Gibraltar’s
new air terminal, or the Caruana Gin Palace as I prefer to dub it, is a
monument to one man’s vanity.
Like
the man himself it is all glitz and glass but inside it is empty and clearly
not fit for the purpose. It is a tribute to Peter Caruana’s ego but has still
yet to fully function for the purpose it was supposedly built – as Gibraltar’s
new air terminal.
The
fact that the then Supreme Leader should have designed and constructed a
colossus to match his ego is no surprise. However what is clearly unacceptable
is his belief that you the people of Gibraltar should pay for it.
If
anybody was in any doubt that the former Supreme Leader acted like an Eastern
Bloc despot of old it is the project that Gibraltar never needed yet which has
ended up costing you, the Gibraltar tax payer, 85 million euros and counting.
Here is a building fit for Ruritania and its empty corridors shall for ever be
roamed by the political ghost of Peter Caruana. Be careful when you sit in one
of the numerous loo cubicles, his ghost could be sitting on your knee. His rictus
grin of “therapeutic” satisfaction at his poisoned legacy to his nation is
enough to cure anybody’s constipation.
When
the GSLP Liberal coalition came to power Caruana was quick to insist that the
new government should not look back but go forward. This is of course what a
government has to do: it has to govern for the now and the future and Fabian
Picardo and his team have been engaged in just that.
There
were those who support the new government who wanted to look back, to see blood
on the carpet, but as I have stated here before the now and future comes first
but justice for the sins of the past will come in due course. For Caruana and
his GSD junta it is coming slowly but surely.
When
the airport terminal started out the budget was put at 24 million pounds that
has now spiralled to 85 million euros. Such a spread can only be put down to
incompetence by the GSD government in mismanaging the creation of the building
that Gibraltar never needed.
Incompetence
is one thing and Caruana and the GSD are in the dock for that. However the
former Supreme Leaders’ ego trip to create a Gin Palace in his own image and
likeness has cost Gibraltarians many millions of pounds. My question is this:
why should you pay?
I
accept the government (which is really you) is saddled with the major part of
the bill but the “Clerk of Works of the Casemates” then run
amok with nobody to keep him in check. His vanity had to be fed at any price
because he knew it was you who would pick up the tab – but why should you?
On
June 6 I asked in Panorama – Should Caruana be prosecuted? It wasn’t a
politically motivated question: it was a legal issue. I asked two questions:
should the former Chief Minister Peter Caruana be prosecuted for breaking the
1991 Nature Protection Act? And, why didn’t the Royal Gibraltar Police enforce
that law from 1997 until the present GSLP Liberal Government was elected to
office last November?
This prompted an email from a Panorama reader named Paul saying: “In
the case of Community Care, my understanding is that it was (and is) a charity
set up for the benefit of Gibraltar pensioners. I also believe that it had many
millions of pounds in the bank when the GSD came into office. What I am not
clear about is how Caruana managed to gain access to those funds and then spend
them all. It may be that he was a trustee; in which case he has flagrantly
breached that trust...”
So
looking back as Caruana begged the government not to do we find the list starts
to build up and believe me it will grow longer. In the case of misspending on
the airport project my argument is simply this. GSD incompetence you the
taxpayer are saddled with. However where Caruana on his ego trip personally intervened
to send the costs spiralling then those items should be for his own account and
not yours.
Caruana
misspent millions of pounds of your money on this folly? Does it matter? Every
million pounds wasted on the Gin Palace is a million that cannot be spent on
the health service, community care, our roads, the police, creating jobs, on
housing, the young, the elderly plus all the other needs our society is crying
out for. So now you tell me: does it matter?
