Consultancy firm accuses OPM of bias for awarding tender to Labour pollster

The Shift Team - 14. December. 2023

A local consultancy firm has filed a complaint over the awarding of an Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) tender to a company co-owned by Labour pollster Vince Marmara and Acting President of Malta Frank Bezzina.

In an objection filed at the Public Contracts Review Board (PCRB), EMCS Advisory Ltd claims the €980,000 tender was awarded without transparency, objectivity and equality of treatment.

They claim this resulted in a decision favouring Marmara’s company, Powered Knowledge and two other companies.

Through their lawyers, Dingli & Dingli, the consultancy firm asked PCRB to cancel the tender and declare the decision to recommend Powered Knowledge as the winner of a €300,000 share “illegal and unlawful”.

The firm also insists that if the tender is not cancelled altogether, part of the tender should at least be given to them and not to Marmara’s firm.

EMCS claim their offer is far superior to that of Powered Knowledge.

The tender concerns the provision of “mystery shopping services to the public administration” and was divided into three separate lots.

Financed by EU funds, the Department of Contracts decided to split the proceeds of the tender among PWC, Idea Advisory Services Ltd owned by former MCAST principal Silvio Debono, and Marmara’s Powered Knowledge.

Marmara has been conducting polls for Labour and the GWU newspaper it-Torċa since 2013 and has received a number of government tenders and direct orders.

With Bezzina, Marmara has already been paid more than €600,000 for a similar ‘mystery shopping’ exercise awarded to him by the OPM.

Last year, The Shift reported that, in 2019, the Marmara-Bezzina tandem was paid an additional €152,000 in addition to the amount allocated in the tender, which they won because their bid was the lowest.

At the end of the mystery shopping exercise, Marmara and Bezzina received a total of €605,000, an increase of 33% from the original bid.

Marmara has not divulged who finances his polls for the Labour Party and it-Torċa.

Besides their private business ventures, Bezzina and Marmara are full-time lecturers at the University of Malta.

0 0 votes

Article Rating

4 Comments

Oldest

Newest Most Voted

Inline Feedbacks

View all comments

Guest

Out of Curiosity

2 years ago

This is why I do not believe any longer the survey results of Marmara. He has a blatant conflict of interest, where I believe that he is now doing his best to depict a positive scenario for the Labour Party, by skewing the polls. With his actions he is trying to help the Government restoring confidence. Scratch my back and I?ll scratch yours. Hypocrites!

Guest

Carmelo Borg

2 years ago

Bojkott ALL SURVEYS
GIVE THEM WRONG ANSWERS

Guest

Tony

2 years ago

I never trusted surveys by Marmara. I suspect his surveys are screwed to get the result to boost and strengthen PL’s supporters moral and diminish that of PN’s supporters. With the data available to him from PL he can quite easily select the persons to contact in the surveys for their opinion. And Marmara being part of the Inner Circle of PL well……….

Guest

J. Kerr

2 years ago

Labour uses this pollster whenever they sense that they are losing ground. He is no more than a subtle propagandist and his brief, I suspect, is to be manipulative. He uses the polls to get people either motivated or discouraged. One has to take note of his findings but also remember to keep the salt close by !