Playing around with political corruption

Corruption is once again on many people’s lips. It is ever-present on the political agenda. From time to time it moves to top the national agenda. Now is such a time.

Many people you talk to, wherever they sit on the political divide, tell you easily they are convinced there is corruption in the public sector. As always the charge is made with a broad brush, specific areas are mentioned, but very rarely specific people.

In the political sector the opposition of the day invariably alleges, in a loud voice too, that there is corruption, and that it is even rampant. The charge is made so freely it tends to tar all politicians with the same brush.

That is not simply unfair to those who are straight. It is wrong and undermines democracy.

The practice of serious politics is an essential component of well-functioning democratic set-up. Politics alone does not guarantee democracy. Extremes of both the right and the left, not necessarily so extreme as to embed totalitarianism, make a mockery of democracy when they gain and hold power.

In the more normal state of affairs the good practice of politics permits power to flow from the authority of the people, who empower politicians to represent them. Such empowerment may be given through direct democracy, most frequently where the people express their preference through a referendum, a rare event in Malta, or through representative democracy. The people elect politicians, as we do, to represent them in Parliament, to enact laws on their behalf and for the public good, and to oversee and hold accountable the administration.

In our system of government, where the political administration – ministers and parliamentary secretaries – is part of the elected representative body, the task of overseeing the administration and exacting accountability is more difficult. The administrators are part of the parliamentary majority, thereby reducing the balance of MPs who act as the watchdogs in the name of the people.

We saw that disadvantage during the week when the government representatives, led by a minister, walked out of the Public Accounts Committee to disrupt the agenda set by the chairman. Whether the Nationalist side was right or wrong is immaterial to my argument. In a presidential system of government, where committees do not include voting ministers, it would not have happened.

Disadvantages aside, our representative system, based as it is on the Westminster model although without the inclusion of a second chamber, is still a good one, and perhaps more widely used than the presidential model such as exists in France and the US.

Ours is also an effective model, but the constant charge of corruption weakens it. Ironically, it helps those politicians who are corrupt – where there is a blanket charge of corruption the truly corrupt do not stand out by their actions, they merge comfortably with the rest of the tarred political practitioners.

A further irony is that, in such an environment it becomes more difficult to identify and prove corruption. Before 1987 the Nationalists used to make sweeping charges of corruption against members of the Labour government. They claimed to have proof, but never brought forward any, let alone conclusive evidence.

When they were elected to govern one of their first steps was to set up the Permanent Commission against Corruption. It yielded meagre result, and did not justify the charges made without break over the previous 16 years when the PN was in opposition.

Now it is the turn of the Nationalists to face the perennial charge, which grows stronger the longer they remain in office. The Labour opposition sees corruption here, there and everywhere. So far it has not produced conclusive proof. It has to be said that is not only Labour politicians who are talking of corruption without break.

Not a few Nationalists are doing the same thing. They almost spoil the party on social occasions, so loudly do they proclaim it, mentioning names – private and political – with reckless abandon.

Producing evidence or being ready to make the allegations formal is another matter. That is not to say that up to 1987 (under a Labour government) or since (under Nationalist regimes) there was no corruption whatsoever. My point is that to talk loosely about corruption is simply to allow those who are guilty of it to get away with impunity.

All politicians profess to be against corruption and to want to crush the ugly monster’s head. The way they go about it, charging each other till they are blue in the face, allows the monster to grow fatter.

It also reduces people’s faith in politicians, making it less and less possible to attract enough candidates of the right calibre to seek the people’s mandate to represent them.

If we think that the individual cases of illicit behaviour that have been discovered among local councillors mean the monster in the political lake has been dragged up to the surface, we are only fooling ourselves. The monster couldn’t be more at ease.