Systemic conflicts of interest at Mepa

It pains me to have to reply to Minister George Pullicino's apologia A Question Of Integrity (February 8) in response to my article Conflicts Of Interest In Mepa because I know that he is at this very moment fighting for his political life. But what he wrote so misrepresents what I said on the deeply important issue of the selection, composition and balance of the Mepa boards and commissions - the all-powerful decision-making bodies of Mepa - as to require a reply, if only to set the record straight.

A wise minister might have paused when he read my article and said to himself: "What he has written is what people are telling me and my party colleagues as we tramp the streets of our constituencies seeking their votes. The perception of my constituents is precisely what has been described here. Perhaps I should be saying in response to Mr Scicluna's article that there seems to be a case for looking constructively at the way the government selects and appoints the members of these boards and commissions to ensure that the system is not only directed to attracting people of integrity but also that the processes of selection, appointment and operation are above suspicion and as systemically independent and objective as possible in order to avoid actual or apparent conflicts of interest".

Regrettably, this is not what Mr Pullicino said. Instead, setting his face firmly against all the good advice he has been given ever since he became responsible for the environment portfolio these last 10 years, he chose to infer that my article was "based on the assumption that wherever there is the opportunity for wrongdoing, then wrongdoing occurs". Nothing could have been further from my mind - or, indeed, what my article said. I have no doubt at all about the integrity and public spiritedness of the vast majority of members of the Mepa boards and commissions. I know personally several of the architects and public officers who serve on them and theirs is a thankless task for the most part well executed - within the constraints of the system. The fundamental thrust of my article was to highlight the constraints of the current system which, by its very nature, has led to real or apparent conflicts of interest - a feeling that the system is contaminated. The question of how an architect can serve as deputy chairman of the board or chairman of a commission while at the same time acting privately for Malta's leading construction developer is but one vivid illustration of the problem.

My contention was - and still is - that we must find ways of reducing systemic conflicts of interest by ensuring that technical expertise informs the decisions reached by Mepa without undermining the objectivity, transparency and ethical basis on which decisions of such importance are made. A process of independent scrutiny and selection of individuals to serve on Mepa's boards and commissions must therefore be introduced which ensures that those making decisions are beyond reproach, reflect more fully the different components of civil society and do not run the risk of being influenced, directly or indirectly, by their vested interests.

Some 15 years ago, the Republic of Ireland was wracked by a similar loss of confidence in the individuals running its planning system. The Irish government moved quickly to establish a process of selection which was seen to be independent. Candidates for appointment to the post of chairman are selected by an independent committee chaired by no less a person than the president of the High Court while the nine other members come from four distinct organisations within civil society and just one civil servant. Though not necessarily the precise answer for Malta, this is the kind of approach that we should be pursuing.

I said at the start that a wise minister might have accepted more readily what I had advocated in my article. It therefore is most heartening to see that, in a Damascene conversion, no doubt prompted by the need to manoeuvre for electoral advantage, the Prime Minister has now openly pledged that, if re-elected, he will assume direct responsibility for Mepa reform "to eliminate totally all suspicions of irregular practices within Mepa, remote as these might be... to reduce inconsistencies in its decisions so that nobody will feel that he or she has been treated differently from other people". Precisely. If the Prime Minister can see this, why cannot the Minister for the Environment?