Noise of the Mediterranean

That, actually, is a very local noise, rising in regard of the now-silent Voice hitherto broadcasting from this place called Malta nestling in the heart of what parts of the Arab world refer to as the White Sea.

No one can call the island or us, its people, typically Mediterranean. For one thing, one cannot stereotype, not even when it comes to what are known as a Mediterranean diet, culture or temper. For another, Malta makes its own rules, which are not quite like anybody else makes them, in the Med or elsewhere.

The recent goings-on in the Public Accounts Committee have provided one more example of our unique way of doing things. The committee became very agitated about a report from the Office of the Auditor General.

It concerned spending at the Voice of the Mediterranean, a joint Maltese-Libyan radio venture that went off the air several years ago, as a result of financial laryngitis compounded with interest-anaemia to keep it on air in its shareholders.

The issue was simple, but made complicated in accordance with the Malta Political Recipes Book. What had to be established was whether those who managed the venture did so with due probity, as set out in the public financial regulations.

The Auditor General suggested that it had not done so without fail, and cited what he saw as lapses. The objective issue, however, did not remain the heart of the matter.

That became instead whether the radio station was subject to scrutiny by the Office of the Auditor General and by the PAC, which it serves.

Irrespective of the details of the report, one would have thought that the people's representatives should feel a duty to oversee the spending of every single cent of public funds. That duty is not fulfilled through defensive nit picking about definitions of the financial regulations.

Whatever the exact terminology of the regulations, public funds have only one definition - they come out of the people's pockets and those who spend them are accountable to the people through their representatives.

Accountability should not automatically be taken to imply something incorrect. It is an obligation to give proper satisfaction in respect of one's remit and actions. Whatever the auditor reported, time spent on furiously debating whether that was material to the Public Accounts Committee was, I feel, wasted.

If not to the PAC, those who spend public money are certainly accountable to those who put up that money. To us, the people. And so to every single Member of Parliament as a representative of the people.

A key function of Parliament is to oversee the actions and spending of the Executive, the political administration and the public bureaucracy. That is the key point that comes through in the detailed study of how Parliament works (Malta's Parliament, An Official History) carried out by Professor Godfrey A. Pirotta, launched in the heart of the building that hosts our representatives on Friday evening.

The first struggle of the Maltese people when the island was a colony under British rule was precisely to assume the power of oversight over public spending.

Through time Parliament has evolved the tools enabling it to exercise that function. It does so as a committee of the Whole House with regard to the votes of expenditure put forward by the government of the day when presenting the annual budgetary estimates for its consideration and approval - or disapproval.

Eleven years ago our Parliament caught up with countries that deploy the UK model of parliamentary democracy. The House unanimously agreed to set up a Public Accounts Committee and to strengthen the Auditor General and his Office by making them servants of the House, the strong arm of the people's representatives.

The democratic function was a simple carry forward of an ancient requirement - to set up guards at strategic points. The PAC, selected from both sides of the House, with the chairman coming from three members nominated by the opposition (to the government's four), is the primary watchdog of the public purse, the guard of the people's financial interest. It carries out its duty by guarding the Executive and political administration.

The committee has not worked perfectly. It started well enough until I, its first chairman, was compelled by the government's attitude to resign. The ministers, I felt, refused to allow the PAC to carry out its duties to the full by being given financial information it felt was pertinent to its deliberations.

My resignation was not politically motivated. I did not consult the Opposition leader or anyone else before I announced it. Professor Pirotta reproduces in his book the substantial part of the reasons I put forward to the House on why I felt I had to resign. They were not countered.

They remain relevant, irrespective of my own political irrelevance, because a well-functioning Public Accounts Committee is deeply relevant to a well-functioning parliamentary democracy.

Once again, the PAC is malfunctioning. The distinguishing feature of a strong PAC is that its members, whichever side they come from, collectively recognise that they represent the collective interest. A few minutes spent in a PAC meeting in the UK, for instance, rapidly demonstrates that point.

The members from the government's side there tend to be no less incisive, and can be more so, than their colleagues from the Opposition benches. PAC members are jealous of their critical function of over-sight on the Executive.

Here in Malta that jealousy has a structural failure. It has become the practice of the government side, whoever is transiting through office, to nominate serving ministers and parliamentary secretaries on the PAC.

That is a glaring, blatant contradiction in terms: the PAC is obliged to scrutinise spending by ministers, among others, since it is ministers and parliamentary secretaries who head the political administration and are accountable to Parliament for all that goes on under their watch.

Also, there is too much of a tendency to view issues from and divide along party lines. The discussion - more a debate - on the Auditor General's report on the Voice of the Mediterranean had seemed to deteriorate enough when the Investments and IT Minister, Dr Austin Gatt, who is a member of the PAC, lost his cool to the extent that he threatened a media cameraman that he would be arrested if he continued filming.

Dr Gatt has strong views and a short fuse. Some of his admirers also put it out that the Prime Minister burdens him too heavily, especially relative to other ministers. To put their line metaphorically, he carries the can while some others bask in the sun. In the case of the cameraman, all of that may have come together.

He was much more deliberate and studied in the move he made on Wednesday, when he proposed to the Public Accounts Committee, with the government 'side' voting in favour, to appoint a person or persons to investigate the conduct of the Office of the Auditor General in its investigation of the Voice of the Mediterranean.

It is immaterial to the fundamental issue of the proper working of parliamentary representative democracy that Minister Gatt is convinced that the report of the Auditor General was riddled with inconsistencies. The point that has emerged brings up a valid question, but - I strongly believe - the wrong and dangerous answer.

Two thousand years ago the Roman poet and satirist Juvenal asked Quis custodies ipsos custodies (Who is guarding the guards)? It is not the first time that the question has been raised over public overseers, such as the National Audit Office of the United Kingdom. It is a valid question - no body or institution is or can be perfect.

But, to answer it by subjecting the Auditor General to an investigation over a report to the PAC with which members of the political administration rightly or wrongly disagree is, I hold, unnecessary and goes against the people's interest.

It is unnecessary because the report was an open book. It could be openly disagreed with and criticised, as was done by the majority on the PAC. If PAC members felt there was deliberate misrepresentation or studied errors, they were free to say so unequivocally, and then leave it to the Auditor General to take note and look into.

As it is, by accepting Minister Gatt's proposal, the PAC has registered grave lack of confidence in the Auditor General himself, and in his role. I would be very surprised indeed if the respected incumbent, Joe Galea, stayed on in the face of such a clear repudiation of his ability to assess a report before presenting it to the PAC, and of his willingness to take note of any lapses, which might have escaped him, and move on to suitable remedial action, if justified.

The PAC decision, apart from being unnecessary, goes against the people's interest because, even if that is not the intention, it could intimidate the present as well as future incumbents in the position of Auditor General and with the National Audit Office.

If the proposal was made with prior consultation and the consent of Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, then there is greater cause for worry at this turn of events.

This is a low ebb in the history of the Public Accounts Committee. I do not think that the call made during its sitting by the chairman, Dr Charles Mangion, for a magisterial enquiry into the way the Voice of the Mediterranean radio station was run, was appropriate, in the context of the committee's reason for being.

The PAC has its own high and significant status. It carries out its work within the ambit and parameters of what is still correctly called the House of Representatives. Should any of its probing and deliberations justify action to be initiated outside the House of Representatives, that should follow as a matter of course. Or the issue can be raised within the House, but not in the PAC.

The loud noises in the Public Accounts Committee about the Voice of the Mediterranean were clear in demonstrating an important aspect of what is sick in our parliamentary democracy.

They showed the lack of coherence and substance that has developed in a mechanism that should be operated and made to work smoothly in the name of the people.

There are many strong or rickety stages for party and partisan positioning. The PAC ought not to be one of them.