Accountability is one of the most important components of democracy. It’s easy to see why. If those who govern cannot be held accountable for the actions that they take or fail to take in the public domain, citizens will become vulnerable to all sorts of manipulation and abuse. One can consider accountability as a sort of implicit contract between citizens and their governors whereby the rulers accept to take on certain responsibilities subject to potential sanctions for non-performance.

We have adopted the Westminster model, but on paper only. We have turned it into toilet paper

Political accountability can only work if it is embedded in institutions and pre-established rules, even if it differs in nature from legal, financial or ethical accountability. In contrast with lawyers, auditors, doctors and other professions, officials and members of the government or even politicians not in office can be held to account even for actions that do not transgress the law or that do not necessarily result in personal enrichment or violate common morality.

In fact, it is widely accepted in western democracies that ministers are also held accountable simply for making bad political choices that failed to produce their intended effect or that end up costing vastly more than initially announced. They are also often held accountable for just failing to act after promising to do so.

The most extreme form of political accountability is negative. Citizens who are unhappy with a politician or a set of politicians can use their vote in an election to ‘throw the rascals out’. It is mostly a peaceful affair, though, occasionally, it can also become bloody when it can only be done through a revolution. But in working democracies, accountability is also positive. It involves laws, rules and unwritten standards whereby, for a start, governments and officials are held accountable for their use of public funds, the quality of their performance, and their attention to the public interest. Equally important, they are held accountable to citizens for honesty, integrity and ethical behaviour.

In the Westminster system of government, there is the unwritten convention of individual ministerial responsibility, that Cabinet ministers bear the ultimate responsibility for the actions of their ministries or departments. This is not the same as Cabinet collective responsibility, whereby ministers collectively assume responsibility. Thus, a minister may take the blame and ultimately resign if he or his officials fail in the proper discharge of their particular responsibilities, but the Cabinet would not similarly be expected to resign if it did not make the issue one of “confidence” in the government.

In Malta, we recently had instances of both: individual ministerial responsibility in the case of Justice Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici and collective ministerial responsibility in the case of Minister Austin Gatt.

What do these conventions mean in practice?

In the case of individual ministerial responsibility, it means that if waste, corruption or any other misbehaviour is found to have occurred within a ministry, the minister is responsible even if he had no knowledge of the actions. Why, you might ask. Well, because a minister may be held to have approved the hiring or continued employment of the civil servant who misbehaved. This is essential because, if a minister is allowed merely to blame his subordinates every time something wrong happens, he will not scrutinize what is happening in his departments.

So, in working democracies, ministers should resign if their actions are inconsistent with what they say they believe. But they must resign even if they have not broken any laws but their subordinates have. They must resign if their subordinates have acted against the public interest. They must resign if the taxpayer funds under their care have been misused. They must resign if corruption has occurred or is seriously alleged to have occurred under their watch.

In proper democracies, ministers resign. A few months ago, a senior British Cabinet minister resigned after a confrontation with police officers in the course of which he used abusive language. Last week, Germany’s Education Minister resigned after she was found to have plagiarised parts of her thesis 32 years ago. Two years ago, the German Defence Minister resigned over similar allegations. Last year, the President of Hungary also resigned in similar circumstances. Sweden’s Minister of Finance resigned after he was found to have employed a female worker in his home without paying taxes. In Chile, an Education Minister had to resign because he was too closely associated with an ex-director of a University committee who was under investigation for bribery. As far back as 1954, a British Minister of Agriculture resigned over the return of land to its rightful owners, even though the mistakes were made by his officials. The list is long.

This is clearly not what is happening in Malta. We have adopted the Westminster model, but on paper only. In fact, we have gone one better. We have turned it into toilet paper. We have had ministers fly in private aircraft for free with businessman who were tendering for government contracts, ministers who obtained services from people or businesses who did not pay their taxes, ministers who were warned about corruption in their ministries and simply washed their hands, ministers who spent millions more on projects than they had originally estimated or even more than their own revised estimates, ministers whose employees were convicted in court on corruption charges. The list is too long to go on. They all said they did nothing wrong.