Last week, we witnessed another case of ‘anything goes’ that is now fast becoming the hallmark of this Government.
The Prime Minister used his parliamentary majority to enact a law that would enable his own members of Parliament to sit on executive boards in public entities. That’s right, Labour MPs voted to get themselves new jobs on public entities: a conflict of interest of the first order.
To be sure, so far, the Opposition had supported all laws presented by the Government in this new legislature. But we could not support this one and we therefore voted wholeheartedly against it.
What was this law all about?
In essence, it removed the prohibition on members of Parliament to sit on a number of public boards and entities. As a result, MPs will now be able to be appointed on the board of these entities and the Government can freely populate our public boards and entities with more of its own. And, of course, the MPs who are appointed on public boards will get paid for their ‘services’.
Let me explain why we voted against this law.
First of all, we opposed it because it throws the important distinction between the executive and legislative roles in our democracy out of the window.
The Government is the Executive and so are its executive entities, which we refer to as ‘public entities’. Their job is to govern.
On the other hand, the Parliament is the Legislative, which is also responsible for keeping the Government in check. That responsibility falls on all MPs who are not part of the Executive, regardless of whether they are Labour or Opposition MPs.
The responsibility to keep the Government under scrutiny is an essential pillar of a democracy. Undermine that function and you get a weaker democracy.
Imagine someone sitting as a member of a public entity in the morning and then sitting as a member of Parliament to scrutinise the same entity in the evening. You get the picture. He cannot do it and trying to do so will expose him to a serious conflict of interest with his oath of allegiance as an MP.
Secondly, this law is objectionable because it exposes the Government’s laissez faire attitude towards good governance and meritocracy.
Joseph Muscat had promised meritocracy and even that people would get to choose board members through online voting. He is now doing the opposite because he is putting his MPs on public boards.
How can the Government ever justify appointing an MP on public boards such as that responsible for the Maltese language or the Film Commission on the basis of meritocracy? It cannot, because no government MP has this sort of specialisation. This is why we believe that this law throws meritocracy to the dogs. And, with it, the entire Malta Tagħna Lkoll (Malta For All) charade.
Thirdly, this law was completely unnecessary; a move dictated by sheer political convenience. In order to appease disgruntled backbenchers who were left out of his mammoth Cabinet, Muscat has completely obliterated the separation of powers. Boards, which, up till now, were kept at arms’ length from partisan politics, will become tools to keep dissenting Labour MPs in check and quietly reward their silence.
Was it really necessary to stoop so low when Muscat has such a large majority in Parliament?
Fourthly and most brazenly, this law flies in the face of Muscat’s crusade against the previous PN Administration on the issue of honoraria.
Everyone remembers the furore that he whipped up about the honoraria. Muscat had vociferously criticised this move and declared he would never consider such a thing. Yet, with this new law, his MPs will now get three separate salaries. That’s right, three salaries: one from their day job or private practice, a second in the form of their parliamentary honoraria and a third in their new capacity of gatecrashers on public boards.
Labour MPs will now get three separate salaries
And make no mistake about it, this law was introduced to give Labour MPs a third salary. Only the Government did not have the political courage to admit that what it really wanted was to boost the pay of its own MPs.
The bottom line is that this Government’s in-your-face anything-goes attitude is bringing good governance into disrepute.
And what makes it worse is the fact that the Government actually went through the motions of changing a law to get what it wanted. For it is one thing putting party acolytes on public boards – we have seen an army of people jumping from billboards to public boards. But it takes some gall to go as far as changing a law to get there.
And let it be known that, warts and all, no previous PN Administration that Muscat so often likes to ridicule had ever attempted to go down this route.
So there you have it. Last week’s law is another blotch on the growing list of faux pas of the Labour Government, which seems set on lowering, rather than raising, the standards of good governance in our country. The problem is that it is succeeding.
Simon Busuttil is the Leader of the Opposition.