Just after Malta’s Independence Day 50th anniversary celebrations, I wrote an article (‘Singapore and Malta’) in which I compared the way the two states had developed over the same period. Quite rightly, a number of people took me to task for my rather lame ending.
“Would I prefer to live in Singapore or Malta? While I would welcome not having to gripe every few weeks about Malta’s lawlessness, the litter in the streets, the poor governance and administration of these islands, its general lacklustre standards in all things, I think that I would find the near police state atmosphere of Singapore, its soulless and ugly high-rise buildings, its Big Brother inhibitions on representative democracy and basic freedoms – of the press and freedom of speech – too stifling to live with. Give me Malta, warts and all.”
I wrote this not only because I sincerely believe that it is better to live in Malta, “warts and all”. But also because I thought the intelligent reader of the rest of the piece would have drawn his own conclusion that my description of the success of Singapore was also a silent rebuke at the way Malta has conducted its governance over the last 50 years.
It is not only our ‘provincialism’, as one correspondent said, that differentiates Malta from Singapore, a belief that the world spins around this tiny island. But also, importantly, a comparison of the institutional imperatives of efficiency, accountability, organisation and the striving after high standards in all things that make for a successful State.
Singapore is an island-State that has become a dynamic hub of the global economy and a technological giant. It has higher living standards, better schools and hospitals than Malta, with a public sector which is proportionately considerably smaller than Malta’s.
Singapore’s civil service is highly skilled and selective and is based on a blatantly elitist model. Those who reach the top are richly rewarded. Those who falter are thrown overboard.
Meritocracy – real meritocracy, not the clientalism practised here – runs like a golden thread through the system. Teachers need to qualify in the top third of their class and testing throughout the education system is ubiquitous.
By contrast with Malta’s welfare state based on social assistance, Singapore’s welfare system aims to give people a good start in life and then encourages them to fend for themselves.
What a Singaporean gets back from his social model is tied to what he has put in. This rewards hard work.
But it is Singapore’s model of government that really differentiates the two. Our western liberal democracy, or “popular democracy” as the Prime Minister of Singapore calls it, leads to a never-ending auction between the political parties.
The Singaporean version challenges two of our most cherished values, universal suffrage and top-down State generosity, and claims to have achieved the necessary compromise between democratic accountability and efficiency.
In Malta, successive governments have suffered from the twin evils of lack of accountability and inefficiency.
While Malta rightly prides itself on being a stable European country that has developed its sovereign constitutional framework in a democratic manner over a period of half a century without a break since it achieved independence, the essentials of good governance and political order arising from the triumvirate of the State, the rule of law and accountability, have eluded our grasp. Why and what should be done?
Democracy – the ultimate expression of accountability – requires the other two pillars (a cohesive working State and the rule of law) to be firmly established. Creating a State and justice system that enforces the rules of good order and administration, that’s the difficult part.
This is where Singapore’s governance has won hands down over the Maltese version. While Singapore’s authoritarian capitalism is unattractive and restrictive of personal liberty, it is undoubtedly efficient and effective. The challenge for Malta is to find a way of injecting its historic liberal democracy – which long pre-dates independence – with a large dose of Singaporean order and discipline.
Neither democracy nor the economy can flourish properly in the absence of a competent State
Malta is a good example of a country that has all the institutions of democracy in place,but has failed to provide a fully functioning State, governed by the rule of law and administered through autonomous, efficient meritocratic bureaucracies. It did once have an outstanding civil service but this fell into a 16-year black hole between 1971 and 1987. Efforts to revive it since then have been patchy. Like many other countries – Greece and Italy are good examples – it has led to the institutions of the State being hijacked by politicians and corrupted as a result. An autonomous, meritocratic bureaucracy is the prerequisite for effective statehood. Singapore has it in spades. Malta does not.
True democracy is not achieved by general elections alone, even if Malta has the highest turnout of any country in Europe.
True democracy is achieved by the development of good governance based on transparency, accountability and institutional checks on government power: a free press, the independent judiciary, a neutral and effective civil service, protection for minorities, respect for civil society, freedom of religion and respect for the rule of law.
In the first article on this subject I wrote: “Malta for all its faults and governance imperfections is still a proper, thriving democracy. Democracy remains the best safeguard for fundamental rights and basic liberties. It is the best guarantee of innovation and problem-solving and the best means – if we choose to pursue it – of relieving the burden of the State. The key lies in good governance. Without this Malta would be condemned to stasis or, at worst, decline.”
While a one-party State has worked in Singapore, proper liberal democracy cannot be allowed to lead to the tyranny of the majority. Just because a government has been elected with a huge majority should not mean that the rest of the population that did not vote for it are to be marginalised.
As the comparison between Malta and Singapore over the last 50 years has shown, neither democracy nor the economy can flourish properly in the absence of a competent State. As a result of the government’s promise to hold a constitutional convention, there is an opportunity for Malta to take a hard look at the way its institutions operate.
Is the power of the Executive (essentially the Prime Minister and his Cabinet) too strong? Should greater checks and balances be introduced? What additional powers should be vested in the President? How can effective parliamentary scrutiny of the Executive be strengthened? How can the overweening hegemony of the two-party system of the last 50 years be broken? What rebalancing of power between the citizen and the State should be achieved?
Malta’s Constitution has in practice, if not by design, given birth to a two-party hegemony and a consequent stagnation in political (and economic) development. It has engendered a culture of tribalism and populism which, in turn, has become a source of economic and social dysfunction that is holding back the process of wealth creation. Maltese society would be materially better off and socially more cohesive if the decision-making process was more consensual.
A more representative electoral system, truly independent State institutions that are run by high-calibre civil servants and proper checks on the power of the Executive would contribute to correct this systemic fault.