Did Sannat’s mayor have a conflict of interest when his mother worked for a private company on the filming of Angelina Jolie’s film By the Sea in Gozo? People in top positions and politicians do their best to avoid conflict-of-interest issues because these can very well do serious harm to their careers but there is a limit to which the principle can be applied.
In the case of the Sannat mayor, most would have probably disagreed with any idea that he had a conflict of interest. Others may have even found the claim risible but not so the three local councillors who raised the plea. However, it did not take long for the Local Governance Board to put things right when it decided that the mayor was not at fault. His mother, it concluded, worked for a company that had absolutely no links to the Sannat council.
The board’s chairman, Joe Mifsud, rightly said: “We cannot reach a state where people who are related to elected members are not even considered to offer a service.” Such an attitude, he argued, would discourage people from contesting elections.
Other points made in the claims against the mayor are better left for the councillors to discuss among themselves. However, the story at least served to highlight the need for councillors to better understand the law that governed them before and after being elected. This point was well made by the board chairman when the mayor was cleared of the charge.
It was also taken up by the president of the Local Councils’ Association, Marc Sant, who feels that local councillors and executive secretaries should undergo compulsory training on relevant laws.
Dr Sant said that all too often councillors and executive secretaries were not properly trained and this resulted in tension, frustration and non-observance of the regulations.
Auditor reports have often remarked about glaring shortcomings in the administration of local councils, a matter that ought to have received greater attention by the government in order to ensure that the taxpayer’s money is well spent. Apparently, it was not clear who should handle the training of councillors but, according to Dr Sant, the association is prepared to take on the responsibility if it is given the necessary financial and human resources.
As it happens, the need for such training has also been raised in a peer review of the local council system in Malta drawn up by the Centre of Expertise for Local Government Reform of the Council of Europe.
The report makes recommendations for structural reform which, if carried out, would put local councils on stronger foundations and put them in a position to give a better service to their communities.
It raises a number of important issues, such as, for instance, the need for a clear delegation of responsibilities among central, regional and local authorities “to promote improved understanding among citizens of how to interact better with these authorities and enable the public service at a local level to deliver increasingly efficient and robust public administration”.
However, the reason given for retaining the current number of councils is not strong enough. Many, including this newspaper, have often argued that, for its size, the island has far too many councils.
Hopefully, however, the players involved in leading the local councils’ movement will now set the ball rolling so the reform exercise, which should see councils become more effective, could get underway.