During my regular meetings with various public officers, I invariably meet those who point towards an undemocratic, opaque system. For some it is not what you know but whom you know which helps you advance in your career in the public service.

Lawrence Gonzi inherited a cohesive and solid PN, which he has managed to blow to smithereens- Helena Dalli

The practice of appointing people not on merit but on trust (read political trust) has permeated the service at various levels.

I have been asking the Prime Minister the question on these positions of trust for some time, but he has hitherto always replied: an answer will be given in another sitting. I might get a reply in October, if we ever go back to Parliament that is.

How does this positions-of-trust business affect GonziPN? For those asking how this Nationalist government can carry on, in spite of all that is going on within the Nationalist Party, the actions of some of its members of Parliament in the House and what is said publicly about this Administration by same, part of the answer lies in what the Public Service Commission has to say on these positions.

In its annual report (2011), tabled in Parliament this month, the PSC states:

“As a matter of long-standing practice, staff in ministerial secretariats are recruited directly on the basis of trust, without resort to calls for applications. This is justifiable since ministers need to have staff in their secretariats in whom they can repose their full personal confidence.

“However, the regularisation exercise highlighted a number of instances in which appointments on trust were used to fill administrative, managerial or technical positions. This gave rise to a concern on the commission’s part that appointments on trust could be used to avoid issuing calls for applications for vacancies that should be filled on the basis of merit.”

The legality of this practice is questioned by the commission, which also states that our Constitution makes no provision for the engagement of personnel in positions of trust.

The commission went on to propose that positions – outside ministerial secretariats – filled by means of direct recommendation should be given with the approval of the PSC. In this way, it will be ascertained that this method of waiving the selection process is used only where there is justification that this is being done in the public interest.

The commission never received a reply on this proposal, which reply was supposed to be delivered by the end of last year.

Are we to be surprised? Not quite. This is a good way of having the people you want, where you want them.

In a report which the PN had commissioned some years ago, they were told that incompetent people were being placed in high positions in the public service. This was being done because they are loyal party people and not because they merit to occupy such positions. They are card-holding party members but that does not necessarily make them eligible for the job for which they have been given responsibility.

This was not a one-off analysis criticising the old patronage system of engagement within the public sector. The auditor of the Malta Environment and Planning Authority, for instance, has issued various reports on the system whereby public officers are handpicked without any public call for applications, going against the concepts of transparency and accountability.

But instead of heeding the advice given by those analysing the reports, the PN continued with this practice. So much so that the PSC is drawing the Prime Minister’s attention.

So, for those who are wondering how the government is holding on, this is one of the factors helping it: the people running the government machine have every interest (political mainly) to hold the fort as opposed to being ready to trip the government up as happened with Labour in 1996-98.

Labour had then tried to change the tribal fashion of winner takes all and did not go by the rules of “Is s/he one of us?”, as Margaret Thatcher had famously put it. This certainly does not help when there is internal party strife that overflows to Parliament and the government, of the kind we are now witnessing with GonziPN.

Which begs the question: What is the best way to govern? Ideally, it should be by the meritocratic system where public officers – apart from those in ministers’ secretariats – are appointed and promoted on the basis of competence and not by party patronage. But it seems that the latter school, that of having a politicised civil service, is coming in handy for the Nationalist government, especially during this legislature.

This is why the government doesn’t even deem it necessary to answer the PSC on whether it agrees with its proposal of ensuring that the practice of a competitive selection process is only relinquished where this is in the public interest.

Lawrence Gonzi inherited a cohesive and solid PN, which he has managed to blow to smithereens. This may be the result of his not meriting the leadership of the party, as so many people within and outside the PN are saying. But the Prime Minister is blessed by the backing of a supportive government machine that continues to prop him up.

Dr Dalli is shadow minister for the public service and gender equality.