Motion of no confidence against education minister defeated

Labour MP Owen Bonnici today opened the Opposition's motion of no confidence against Cristina, after funds for the EU educational youth exchange programmes were suspended because of mismanagement inside the EU Programmes Authority (EUPA).

The three senior officials at the Education Ministry who were blamed for the suspension of EU funds for students’ programmes by an inquiry board, resigned. Christopher Bezzina, Robert Tabone and EUPA director Mauro Pace Parascandolo submitted their resignation and it was accepted. In their resignation letters, the three official said they did not agree with the conclusions of the report and were offering their resignation without any prejudice towards any action they might take in the future.

About €4 million, allocated to 2010 projects, were suspended after the Commission said that its complaints about how the programmes and the funds were administered by Malta had not been heeded. Following a meeting between Mrs Cristina and European Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou, the projects under the Youth in Action Programme would go ahead as planned for applicants who had been formally notified of selection under the 2010 call.

Owen Bonnici
Labour MP Owen Bonnici welcomed the government’s decision to offer University exchange programmes to students affected by the suspension of EU funds for education funds, but said such exchanges would not be as good as the EU programmes.

He said it was a disgrace that taxpayers would have to fork out some €500,000, when previously the programmes would not have cost the country a cent.

Bonnici said the government was quick to assume the burdens of EU membership, but was unable to make the best of its advantages.

He said the government had been excellent at “creating illusions” on the country’s financial state. “Can the people trust the PN to manage other sectors of the country after making such a mess of the EU educational funds?”

Bonnici said Cristina’s credibility in parliament had been tarnished when, along with other Nationalist MPs, had claimed that Labour MP Justyne Caruana had voted against the Opposition’s own motion on the power station extension.

At this point, Tonio Borg interjects. Borg was the instigator of the claim that Caruana had erroneously voted against her side’s own motion. “You would repeat it?” Bonnici is heard calling out to Borg.

Bonnici then said ministers were responsible for their personal actions, but that they must carry the can for what takes place in their ministry. “Their civil servants are anonymous. In this case, the reverse happened – the civil servants carried the can and the minister did not.”

Bonnici added that according to a PQ, Cristina had told parliament she only got to know a week before the programmes were suspended of the whole fracas, when she had been aware of the inquiry into the EUPA’s management as far back as November 2009.

Dolores Cristina
Education Minister Dolores Cristina opened her defence on the motion by taking issue with the new coverage devoted to her son Alessandro Cristina, who happened to be a programmes manager working in the EUPA.

“When you enter politics, you must withstand the criticism… but when it’s a personal attack on your family, then thing are different…”

“Alessandro can defend himself. What I must take issue with is the lack of seriousness and lack of ethics of Labour’s journalism, which came out with spurious lies about his girlfriend and even his girlfriend’s family whose advertising firm happens to be a main company on the island. Joseph Muscat should have a chat with Charlon Gouder,” she said, holding out the Labour journalist for some serious telling off, even alleging he had ulterior motives for putting the focus on her son.

She lauded the PN’s work in securing EU membership, and opening the way to the funds that made the EU programmes possible in the first place. “Now everybody, even the Opposition, is convinced of the need for Malta’s EU membership.”

She said that an external auditors’ report by Ernst and Young back in May 2009 on the EU funds’ management had been followed by recommendations from the European Commission in August. These were implemented, she said, namely by updating manual procedures, converting bank accounts from current into savings. In November, it was never indicated that the funds were in crisis, and that no ‘corruption’ had ever been pointed out by the EC. She also denied visits by OLAF, the EU’s anti-fraud office, to investigate the EUPA.

Instead she said the EU had praised Malta’s implementation of its Leonardo, Grundtvig, and lifelong learning programmes, giving Malta the highest rate of participation in the Erasmus programmes in 2008-2009.

“I am not tied to this seat. I don’t lie. I never had information that the EU programmes were going to be stopped before it was too late,” Cristina said.

Tonio Borg
The deputy prime minister joined Cristina in celebrating what she earlier on called the “silent revolution” in Maltese education. In a reference to previous Labour administrations, Borg said his government “never closed private schools or created selection boards for university… we opened the university to all, together with the ITS and Mcast and awarded stipends to everyone.”

He defended the minister, claiming administrative mistakes were not like abuse of power or corruption. The inquiry report into the suspension of the EU finds had found nobody had acted irresponsibly or fraudulently, Borg said, but identified administrative shortcomings. This had been followed up with a meeting with Commissioner Vassillou, which led to the continuation of the lifelong learning progamme for 2010.

Borg recalled that as home affairs minister, some prisoners had escaped and the Opposition presented a motion of no-confidence. “It was as if I had gone to Corradino and plotted the escape,” Borg said, before pointing out that a mass break-out from jail had taken place under a Labour government. “Nobody resigned then,” he said.

In a swipe at Labour’s move in support of EU membership, Borg said: “This is looking more like the road to Damascus, with the Opposition and government fighting on how effective government could have been in absorbing EU funds."

Beppe Fenech Adami
Nationalist MP Beppe Fenech Adami called it ironic that it should be the Opposition to cry foul about the suspension of the €4 million fund, when it had produced a TV programme called ‘Made in Brussels’ with €2 million in EU funds.

Fenech Adami instead lauded the government’s efforts in securing €1 billion in European funds. He accused Labour of being a “chameleon that changed colours according to political convenience.”

He then launched a barrage of figures to illustrate achievements in the Maltese educational sector: “The Opposition truly hasn’t realised the silent revolution in education… we spend €1.4 million every day in funds, €175,000 in just these three hours of debate, 6,000 computers distributed in primary schools across Malta and Gozo, with 1,000 laptops distributed to teachers last year and 16,000 students receiving a stipend.”
Yet another reference to previous Labour administrations here: “We have 10,000 students at the university, 10 times the amount we had in 1987… instead of a government making way with church schools, government spends €38 million a year on these schools.”

Joseph Muscat
Opposition leader Joseph Muscat said this was the first time parliament was debating an issue that had affected so many people’s lives. He said it was remiss that the education minister had not deigned herself to issue parliamentary statement on the suspension of the funds.

He said that all he had heard throughout the debate were references to the 1970s and 1980s. “Guess what, we’re in 2010… time has passed.”

Muscat said that had government had ordered an audit of all EU funding, things would have been different. “It seems it is everybody’s fault but the government’s.”
He said Dolores Cristina’s defence was not credible, and said a turf war had developed inside the education ministry due to the ministry’s interference.

He also said that it was regrettable that Cristina’s son Alessandro had been mentioned in the whole fracas, although he neutralised her claims with his own statement: “I understand the hurt of a parent whose children are mentioned in politics… my own two-year-old daughters are mentioned  negatively, and I hope the education minister will take note of this observation.”

Francis Zammit Dimech
Nationalist backbencher Francis Zammit Dimech accused the Labour opposition of “trying to dent” the government’s “excellent record in education” and its EU vision. He claimed that Muscat’s calculation of the interest spent on education was “dangerous”…

Interjecting on a point of order, Muscat explained that he had mentioned the the interest paid on education in isolation but in context when compared to the total debt paid for the national debt.

Continuing his speech, Zammit Dimech asked what the PL would cut in educational expenditure when it was elected to Government. The civil service was not totally anonymous, as Bonnici claimed. He explained how before 1987, the Labour government had enacted the Interpretation Act which established that the Minister had “total power over a civil servant’s decision”.

If we say that there was no way for administrative error, as the Opposition was insisting, then the minister “has to carry political responsibility for this?” Zammit-Dimech asked. This was “part of the learning curve of the country in the absorption of EU funds,” the Nationalist backbencher concluded his speech.

Lawrence Gonzi
Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said he had not heard “such a poor speech such as Muscat’s when defending such an important motion such as this”.

It was not possible that the Opposition “continued to shake its hands with joy when negative statistics for the Government are published. He accused the Opposition of “not having the national interest at heart but had wanted to protect its partisan interest”.

Gonzi also accused the Opposition of “writhing its hands with joy” whenever something negative about the EU was published, “This was the typical strategy of the Super One journalism, which led the PL to lose the last general election, as the last election defeat report has shown”.

Gonzi refuted Muscat’ suggestion that the Nationalist Government was the government of “half the people... This government had the courage to take courageous initiatives”, such as the election of President George Abela. “We didn’t join the EU for half the people, but for all of it!. If something negative happened, “then that would happed for the whole population, not for half of it,” he added.

He claimed that a ministerial statement was not “the best manner how to discuss the Opposition’s motion” A debate was “the better way” how such a serious matter had to be discussed. During this legislature, Opposition motions were presented “as much as possible without any amendments,” he insisted.

He explained how nobody on the Opposition benches could say “that he or she was in favour of EU membership.  You can change your emblem, but you cannot change your history that you were against EU membership!,” Gonzi insisted. It was true that the EU programmes were suspended, but this was “not the be-all and end all” of the matter.  He justified the use of public funds to provide a temporary solution for those students who were affected by the suspension.

“We cannot maintain systems where there is a lack of communication,” the PM insisted. Gonzi claimed that if the EUPA incident had not occurred, then Malta would have been “among the most efficient in absorption of EU funds”.

From this lesson, we had to learn that the EU requested accountability “for every single cent that it awards,” he added. The PM revealed that a meeting for all permanent secretaries was called recently to discuss that if there were problems, the system of internal reporting within the Civil Service was indeed working effectively. Gonzi also ordered for a revision of all the national authorities in the country that deal with EU funds and take “radical decision if the need may be”.

Evarist Bartolo
Winding-up the debate on the no-confidence motion against the Education Minister, Evarist Bartolo, Labour’s main spokesperson for Education, explained that out of nine minutes of his speech, Gonzi had only dedicated three minutes for the problem at hand, and dedicated the rest “for an attack on Muscat.

The Opposition gave one month before presenting the no-confidence motion against the Education Minister, Bartolo explained. The practice in other countries was for the Minister to make a ministerial statement and apologise for what had happened.

“If the minister had done this, then the Opposition would not have presented a motion of no confidence in Cristina,” he insisted. There are some things in the education sectors that were going good, others that were going discreetly and others that were going really bad, Bartolo said.

“The Education Minister’s leadership style has led to this, and the EUPA debacle was the first casualty,” he insisted. Cristina had not coped with the education portfolio, how did the PM give her family portfolio as well? Bartolo asked. The ministry was run by “two persons in the Ministry’ private secretariat. Everything is done from top to bottom. And then they want us to believe that the Minister did not know,” Bartolo insisted.

He revealed that an internal audit report had indicated the problem. “Instead of destroying the messenger, he should have instead acted on them”, the Labour MP added. The internal reports had indicated from April 2008 that there was the need for strengthening of the national authority which administers the EU educational programmes in Malta, Bartolo insisted.

Apart from EU audit, the EU had already received reports from people who had recalled their experience to the EU Commission. He insisted that at MCAST threw was a huge drop-out rate of 50 per cent.  This high drop-out rate was “the result of the problems in the primary and secondary sectors”, Bartolo lamented.

Only 60 per cent of students every year had obtained the necessary qualifications to go to the post-secondary level. The Nationalist Government had created a feel-good factor in the country, “supported by those media that are fed money from one side with and then present current affairs programmes on PBS”, Bartolo insisted.

“In this case, instead of Cristina shouldering the political responsibility herself, the responsibility was shouldered by the civil servants and the 600 students that were affected by the suspension of the EU programmes,” he added. “If Cristina works only with her one people and they have let her down, then she should shoulder the political responsibly for them!,” he insisted.

It it positive if Malta learned from the lessons learnt, however for small countries such as Cyprus and Malta it was already “very difficult to cope with the administrative requirements of EU membership”, Bartolo concluded his speech.