CARUANA BLAMES OTHERS FOR HIS OWN FAILURES, SAYS OPPOSITION

No matter how many times Mr Caruana tries to wriggle out of it to suit his own political ends, the fact is that he was the one who identified that there was a need for Gibraltar to upgrade its maritime assets in the context of the continuing conflict with Spain over Gibraltar’s territorial waters, says the Opposition, and all the Opposition has done, and will continue to do, is to hold him to account for the statement that he made to Parliament in 2009 to that effect.

The Opposition statement adds that the failure of the Government to act on the commitment that Mr Caruana gave three years ago has logically meant that for all this time the Royal Gibraltar Police has faced the Guardia Civil and other Spanish agencies at sea with inferior resources.

It will be recalled that during the budget debate of 2009, Mr Caruana  said that the Gibraltar Government had jurisdictional competences for official acts in Gibraltar waters and that they were “certainly intending to upgrade our investment to make much more senior our assets to uphold them”. He explained that this would “involve the acquisition of vessels of a much more important size and capacity with which to exercise and enforce our jurisdictional competences and statutory obligations.” In February 2010, in response to a question from Dr Garcia, Mr Caruana said that it was still the policy of the Government to purchase the vessels. This has not happened and there is no specific, visible provision for these vessels even in the budget of 2011/12 which has just been approved.

Mr Caruana is wrong to suggest that the line which Dr Garcia and the Opposition have adopted on this issue takes the United Kingdom off the hook. The fact is that the person who has let the United Kingdom off the hook is him. He told Parliament in the budget debate of 2010 that the Gibraltar Government drew a distinction between “Gibraltar authorities exercise of their statutory competences and jurisdiction which is what I was referring to, and the defence of Gibraltar from what is in effect an assault on its sovereignty which is the responsibility of the United Kingdom Government.” He then went on to explain that the UK was responsible for preventing the incursion from taking place, but that once the Guardia Civil were inside it was the responsibility of the RGP to prevent them from exercising competences.

What Mr Caruana cannot do is to restrictively define the manner in which he expects the Royal Navy and other MOD agencies to operate and then on the other hand complain that they do not act. It is therefore Mr Caruana and his Government and not Dr Garcia and the Opposition who have let the United Kingdom Government off the hook.

It is clear that the approach of the Gibraltar Government to the territorial waters issue has not worked and all that Mr Caruana is doing is to blame others for his own failure. Indeed, it will be recalled that it was Mr Caruana himself who claimed that the waters issue had been neutralised before the visit of then Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos to Gibraltar. Everybody knows that far from being neutralised, the conflict became worse than ever after the visit took place.

Therefore for Mr Caruana to suggest that in this context Gibraltar would hugely suffer if Dr Garcia and the Opposition were ever in Government smacks of nothing more than total desperation by a Government that increasingly appears to be on its last legs. He seems to have forgotten that he was the one who identified the need to upgrade Gibraltar’s maritime assets and that he was the one who called on the boating public to shoot a flare if they were approached by the Guardia Civil inside our waters. All that the Opposition have done is to hold Mr Caruana and the GSD to account for the commitment that was given to Parliament in 2009. This is something that the Opposition is perfectly entitled to do.