In any democracy, a minister caught in a scandal never goes willingly. The resignation is put off until the minister’s position is truly untenable. Admittedly, in places like the UK, the last possible moment is usually reached within days; in Malta, it took long months for Michael Falzon to resign over the Mark Gaffarena case. But that’s not the salient difference between here and elsewhere.
Elsewhere, a minister falls on his sword in order to draw a line under the case. The point is to close the episode and enable the government to move on with its agenda.
In his interview on Xarabank last Friday, however, Falzon did the opposite. Not only did he refuse to recognise that he did anything wrong in the Gaffarena case. He launched a series of counter-accusations, not only but most gravely against the National Audit Office, at one point even stating that the Auditor-General ought to resign.
Not quite the thing to say if you want the episode closed. On the contrary. The more sympathetic you are to Falzon – the more you take his view that he was stitched up by a politically motivated investigator – the more you should insist that the Prime Minister clarifies the government’s own position.
What struck me most about the Xarabank interview is how often Falzon’s voice broke; he almost broke down completely towards the very end. Here was a man genuinely and deeply wounded, I believe, by the attacks on his character that have come in the wake of the scandal.
Almost obsessively, he kept talking about honour (irġulija, literally manhood) and character. He spoke of himself in the third person, saying ‘Michael Falzon’ instead simply ‘I’, which is only strange for people who do not recognise the idiom of honour: an honourable man has a name whose reputation has a life of its own, like stocks and shares. Michael Falzon wanted us to know his name was trailed by a cloud of character witnesses over the course of a career of loyalty.
But the NAO wasn’t evaluating whether he had behaved like a true man of honour. It was assessing whether he had behaved like a good bureaucratic politician. Honour has to do with personal responsibility – taking the rap for doing bad things. Good governance also has to do with political responsibility – taking the rap for not being careful enough, if you let certain things happen under your nose when you could reasonably have done more to stop them.
This distinction has, of course, been blurred over the last several months.
The government is being called the most corrupt since Independence, with this case being used as a prime example. The NAO report says that Falzon “facilitated” the deal while noting that it was characterised by “collusion”.
But collusion doesn’t necessarily mean being in on a crooked deal. The NAO could just as simply have said that Falzon didn’t do his job well, without changing a word of the rest of the report, and we’d still inevitably come to the same conclusion: Falzon’s negligence had enabled the deal to go through.
If he doesn’t see any evident corruption…But of course he does. That is why he is so furious that he is being associated with it
The deal was exceptional in every detail. It was an expropriation initiated by Gaffarena, not the Land Department. He knew about one expropriation before it had been publicised. The property he gave was overvalued; the property he got was undervalued. The property was expropriated for no clear purpose and not in the most rational manner. At key moments, the civil servants acted without consulting anyone nor did they keep a paper trail of the deliberations.
Falzon says that to have involved himself in the nitty-gritty would have been to break the rules of good governance. But that’s not what the NAO says he should have done. It expects oversight not involvement: that the basic questions – why? what for? who else did you consult? – should have been asked. They are questions about transparency not about the law.
You can be a man of honour but if you asked none of those questions then you
did not do the job you were supposed to do. In his interview, Falzon repeated several times that he was always “on the side of the people” (meaning he was not partisan). But in his case, acting in the public interest meant ensuring transparency and accountability. He didn’t.
He has claimed that the building had been used for public purposes before. But that’s a lame excuse.
The issue is whether there was a clear, deliberated public purpose now.
Throughout the interview, Falzon refused to pass judgement on those parts of the report that didn’t concern himself, essentially saying, “Who am I to judge?”
But actually his opinion of the case is fundamental. Not to express it is evasive, not humility. If he agrees that the case (excluding his role) stinks of corruption, then he must accept political responsibility for letting it happen under his watch with his signature on it. If he doesn’t see any evident corruption… But of course he does. That is why he is so furious that he is being associated with it.
Instead, in his fury he has reacted by raising two questions about the case that we need an answer to.
First, he has accused the NAO of being corrupt – since he said the report is politically malicious in its timing and in its targeting of him. At one point he said that if the Auditor General were half the man Michael Falzon was, he would resign.
What does the Prime Minister think of this? Does he have confidence in the NAO? We should be told.
Second, Falzon has pointed out that the consultant architect, whose over- and under-estimates were so helpful to Gaffarena, needs to come under the public spotlight (and even lose his current job at the University of Malta if his estimates turn out to have been so wrong).
True, we need to know whether the architect’s role in this case bears further investigation. (The NAO report does point out the striking decisions he took to arrive at the sums, even though Falzon has accused the NAO of being in collusion with the architect).
In fact we need to know more about what’s happening to all the people involved in the case.
Are the civil servants to be subject simply to disciplinary proceedings (a transfer) and not criminal ones?
If the case really is one of corruption, can criminal action (not just action to nullify the property transfers) be taken against Mark Gaffarena?
It’s amazing how such questions aren’t being asked. We owe it to Michael Falzon that he has, directly or indirectly, raised them pointedly.
But as for honour, preserving it requires the wisdom of serpents, not just the innocence of doves.
ranierfsadni@europe.com