Writing in The Times earlier this week, a correspondent blamed the recent bureaucratic mess in the appointments of medical consultants on a Public Service Commission (PSC) that is “past its sell-by date” ignoring its responsibility to make sure that the best qualified people are appointed to government posts. This is hardly the right reflection of the bureaucratic mess and the resultant blame game that made it to the press to become a political tiff.

Labour has not yet shaken its old habits of ascribing anything that goes wrong to corruption- Michael Falzon

First of all, I feel I have to express my disagreement with those who saw something sinister in this sorry episode just because one of three people who were ‘irregularly’ appointed – and ended up with no appointment at all – was the son-in-law of a minister.

Unfortunately, Labour has not yet shaken its old habits of ascribing anything that goes wrong to corruption, even when it is obvious that the issue here was one of lack of clarity and efficiency. It has always opted for an untenable ridiculous stance based on the assumption that the administrative machine is perfect and does not err and, hence, anything wrong must per force be ascribed to ulterior motives.

Beyond the way this episode has been blown up into a pointless political controversy, the obvious conclusion is that ensuring that there is no undue interference in civil service appointments, as the PSC is so keen to do by strictly adhering to the written rules and regulations, does not necessarily produce the best results.

After reading the letter I check­ed what the Consti­tution says about the PSC, since this is a body set up by the Constitution so as to enjoy protection from blatant political interference.

The Constitution has two quite longish articles about the setting up of the PSC and its functions but nowhere does it explicitly say that it is responsible to see that govern­ment appointments must be strictly made on grounds of meritocracy; although this is indirectly implied by the statement that appointments must be made “solely in the best interests of the public service and of the nation generally”.

It is quite obvious that the thinking behind the drafting of the two articles about the PSC was the idea of setting up an adminis­trative barrier to preclude the politicians running the state’s executive branch (for which read ministers) from abusing of their power by appointing people to government posts on the basis of cronyism or nepotism.

The notion that the system should lead to the appointment of the best candidates available is not the prime mover of the system. It comes a poor second to the assurance that everything is done properly and above board.

After all, in any such system, the choice of the best candidate must always be subjective: there can be no objective rules prescribing the minimum pre-determined quali­fications and the assessment of the selection board. Members of selec­tion boards, of course, can be in­fluenced to take decisions not based on meritocracy.

One can go on postulating on who selects the members of the selection boards but the buck has to stop somewhere.

In the bu­reaucratic mess that has sur­faced it was obvious that there was also the issue of whether the selection board per se was also responsible to eliminate from consideration those applicants who were strictly not qualified according to the call for appli­cations; an issue that should nor­mally not present difficulties, albeit this was not so in this case.

A similar situation crops up in the award of government contracts. The Contract Committee (which does not enjoy constitutional protection) also monitors the process by which winning bids are awarded, and any government contract must be endorsed by it. Contrary to popular myth, ministers have no power to award contracts to whoever they want and the real power technically rests with the Contracts Committee.

This does not mean that this committee is beyond undue in­fluence. Whatever system one opts for, at the end of the day it is run by mortal human beings who are always subject to human frailties and weaknesses. Although inten­ded to avoid abuse, it is a fact that the system has been abused, even if not as frequently as popularly perceived.

Differences between government departments or state entities and the Contracts Committee crop up all the time.

I will resist the temptation of giving examples of actual cases, but the conclusion here is also discouraging: the adherence to strict rules and conditions meant to ensure that there are no abuses does not ensure that the govern­ment gets the best deal and the best value for its money. Some­times it does the opposite.

Appointments and promo­tions in the civil service and the award of government contracts give rise to the question: how much do the rules tailored to avoid abuse of the system com­promise its effectiveness?

According to the British and Irish Ombudsman Association, the principles of good gover­nance are: independence; open­ness and transparency; accoun­tability; integrity; clarity of pur­pose; and effectiveness.

More often than not, un­fortunately, our administrative machine finds it impossible to adhere to all these six principles concurrently.

micfal@maltanet.net