Responsible government presupposes that the Executive accounts for its actions to those to whom it is answerable, that is, ultimately, the electorate.
A system where decisions are decreed by autonomous authorities, without any form of public scrutiny, is a system that is alien to parliamentary democracy. It amounts to absolutism.
The issue that arises from the above hinges on whether the functions undertaken or assigned by the Executive are effectively discharged by ministers and how they could be properly delegated.
In examining this question, it may be useful to divide a minister’s duties into three categories, namely the determination of policy, the retention of Parliamentary support and the supervision of the administrative work involved.
Decisions could not be taken wisely without the data that only experts can provide or the accumulated experience that permanence can give.
But, ultimately, the decision ought to be the minister’s alone.
If one were to turn to the second category of the minister’s duties – those in Parliament itself – it is the minister who must occupy the centre stage.
The role of the official is that of prompter in the wings – or so it should be.
Like the prompter, the official should not be heard, much less should he be a authorised to take decisions off his own bat.
It is the minister who should be on top of civil servants and the bureaucratic cohorts, not the other way round.
When it comes to the third category of ministerial duties – day-to-day administration – the size of the bureaucratic machine is such that countless decisions may have to be taken every day by officials on their own responsibility, exercising delegated powers under the law.
This has to be within the limits assigned to them by their superiors. This is bureaucracy. Democracy cannot get rid of it, however unsavoury this may be to the advocates of people power.
Although the Constitution gives a voice to Parliament before major decisions are taken, we see, almost on a daily basis, more authorities being created outside the umbrella of parliamentary scrutiny.
These authorities are manned by hand-picked nominees of the government and are sustained by public funds.
Some of them are being dressed up as ‘regulators’ with their own brief. In a number of areas, there may be overlaps of responsibility and clashes of authority.
We see ambassadorial announcements made out of the blue from on high. The money-no-problem mode has persisted and public expenditure runs at a gallop while Parliament watches from a distance and the taxpaying electorate picks up the bill.
Malta is faced by the ever-present danger of the State arrogating too much power, thereby encroaching on the turf both of Parliament and of the courts.
The other danger is that the real power of the Executive (the Government) passes more and more from the hands of ministers, who can be called to account by the elected representatives of the people, into the hands of faceless officials, out of reach of parliamentary scrutiny.
Parliamentarians with a lively appreciation of their prerogatives could stand up to the despotism of the Executive.
But faceless nominees on quangos and autonomous authorities, the likes of which are mushrooming at an alarming rate, are out of reach and out of range of parliamentarians and could conceivably establish a despotism on the ruins of the two leading features of the Constitution: the sovereignty of Parliament and the rule of law.
No democratic parliamentary system is worthy of the name if ministers are dethroned and if parliamentary authority could not be effectively exercised under scrutiny in the name of the electorate.
Our main protection against deviations from the high purposes of parliamentary democracy must continue to be the enforcement of the principle of ministerial responsibility and accountability.
Lord Bryce pointed out many years ago that “neglect to fix responsibility has been one of the most fertile sources for trouble in popular governments”.
A maturing electorate, intent on building up resistance to arbitrary power, would do well to take this observation to heart.