“I have just informed the Public Accounts Committee that both my lawyer and myself are available to attend a committee meeting on any date after Wednesday 3rd November,” Mizzi said, in a post accompanied by a photo of a family and the slogan ‘five years of cleaner air’. 

As a minister, Mizzi was responsible for overseeing Malta’s shift to natural gas-derived energy.

The committee is currently discussing an auditor general report into the contract awarded to the company Electrogas, for building and operating the country’s gas-fired power plant. 

Mizzi rejected the committee’s first request for him to testify citing guidelines on parliamentary procedure which give sitting MPs the option of refusing to appear before the PAC. 

MPs on the committee – both from the government and Opposition side – agreed that Mizzi should be called upon to testify once again, though government MPs stopped short of condemning his behaviour. 

Following this first refusal, Finance Minister Clyde Caruana had acknowledged in Parliament that Mizzi had an obligation to reply to questions on a national project he had led, suggesting that while Mizzi was to some extent being defended by government MPs, this also had its limits. 

After the Nationalist Party filed a motion requesting a vote in Parliament to force Mizzi to attend the next sitting, he declared in another of his Facebook posts that he would be attending the meeting. 

Just 24 hours later, however, Mizzi had changed his mind, against uploading a Facebook post saying he could not attend because his lawyer was not available to accompany him, as was his right. 

Mizzi resigned his ministerial post in November 2019 and was later expelled from the Labour Party following revelations about profits made by the company 17 Black through its involvement in an Enemalta wind farm project in Montenegro.  

What do you make of Mizzi’s latest post?