Ethics, reforms and political governance

One area where political governance has fallen dangerously behind corporate governance is where the adoption of strict codes of conduct is concerned. Practically every international company has well-defined standards of business behaviour that bind the senior management. But we need to ask ourselves whether the business of government is similarly regulated by adequate codes of political conduct.

It is no news that in the past several years people's satisfaction with democracy, even in developed countries, has declined. This could be attributed to a number of factors, including the non-responsiveness of politicians to citizens' aspirations, and the non-accountability of politicians.

An increasing number of people believe that politicians are principally concerned with power, that politicians do not care about what people think, and that normal citizens are unable to affect the political decision making process. As Seymor Martin Lipset said in the American Political Science Review in 1959, it is an undisputable fact that that the single most important condition for democracy to survive is that democratic system's legitimacy.

Incidents of abuse of power by politically-appointed officials undermine the people's confidence in political democracy. The worst thing that can happen is that in the absence of clear and comprehensive rules of ethics that bind both national and local politicians, as well as political appointees in managing publicly-owned entities, we continue to abstain from seeking remedies against the abuse of political power.

When 10 years ago the Labour government commissioned Edgar Mizzi to investigate a number of alleged abuses by previous administration officials in a number of government-controlled entities, his main conclusion was always that there were clear indications of abuse of authority, but in the absence of strict rules of ethics such evidence was insufficient to stand the test of the criminal court.

This is not a unique situation. Other countries have faced the same dilemma and, rather then change their criminal law to include a whole range of abuse of political power, they introduced the notion of ethics regimes similar to those already in existence for the private business sector. To rebuild the citizens' trust in the functioning of the political system and the public sector we need to adopt and enforce an ethics regime intended to improve the ethical standards and performance of public officials.

Although we already have a very vague code of conduct for public officials serving on government boards, as well as other established practices regulating the conduct of politicians, we need a much stricter regime that leaves less room for discretion and are less aspirational and more prescriptive. We need to define the grey areas like when conflicts of interest arise, and when a competitive bidding process is tainted with undue pressure from holders of political power.

A comparative analysis of the different aspects of conduct rules found in the regimes of various democratic countries will immediately show where our own systems are lacking. Various codes of conduct adopted by some western European countries require that holders of political office disclose interests concerning tax returns, sources of patrimonial income, investments, ownership interest in a business, real estate, creditor indebtedness, retainers, fees and honoraria, reimbursement of travel expenses by private sources, deposits with banks, professional services rendered, identification of trusts by trustees and beneficiaries, and names of immediate family members.

These codes also specify prohibited activities that could include:

Use of one's public position to obtain personal benefit; providing benefits to influence official actions; use of confidential government information; financial conflict of interest; nepotism; political activity by public officials; award of contracts without a competitive bidding process and travel payments from non-government services.

The effectiveness of these legislative codes of conduct depends on several factors including the existence of sanctions, cultural attitudes, and institutionalisation.

Sanctions vary from simple reprimands to disqualification and from loss of mandate to suspension from office. These codes and their enforcement could be managed by different entities, including an ethics committee of Parliament, as is the case in Israel, or the High Court, as is the case in India.

We should no longer rely on our criminal law to control gross criminal behaviour like bribery, white-collar theft, and blatant corruption. We need to understand, define, and sanction other politically-unacceptable behaviour like not declaring conflicts of interest, nepotism, and tampering with the rule of independent competitive bidding for contracts financed by public funds.

A future Labour government will ensure that those who hold political office or who are in a position of trust in public entities are held accountable for their actions through well-defined rules of ethics aimed at putting political governance on the same level of corporate governance adopted by the best-of-breed international companies. Only in this way can we address the dissatisfaction the electorate has with politics and the behaviour of politicians and others who wield political power.

Dr Mangion is deputy leader of the Malta Labour Party for parliamentary affairs.