’t feel I should tender my resignation on what has come out, if anything I am more determined than ever so that whoever in politics is keen on throwing mud at him I will be able to throw it back to him so that he’ll maybe stop harming me and my colleagues. This is not the first time they’re using this kind of tactic but I will not be stopped and my conscience is clean. I won’t resign on this. If anyone should resign, it is someone who was president of a party a whole four years where there was rampant discrimination, including directly against me, and did nothing about it. I was suspended unjustly from my job for four years, and Sant as president of the Labour party said and did nothing.”
Galea says the episode has taught him to “revise” his opinion of political adversaries whom he had always respected.
“I have always respected everyone in politics, be it Labourites or Nationalists, but since the Opposition has launched this campaign against me I will have to revise the way I deal with them. There are certain individuals whom I can’t respect anymore.”
In this case Alfred Sant himself is fronting the campaign…
“Sant is fronting it but there are others within the party who have not yet spoken publicly about this case and about whom I will have the opportunity to speak later on.”