Feb 07 - “What New Dawn?” Asks GSD As It Continues To Press Government On Fishing
The GSD Opposition has said that, yet again, the Government refuses to provide a simple answer to a simple Opposition question, this time on whether Spanish Fishermen will have to apply for licence in Gibraltar to fish in BGTW. The GSD argues that the suggestion that somehow the Opposition is responsible for not obtaining the information because it did not participate in the debate on the draft fishing legislation is a “dishonest smokescreen” saying that this is a question that was posed to Mr. Picardo in Parliament in Chief Minister’s question time.
The reality, according to the GSD, is that this is a Government which was elected into office “promising change and a New Dawn” but that, two years into its term in office, more and more people are coming to realise that, “when you strip away the spin and the rhetoric, all that it increasingly offers the people of Gibraltar is a False Dawn.” The GSD stresses that more meetings of Parliament will not change that unless the Government changes its culture, centred on the Chief Minister, Mr. Picardo, of “not wanting to answer questions which are clearly in the public interest.”
Daniel Feetham, the Leader of the Opposition said: “This is a Government that constantly closes the shutters on the Opposition every single time we ask an inconvenient question, by either refusing to answer questions in Parliament or indeed, lying to Parliament as Mr. Picardo did on the Sunborn issue.”
He continued: “The Fishing issue is just one of a long line of issues on which the Government has not come clean with the people or has been forced to because it has been rumbled by the Opposition. These have included the secret investment of £344 million of savers money in Credit Finance; the so-called incubator scheme which no one knew anything about involving companies registered at No 6 Convent Place owned by well known GSLP supporters; the identity of the companies that have been awarded contracts by direct allocation whilst at the same time having their labour subsidised by FJS trainees; the report as to how the former speaker had his personal tax affairs leaked to the media; or who paid for the Washington visit and what contractual arrangements the Government may have with those people to allow the public to determine whether that visit has come at a wider price for this community; or how much it pays Glyn Ford in consultancy fees, a former MEP but member of the GSLP and a man who campaigned for them at the last General Election. Never in the history of politics has a Government two years into a first term accumulated such long list of issues on which they refuse to come clean or have tried to keep from the public until they were exposed.”
