When it comes to overspending, parties in government have a lot to answer for. More often than not, they manage to get away with it, but the growing legion of taxpayers who are taking more interest in how governments spend the money entrusted to them is growing rapidly.
They hold them to account for extravagance and for practices that are seen to raise the administration’s wage costs or expenditure unnecessarily, despite their often avowed political mantras to the contrary.
Labour attempted to wriggle out of a spot in which the deputy leader of the Nationalist Party, Beppe Fenech Adami, put it a few days ago when he highlighted the extra costs the taxpayer is having to fork out to sustain Joseph Muscat’s supersize Cabinet.
The Labour Party counter-attacked by paying the PN back with a few accusations of its own.
There is no surprise in this. Parties with their back to the wall are apt to do this. Keen party supporters lap up such counter-attacks, but uncommitted voters expect the government to respect their intelligence. Labour have not as yet given strong and justifiable reasons why Malta should have a Cabinet that is so large.
The Prime Minister had time to correct his stand in a recent reshuffle, but he stuck to the same size.
According to Dr Fenech Adami, Dr Muscat’s Cabinet is costing the taxpayer €8.5 million a year more, a significant amount by local standards.
The annual bill for 15 ministers and eight parliamentary secretaries comes to €20.1 million.
The last Nationalist Cabinet was made up of 12 ministers and two parliamentary secretaries, costing €11.6 million. Over the term of the legislature, the rise in the cost of Dr Muscat’s Cabinet would come to a staggering €42 million, enough, according to Dr Fenech Adami, to employ either 444 teachers or 532 nurses.
Instead of contesting these figures or justifying the size of the Cabinet, Labour said the last PN Cabinet had awarded a weekly rise of €500 to itself, given more than €1 million in consultancies to those in its inner circles, and left Enemalta bankrupt.
This tit-for-tat response is what keen supporters expect, however, it insults voters’ intelligence. If anything, it only shows that Labour have no answer to the accusation that the government is being extravagant.
Yes, the Nationalists can be accused of a number of wrongs, but this does not justify the extravagance the government is resorting to and, significantly, they are no longer in power.
Added to the number of ministers is the cadre of people employed in secretariats, not to mention the plum posts given to backbenchers.
Do secretariats all require the number of people they have taken on? And why should governments, Labour and Nationalist, spend so much in promoting their budgets? Budgets have been turned into huge political propaganda sprees funded by the taxpayers. This is one big shame, but political parties sometimes appear as if they can get away with anything.
Malta needs a clean-up badly, but whoever decided to employ 70 cleaners on the eve of an election to the European Parliament must surely think that voters are fools. Diligence in spending is required in all aspects of the administration at all times during a legislative term, not just when it suits an administration. It is only through greater national awareness of the importance of accountability that politicians would probably start to think twice before resorting to extravagance.