Parts of Foreign Minister George Vella’s recent address to the country’s ambassadors offer food for thought. He said most of them did a good job bar “a few exceptions” and called on those not pulling their weight to put their act together without him having to take action.

The fact that Dr Vella felt the need to publicly chastise these “few exceptions” indicates that such individuals are out of their depth and should never have been appointed ambassadors in the first place. Unfortunately, a number of this government’s politically-appointed ambassadors lack the necessary credentials to be given diplomatic posts and their only qualifications are that they are somehow associated with the Labour Party.

Any government has the right to have a mix of political appointees and career diplomats in ambassadorial posts and both types can possess excellent qualities for the job. Indeed, on the whole, Malta has been well served by its mixed diplomatic service. Yet, all ambassadors must be well qualified for the job and being associated with (or having helped) the governing political party is certainly not enough to deserve such an appointment.

Hopefully, this government will now take stock of the situation at the Foreign Ministry and adopt a more balanced approach when appointing ambassadors. Political appointees not up to the job should be removed from their posts while career diplomats not pulling their weight should be recalled to head office.

Dr Vella also instructed the ambassadors not to hand in voluminous reports because he did “not have the time to read them all”. If they felt the need to go into detail, he added, they should also submit a summary. This is quite a bizarre declaration by the Foreign Minister and quite a difficult one to digest.

Sending reports to the Foreign Ministry from overseas capitals is a crucial and necessary function of any ambassador. Such reports give a round-up of the political and economic situation of the country the ambassador is serving in, describe the state of relations between Malta and the host country and, perhaps most crucially, give a detailed account of what initiatives were taken by the diplomatic mission to improve relations between the two countries and to attract investment into Malta.

These reports also include recommendations to the Foreign Ministry on what should be done to improve relations and resolve outstanding issues between the two countries.

If the Foreign Minister does not have enough time to read such reports, surely he should have competent people around him for such a task?

Aren’t the senior members of his secretariat, the heads of the directorates, the ministry’s permanent secretary and other senior ministry officials capable of reading and digesting such reports? Having done so, they can then attract the minister’s attention to any proposals, crucial issues or outstanding matters.

We would like to think there are competent people working at the Foreign Ministry who are capable of evaluating ambassadors’ reports and then following up such reports with action. We would also like to think that the Foreign Minister is capable of delegating such a task to his trusted senior officials.

Or are we in a situation, so typical of this country, where nothing can be done without the minister’s direct involvement? Let us hope not.

Dr Vella also told the group of ambassadors he understood that some countries offered more opportunities than others for Malta. Considering this, why not introduce a system of Foreign Ministry inspectors whose job would be to evaluate whether Malta’s diplomatic missions are cost-effective and then recommend ways of improving them?