The dearth of good leadership candidates in the recent Nationalist Party leadership election has thrown into sharp relief the general quality of our members of Parliament and the current limitations of their role in parliament. The PN’s election as their leader somebody who is not even in the House of Representatives speaks volumes.
It is an issue which affects both main political parties. This is not a blanket denunciation of our members of Parliament, or specifically PN members of Parliament. But we do have a problem that when you meet MPs, and as you watch them on television, increasing numbers seem to be mediocre.
What do I mean by mediocre? Not unintelligent or incapable. Only mediocre when you set them against the standards we should expect. From 67 MPs are drawn the 25 or so ministers and parliamentary secretaries who will together command the public service, run the country and help shape the lives of 430,000 souls.
If we were serious about the quality of our MPs, we would demand that every MP should have the raw talent to be a good minister. A significant proportion should be realistic candidates for the Auberge de Castille. Without a steady inflow of MP heavyweights-in-training the supply of contenders down the line – as the PN discovered to its chagrin – is too thin.
All those who become members of Parliament should be genuinely exceptional people: highly intelligent, articulate, well-read, insightful and authoritative. This is not an accurate description of many of today’s MPs on both sides of the tribal divide. Those we may call mediocre will not trouble anyone with an original thought. They are most comfortable repeating the party line and trooping through the government or opposition lobby as cannon-fodder to vote.
MPs like these may be diligent in supporting their party, perhaps even in helping members of their district. But do they have broader views on how an economy should work, what good governance and efficient administration amounts to, or on the scope of Malta’s place in the world? Have these views cohered into a vision of the kind of country Malta should strive to create? Or do they simply ricochet between small-scale issues and voting the way their party demands, or some other cause they have been asked to lend their name to by their party Whips?
Last year, the Speaker of the House called for members of Parliament to make improvements to the quality of their speeches. He also said that parliamentarians needed more support in preparing them, announcing that the team of research analysts in the House would soon be increased in size and MPs might one day have an allowance to employ their own researchers. Most importantly, perhaps, he also said he hoped that the long-awaited Bill on standards in public life would pass into law.
This was all to the good. But while the Speaker made some interesting points about the verbosity and low quality of speeches by MPs (and some ministers) in the House, what he said should prompt deeper reflection about whether the institution of Parliament and the people elected to it are equal to the crucial roles and responsibilities with which they have been entrusted.
In a parliamentary democracy it is the central function of our House of Representatives to scrutinise, debate and approve laws. The House is not there to govern the country – which is the role of the executive – but to hold the prime minister and his cabinet to account.
The current inability to apply appropriate checks and balances to the power of the executive is a gaping hole at the heart of our parliamentary democracy.
Rather than an anti-elitist parliament, we should be shamelessly elitist, explicitly interested in attracting to public service those who have achieved success in other fields
The quality of parliamentarians who inhabit the House of Representatives and the legal, administrative and parliamentary tools that underpin its procedures, including the scope and effectiveness of parliamentary select committees, need strengthening.
The PN Opposition’s recent proposals for reform to embrace a package of good parliamentary house-keeping – ranging from the vital need to give members of Parliament better research resources, to family-friendly measures to encourage greater female participation in the House, and an examination of the possibility of having full-time MPs – were well made.
Holding more frequent debates on private member’s Bills would also give MPs greater responsibility and an incentive to shine by providing greater scope to introduce legislation which reflected their constituents’ priorities, as happened with the epoch-changing introduction of divorce legislation.
There is a need to rebuild public and political trust in our parliamentary institutions. An essential element of this lies in attracting high-quality MPs to the House of Representatives. The renaissance of the PN must begin by once again bringing people of high quality and public service commitment to its parliamentary ranks.
How could we go about attracting future heavyweights? First, we should start by tackling the bias that underrates the value of public service and discourages highly successful businessmen and top-earning professionals from becoming MPs. It sends a negative message about who is suitable for parliament. Doesn’t making a lot of money indicate a level of smartness that we should desire in a politician? Rather than an anti-elitist parliament, we should be shamelessly elitist, explicitly interested in attracting to public service those who have achieved success in other fields.
Attracting the best candidates requires the political parties to rethink what makes a good MP. The obsession with ticking boxes leads often to hopelessly non-meritocratic places, as with the pledge by the United Kingdom’s Jeremy Corbyn for half of Labour MPs to be female by 2020.
Although a more diverse parliament with more women represented there is a good thing, ultimately however it’s not a candidate’s gender, sexuality or background that matter, but their intelligence and judgment. It should matter not whether a parliamentary party is 75 per cent female or 25 per cent. It only matters that all are exceptionally capable.
To attract the brightest, the job itself should change. Parliamentary business cannot be transacted efficiently when the House is only part-time, when MPs absent themselves on a regular basis and Parliament has to rely almost entirely on the executive to function.
Then there is the vexed question of money. €21,000 (albeit for a part-time job with a gold-plated pension) is little better than the average Maltese full-time wage. It is also the lowest paid parliamentary salary in Europe.
If the House of Representatives were to move to a full-time parliament, given the unsocial hours that MPs work, the disruption to family life, not to mention the status and responsibilities of the job, a considerably higher salary would be reasonable. More importantly, it would also be more likely to tempt high-calibre candidates from other well-paid professional careers.
People may balk at this. But unless the role of MPs becomes more attractive, and unless better quality control is applied (including through professional training for the job), the parliamentary talent pool will dwindle further. And this means more dismal leadership contests down the line. The country deserves better.