Preset agendas

It hardly matters whether the election will be held in May next year or this November. The election campaign has already started. The area where this is really being felt is not in the controversies between the parties, or in the increasing scurry of policy proposals. The campaign is rolling in that shadowy area of political action to which the PN, despite much pretence to the contrary, always devotes particular attention. It concerns the hands-on, nitty gritty work of tackling the individual grievances and expectations of "their" people.

Patronage and clientelism never abandoned the political practice of the PN machine and its protagonists, even if assiduous readers of the independent and right-wing media, having no other contact with the Maltese reality, must believe such practices were abolished after 1987. Actually, they remained very important tools under the Fenech Adami and Gonzi administrations, and were honed to perfection, serving as crucial elements in the 1992 and 2003 general election victories by the Nationalists.

To be sure, clientelism has survived and prospered in most modern democracies the world over, despite all the talk about the supposedly globalised, post-modern society in which we now live. It has always flourished in the Mediterranean variety of political mobilisation and in Malta was always a vital motivating force by which parties organised political affairs. That can hardly be considered surprising. In a tiny society like ours, where people know each other through extensive social networks, much give and take happens on a face-to-face basis. Information and allegiances are deployed through friends of friends and through clans based on kinship or neighbourhood. Traditional strands of belief and habit remain very strong. They reinforce the expectations for spoils and favours, in return for services rendered or promised. As the election date approaches, such expectations well up. Many come to the conclusion that, just prior to the election, politicians are most amenable to dish out favours.

Clearly, clientelistic pressures have been growing steadily within the PN camp in past weeks. To deny this would be absurd.

Nor - to be frank - can it be said that such pressures are all counter productive. In certain cases, they serve to clear up the administrative system, clogged by too much bureaucracy or sloth. Licences and permits, which have been left to pile up in office trays, are suddenly steered towards delivery. When families and small enterprises find that they can finally proceed with works to their house or with the refurbishment of an old shop after years of delay, that can hardly be counted a bad thing. What is wrong is that it happens through arbitrary mechanisms which discriminate between family and family, enterprise and enterprise, on a political basis.

Other developments which accelerate as the electoral process quickens, have much more serious consequences. Promotions, appointments and recruitment in the public service are manipulated to benefit supporters, even when abler people are available. Contracts are positioned to accommodate favoured suppliers. Some of these moves go beyond the short-term advantage of anchoring voters to the party in power, in this case the PN. They are intended to tie the hands of the new Administration ensuing from the next election. Presumably, this should not be such a problem if the same party is re-elected to government. But if alternation takes place, then such moves would lock the incoming Administration into policy decisions and high level personnel structures which it can only view with little confidence.

At present, this too is happening. The Gonzi Administration is trying to finalise a long term contract covering the supply of computer hardware for the public service. Now is not the right time.

Moves are afoot to promote people to the top in leading government structures, such as the army, on election eve. Similar arrangements are being prospected in organisations where the government remains a driving force, such as Bank of Valletta, Maltapost and the MIA.

This is unacceptable. In 1996, following our election win, Labour was faced with a contract signed three days before the election, for a Lm35 million construction project of ships for Gozo Channel. At the same time, the then PM's personal assistant was given a gratuity running to some Lm30,000, if I remember correctly, in compensation for having been subjected to an attack, the full circumstances of which remain murky to this date. Other instances can be detailed.

No one can say that Labour retaliated in kind. On the eve of the 1998 election, we could have, for instance, appointed a new permanent head of the civil service. I did not consider this to be fair to the incoming Administration, if it happened not to be Labour. So the person chosen - who in my view was by far the best choice on the basis of performance and merit - was appointed, with his full agreement, on a short-term arrangement, subject to the long-term approval of the Administration to be formed following the 1998 election.

Today, matters should be made clear and unambiguous. The principles of transparency, accountability and efficiency should apply with greater strength as the election campaign rolls, not with less. If the Gonzi Administration believes that it can manipulate the future by making arbitrary and partisan decisions that preset the national agendas following the election... by way of top level public appointments and promotions, or by way of staking out long-term contracts... this time round, let me say: It's not on.