Yesterday
I penned an article for Panorama on the need of Spain to decide if it supports
the rule of law or not. If it does then it has to recognise the legitimacy of
the laws passed by Gibraltar’s Parliament, such as the 1991 Nature Protection
Act, and the Geneva Convention to which it is a signatory giving Gibraltar
three miles of territorial waters.
After
I wrote the article I read a press release from our own government. This told
me the Gibraltar Government had cancelled the contracts issued to Mr Nigel
Pardo by the previous GSD administration. The contracts were in the name of his
two companies of Land Projects Ltd and of Gibraltar Land Reclamation
Company Ltd (GLRC) as Project Managers.
What caused me to raise my eyebrows was this phrase: “The companies were informed that GSLP/Liberal
Government have an objection in principle to maintaining in force contracts
which were awarded illegally in the light, notably, of EU public procurement
requirements.”
I know little of Mr Pardo but I understand that he is
related by marriage to both the former Supreme Leader QC and also his one-time
henchman Joe Holliday. If that is not the case then I am happy to be corrected.
Either way that is not a crime.
Yet it would seem that the former Supreme Leader QC
did enter in to an illegal contract deal with Mr Pardo, who may or may not have
family links to him.
I am not sure whether this was illegality on Mr
Pardo’s part: after all he may not have known the legal status of the deals.
However as the former Supreme Leader is a QC we can presume he was fully aware
of what he was putting on the table for this family related gentleman to sign.
Even if it only became apparent later then the contracts should have been
rescinded.
This
begs the question: how can a GSD government, led by a leading lawyer and a QC,
have a total disregard for the law. The former Supreme Leader may have thought
he was the law, or above the law on whatever heavenly cloud he was floating on,
but sadly for him he was not and is not.
So
the former Supreme Leader broke EU law and also seemingly ignored the 1991
Nature Protection Act of Gibraltar: a law which still stands to this day. I
suspect the list will get longer before we are done. One day the law will catch
up with the former Supreme Leader and his former Government.
It
will be interesting to hear what the former Supreme Leader’s Justice Minister,
Daniel Feetham, has to say on the subject of these laws especially as he also
is a respected lawyer and participated in this government.
For
instance as the law minister did Mr Feetham advise his chief minister that he
was breaking the law? If not, why not? If he did what was the former Supreme
Leader’s reaction?
How
does Mr Feetham justify his being a member of a government which has clearly
acted illegally when he was meant to be the uphold of the law?
I do
have a third question relating to Mr Feetham and the former Supreme Leader but
that can wait to another day.
