Fasten your seatbelt, councils are encountering ‘turbulence’
Video: Alan Adami
With news breaking almost daily about alleged wrongdoing at local councils, what is causing this mayhem?
At least nine of Malta’s 68 local councils have been in the media in recent months in connection with alleged wrongdoing or because of major rifts between councillors of the same party.
And there seems to be no stopping the trend. Yesterday, The Times revealed that Labour had asked the Gżira deputy mayor to resign from the party after it discovered he faced criminal proceedings unrelated to council work.
Add these situations to a spate of investigations and forced resignations for mismanagement, and people are left asking what caused this storm.
Parliamentary Secretary for local councils Chris Said still believes the situation does not reflect a crisis but is simply a patch of “turbulence” from which councils will emerge.
He said it was unfortunate that the misdeeds of a handful of people were casting a shadow on the excellent work being done by the “absolute majority” of the 450 councillors serving the country, but insisted that the problems would be temporary.
To a certain extent, he pointed out, the situation was to be expected since many of the “allegations” coming to the surface were the result of improved scrutiny brought about by the reform of the Local Councils Act, which came into effect earlier this year.
The most significant change is the one which made executive secretaries directly answerable to the Department of Local Government, rather than councillors.
The argument behind the change was precisely that secretaries would be more willing to raise questions about councillors’ wrongdoings if their job and performance benefits did not depend on them.
“Executive secretaries are now in a better position to control the council’s operations and to bring to light any possible irregularity”.
Moreover, the reform also brought with it new checks and balances such as the setting up of the Board of Local Governance, which receives complaints related to improper operations of councils.
At the same time, the monitoring unit within the department was strengthened and given more powers to investigate claims.
However, according to Labour deputy leader Toni Abela the situation within councils is a reflection of the general decay in governance at national level.
“It is a moral question,” he said, insisting the government was not in a position to dictate to councils how they run their affairs.
He cites as an example of mismanagement and lack of transparency the power station extension saga, the mishandling of EU educational funds, and the allegations of corruption in the super yacht tender, which were only investigated some nine months after they were made.
“Ministers are not being held accountable and serious questions of maladministration raised by the Auditor General every year are not addressed. This erodes government’s credibility since it does not have the moral high ground to dictate to councils,” Dr Abela said.
He insisted that “this state of moral malaise has hit every level of public administration” and does not rule out that some Labour councillors may also have been “infected”.
“It was the Labour Party that started all this a year ago in Żebbuġ, Malta, when it asked a mayor to resign. We have taken action in Fgura, Gżira and Tarxien. The party will not tolerate any wrongdoing,” Dr Abela said.
He also criticised the PN for taking action against its councillors now when, in some instances, the cases were known to the party for months.
“PN general secretary Paul Borg Olivier only started to take action because he was prodded to do so after reports started surfacing in the media. Dr Borg Olivier, who went on holiday with construction magnate Żaren Vassallo, is hardly in a position to speak of high ethical standards when dealing with councillors,” Dr Abela said.
MP Edwin Vassallo, responsible for the Nationalist Party’s local councils’ section, was more positive.
He said such incidents “strengthen” the party since they served as a lesson for everyone, including seasoned politicians.
“The way the PN tackled the issues that arose shows the party’s commitment to fight corruption. The party acted immediately without looking at faces or political allegiances. This, in itself, should strengthen the party’s credibility and that of local councils,” he said.
With regard to the effect of the turmoil on PN-led councils, Mr Vassallo said: “It is not a pleasant or easy experience but one which taught us a great deal and made us stronger.”
Godfrey Pirotta, who lectures on public policy at the University of Malta, believes it is time for MPs and councillors to be made liable for their actions. The system was implemented in the UK and it worked, he pointed out.
As for the reasons behind the current turmoil, Prof. Pirotta said the problem was partly a reflection of the national partisan political system, through which councillors were more driven by competition against fellow councillors or the opposing party than by an aspiration to improve things in their respective town or village.
Moreover, he said, councillors had cultivated the culture of being able to get away with mistakes because the party was there to defend them.
However, on a positive note, there seemed to have been a shift in the opposite direction now with parties acting as prosecutors of their own people.
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Adrian Wirth
Sep 6th 2010, 10:24
In a country where everything is political or has or can be turned into something political it is beyond belief that the structure in place to 'manage' the day to day affairs of our local communities is itself subjected to the curse of political influence. Local administration on a local basis ought to be apolitical and all political parties come to an understanding that at least in the normal running of community services and community improvements there needs to be a political moratorium. For a community to be successful and cohesive it has to be able to anticipate 100% community support not 50%. It will be hard to rid the local councils of a political slant now but surely it's well worth the effort.
Farrugia M
Sep 6th 2010, 08:57
Joe Xuereb
Sep 5th 2010, 17:34
Dr. Said in this interview comes across as quite articulate if one is to ignore the English words peppering the entire inane presentation. He starts off, patronisingly, by saying - certainly implying - that 'we must not look at the few rotten apples but feel smug instead about the majority, juicy apples, with perfect undented skins. With that self-congratulatory piece out of the way - what did you expect, reader?! - he then goes on and on and on about how things will be shored up and improved. The whole interview is thus , to all intents and purposes, rendered irrelevbant to the question in hand. Political spin?! You bet!! I would be interested more in knowing WHY the rotten apples; people are elected by the people because they have confidence in them. This is not unlike the 'some priests are bad but the majority do good works'. It is exactly the same thing. And so, Malta goes nowhere very fast in spite of EU membership, and pushy church. Which might well be at the root of the murkiness.
Carm Ellul
Sep 5th 2010, 16:25
If a local council cannot manage to manage a public toilet in a very public place such as recently shown on TVM , then that council should be dismantled .
Next time the political parties should propose people worth their salt , since these are now being paid and also funded by OUR taxes.
The impression being given is that these council members are there for the ride not for the rowing.
s theuma
Sep 5th 2010, 15:32
“The way the PN tackled the issues that arose shows the party’s commitment to fight corruption". Yes.......as long as no big names are involved.
l fenech
Sep 5th 2010, 14:47
U din il-hama li inaqlat sissa, min jaf xemm li ghadna ma nafux bieh.
michael seychell
Sep 5th 2010, 14:45
Dr. Toni Abela, stated that : “It was the Labour Party that started all this a year ago in Żebbuġ, Malta, when it asked a mayor to resign. We have taken action in Fgura, Gżira and Tarxien. The party will not tolerate any wrongdoing,”
Whilst one may agree with this statement, I ask Dr Toni Abela who is responsible for his Party's Councils, why no action whatsoever was taken on the Mosta Mayor whose Council was handed various official letters from the Director responsible for Councils including a 'final letter'. Maybe Dr. Abela should explain also how come and why his own name was mentioned regarding the employment of a clerk at Mosta Council, when it was alledged that the Council's Secretary insisted that person was not capable for the post.
It has this week been said that the M/LP came to know recently that the Gzira Deputy Mayor was arraigned in court on criminal charges over three years ago, before the Council elections were even held. I find this very strange and difficult to believe, when many M/LP lawyers, including the two Deputy Leaders attend court regularly, and nobody ever met the Gzira Deputy Mayor in the Court corridors.
Charles Micallef
Sep 5th 2010, 13:00
Such action must be welcomed with open arms and by all, although there is one thing that it could be done that it will go a long way to stop the constant bickering, that is remove the Political Labeling and Tagging...it will also serve to stop the embarrassment to either political party when there is turbulence at 35000 feet!
Sergio Caruana
Sep 5th 2010, 12:26
Scrap all local councils. They are not needed in tiny Malta.
Joseph Calleja
Sep 5th 2010, 12:26
And that my friends is what they call politics! If you don't want your name tarnished or ridiculed, don't enter into politics. An old man once told me, you cannot be a politician and honest at the same time. Sometimes I wonder what he meant by that. Who is next in line? The Mps, the Meps? Mepa? Politics is a dirty word. Name calling, pointing fingers etc is all part of politics and sometimes that is what keeps everybody honest. Like the man said, fasten your seatbelt we are going through a patch of turbulence and tomorrow everything will be back to normal. But we don't have to worry about anything because according to Nostradamus, the world will end in 2012..
Joe Xuereb
Sep 5th 2010, 12:09
From a distance, enough to be objective, I can have a bird's eye view of.......and see that all is not well in the State of, no, not Denmark, but Malta, the tiny republic basking in the sun like a shark pretending to be a goldfish, an island resting on the glorious laurels of events past.
The 'islet' and its people are beleaguered by 'in-your-face' problems. People succumb to the pressures, and when high officials succumb, what chance for the poor man in the street? Said man in the street is offered sops like Notte Biance this, re-enactment that. Largely to distract the hoi polloi and periferally, for the tourist, you understand, but the tourist is not there in sufficient numbers to make a viable industry. Besides, people are kept anguishing over cul de sacs like divorce, here taking on gigantic proportions, and feeling all-triumphant as in 'abusers of people/kids are innocent until proven guilty'. Ergo, there are no abusers of people/kids in Malta.
A bird's eye view is just that and it don't feel comfortable. They shoot birds, don't they?! I feel a bumpy flight coming on - Oh! Bette (Davis)! I feel it in my fairy-feathered-wings. My darling Icarus!!