There can be little doubt that the way in which this government handled public appointments in its first six months in office has been a major blot on its record. The excuse that the Nationalists in power were equally culpable does not wash. The PN has a lot to answer for too but the electorate was promised an end to partisan appointments, to be replaced by one where competence, integrity and the national interest would be the overriding criteria for selection.

This fall in standards was nowhere more blatantly marked than in theway senior promotions in the Armed Forces of Malta were handled. The AFM had historically mostly been spared political interference in its selection and appointment of senior officers. This changed in 2013.

In a putsch executed by the (subsequently) sacked minister for home affairs and national security, Manuel Mallia, both the AFM commander and his deputy found themselves compelled to resign their posts. This was compounded by the naming of a promotion board for selection of majors to the rank of lieutenant colonel which consisted predominantly of civilian members with no knowledge of military matters.

The final insult in the process was the replacement of Brigadier Martin Xuereb as AFM commander with somebody who until then had only been a major (a rank four posts lower down in the military structure), who found himself parachuted into the top post, for which he clearly lacked experience.

This botched promotion process led to a stand-off between the Ombudsman, Joseph Said Pullicino, and Dr Mallia as to whether or not the Ombudsman could be precluded from investigating complaints by AFM officers before having exhausted all other avenues open to them.

On the one hand, the government argued that the Ombudsman lacked jurisdiction to hear complaints by military officers who did not resort first to the ordinary remedy granted by law. On the other, the Ombudsman insisted that the complainants could not have been expected to appeal to the President as a means of redress because that would effectively have amounted to a renunciation of their right to refer the case to the Ombudsman since he is precluded from investigating the President’s decisions.

The Ombudsman has now been vindicated in his view. A judge has ordered the Ministry for Home Affairs to furnish the Ombudsman with all the documents he needed to continue his investigation into complaints by army officers on promotions in the AFM as well as other areas covered by the Ombudsman’s remit.

This unhappy saga, which has demonstratively exposed the government’s hollow promises on meritocracy and, sadly, tarnished the reputation of the AFM, has highlighted two key lessons.

First, the 20-year-old Ombudsman Act has been one of the most successful steps in giving Maltese citizens redress against an overweening public administration. As a parliamentary office independent of the government, the Ombudsman enjoys huge public trust. Trying to sideline the Ombudsman, as Dr Mallia had tried to do, was to undermine one of the essential checks on the Executive so fundamental to good governance.

Secondly, the establishment of so-called ad hoc ‘grievance boards’ to investigate alleged injustices (as has also been done to such ill-effect over past promotions in the AFM) or the Opposition’s current exercise of registering claims of injustice now, which it will investigate once in government, are a shabby excuse for pandering to political clientelism.

Rather than blaming institutional failures, the two political parties should resolve to administer institutions properly, not seek to bypass them.