Before last year’s general election, I wrote an article in another newspaper (‘Time for a change to Labour’) in which I concluded: “The Labour Party now should have its place in the sun. Let us be clear. A Labour government will not be perfect. It will make mistakes. It will be facedon arrival by all the issues it has failedto address in its road-map and themessy business of daily Maltese politics. But its front bench is no worse, and in some respects is better, than those now in government.
“Malta needs a new approach to politics and an end to the bitter tribalism that continues to tear this country apart. It stands a better chance of getting this from the Labour Party. If Joseph Muscat fails to deliver on his promise of change, free from the pull of special interests and politics as usual, then his administration will last for only one Parliament. But on the basis of what we’ve seen, it is right that he is given the chance to show what he can do.”
As we enter the last 10 days of the campaign for the European parliamentary elections, it is time to take stock.
There is little doubt that these elections will be a direct judgement on how Joseph Muscat’s government has performed in its first full year. While the Nationalist Party will be seeking to win one more MEP seat to equal Labour’s three, and will be counting the total number of votes cast for Labour and Nationalist candidates to see if the 36,000 vote margin of 2013 has been reduced, the pivotal issue deciding these outcomes will be an assessment of the government’s performance.
I am confident that the change of government 14 months ago was necessary and that, taken overall, it has been good for Malta. The colossal difference in drive, energy and output of this government compared with the tired, corruption-ridden Nationalist administration that preceded it is profound.
Matters of fundamental importance, such as the reform of the justice system, a new strategy for education, the hospital service, the cost of energy and the appalling inefficiency of Enemalta, the introduction of civil unions, transgender rights, the State’s distancing from the Church, and proposals for new rules on party financing – all of them issues which had lain dormant and neglected under previous Nationalist administrations – have at last been addressed, and in some cases implemented. There has been a can-do mood, previously lacking, albeit implementation has often been disappointingly ragged at the edges.
It would be fair to summarise the government’s first year in office as a year of progress but it was also a year of considerable turbulence and dysfunctional governance. There have been some absolute howlers. It is difficult to decide which was worse, the mishandling of the cash-for-citizenship scheme, which cast Malta’s international reputation in a bad light, or the betrayal of all the prior promises made about the commitment to a non-partisan and meritocratic approach to politics and to public appointments.
Both these major failures were indicative of something more deep-seated.Governments cannot operate effectively if they don’t have quality administrators in place to execute policy. Simply replacing experienced and trained departmental heads with party apparatchiks –however tribally loyal – is never theright answer, as events this last yearhave demonstrated.
The Prime Minister’s clean sweep of virtually all the top posts in the public service, the foreign service, the armed forces, the police force and all State-run entities, leading to a government machine which is gross in size, unwieldy and poor value for money, left a vacuum which not even the most energetic and competent minister – and Malta has very few of those – could fill. The result has been inefficient governance. But there is a more serious and insidious issue which leads me to conclude that, one year into this Administration and with another four to run, it is time for the electorate to send an unequivocal message to the Prime Minister that while some things have been welcome, there are many others which are not. It is not only time, but also healthy for democracy to do so.
It is time for the electorate to send an unequivocal message to the Prime Minister that while some things have been welcome, there are many others which are not
The most worrying of these is the creeping arrogance which appears to be taking hold. Hubris was largely responsible for the undoing of the last Nationalist Administration. It is therefore depressing to find it manifesting itself so early in this government’s term.
Instances of hubris are all around us. To take a few examples in no particular order. The approach adopted by the planning authority to the introduction of a new structure plan for Malta is being driven by a prior commitment to give developers a construction free-for-all. The fact that Malta is grossly over-built and should be conserving what little open space it has left has been deliberately passed by.
The complete neutering of the environmental authority under the guise of the so-called demerger of environment from planning is simply an irresponsible way of ensuring the planning authority has a clear run. In 2008, the then Nationalist government’s promise to reduce the environmental deficit if re-elected was responsible for handing it a narrow electoral victory. 2014 could see the recently mocked environmental lobby – which extends well beyond the NGOs to the nation as a whole – again biting back at a government which promised good planning and environmental practices and is instead pandering to avaricious development.
The Prime Minister’s cavalier attitude to the constitution is also a cause for concern. The extra responsibilities which the new President has apparently carried forward from her ministerial duties should be transparently and publicly defined. It should be made clear that responsibilities which belong in a democracy with elected members of the executive are not surreptitiously transferred to an unelected Head of State.
The involvement of elected members of Parliament (whose role is to hold the executive to account) as executive members of that self-same government also rankles, giving the impression that this government sees no need to respect the carefully calibrated checks and balances so vital to a good working democracy.
The handling of Malta’s representation at the recent canonisation ceremony in Rome was high-handed, undignified and unworthy. The unfulfilled promise, made in the first few weeks of government, to revise the ministerial code of conduct, and the random way in which the existing rules have been applied in practice, has again left an impression of arrogance. L’etat, c’est moi. The authoritarian way in which the decision to give an amnesty to those who benefitted from the electricity meters scam is another example.
These instances of hubris and signs of increasing arrogance are a far cry from the promises so solemnly made in the run-up to the general election of a new approach to politics, free from the pull of special interests. That they should have occurred within the first 12 months of taking office makes them doubly of concern.
There is a loss of trust. Bad governance should be punished. It is time for the 20,000 or so voters (the so-called ‘switchers’), who think before they vote, to send a message to Labour that the government is not invulnerable. The electorate should not be taken for granted.