PL challenges Busuttil to take action against former B’Kara mayor over damning report

The Labour Party has challenged Opposition leader Simon Busuttil to take action against former Birkirkara mayor Michael Fenech Adami, after the Local Governance Board found that he had frequently breached public procurement regulations.

PL deputy leader Chris Cardona claimed that Busuttil is unable to take action, as the Fenech Adamis are more powerful figures within the PN than he is.

“Busuttil is weaker than the Fenech Adami family,” he told a press conference. “By defending Michael Fenech Adami, he has proven that the PN is still heavily in the grip of the same old cliques.

“The PN speaks a lot about good governance, but never take action in the face of bad governance – not when they were in government, and neither now in Opposition.”

The damning report – released last Saturday – says that the former PN mayor had personally granted work to several companies without issuing calls for tender or even gaining prior council approval. It instructed the director of the local governance department to take all measures it deemed fit against Fenech Adami – son of former Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami and brother of PN deputy leader Beppe Fenech Adami – and his former executive secretary Arthur Pizzuto.

Michael Fenech Adami has vehemently denied the findings, dismissing them as an act of “political vengeance” by the Labour government and Birkirkara’s incumbent PL mayor Joanne Debono Grech. The Nationalist Party also refused to accept the findings, given that Ronnie Pellegrini – a former henchman of Lorry Sant and current chief of staff to civil liberties minister Helena Dalli – is one of the three members on the local governance board.

However, Cardona recounted how the PN media was all too quick to pounce on a report by the same board against Zabbar’s former PL mayor Quinton Scerri back in 2014, also about public procurement breaches. Scerri had back then challenged the Local Governance Board’s findings because Ronnie Pellegrini was excluded from the investigation and did not sign the report.

“Simon Busuttil always finds excuses not to take any action against people close to him, but by defending Fenech Adami he is defending bad governance and barefaced abuse of power.”