Franco Mercieca and Prime Minister Joseph Muscat made a wise decision. Mr Mercieca’s continuing private work was causing too much controversy and raising criticism, a lot of it carping. He can now continue to concentrate on his work as a parliamentary secretary and on Sundays offer his surgical skills to those who need them at Mater Dei Hospital and the hospital in Gozo.

I would consider a three-month phasing in period for all ministers and parliamentary secretaries

It will not be quite the end of the affair. There will still be those baying for blood. But it will go far enough.

Without fail, then, the Prime Minister should set in motion a thorough revision of the code of ethics, which has been in force, unchanged, for nearly 20 years.

It requires changes that go beyond the right or wrong of ministers and parliamentary secretaries continuing to do some work while they are serving in high office. Yet that might as well be a starting point.

The principle, so adumbrated by those who criticised Mercieca out of partisan, not just ethical, motives, is that ministers and parliamentary secretaries should work full-time in their job.

Their focus and energy should be directed at serving the people in the jobs in which they are accountable to the people.

That principle has been broken well before Mercieca came on the Gozo and the national scene. All through the past 18 years, various ministers and parliamentary secretaries have been guilty of such a breach. They acted as paid lecturers at the University of Malta, mostly in the law faculty, but not just that.

Those who primly point out that teaching is different from practising surgery or seeing patients as a general practitioner are off stream. The point is – full-time or not full-time. By this firm principle, those who teach at the University were in the wrong, and no two ways about it.

That does not mean that I, for one, would have preferred them not to lecture. Education and Malta would have been the poorer for it. But a point is a point. The Governor of the Central Bank, for instance, is specifically prohibited by the Central Bank of Malta Act from doing other work.

Every governor or acting governor has abided by that restriction. That includes the present Governor, Josef Bonnici, who used to lecture and tutor in economics. He sticks by the letter of the law, unlike ministers and parliamentary secretaries who have lectured in the past and lecture now.

Can it be said that law is more important, more essential than economics? Say yes and reach out for the next block of rubbish.

Economic students who have benefited from Bonnici’s economic skills and erudition in the past would benefit even more now, given that he has gained so much more practical monetary and macroeconomic experience. Still, his economic mouth is zipped.

My point is not one of approval. I would prefer Bonnici to pass on his deep knowledge to our students. Yet, he does not.

A revision of the ministerial code of ethics should look at this prohibition with eyes wide open, not shut and sealed by partisan prejudice. In the jobs sector, I would consider a three-month phasing-in period for all ministers and parliamentary secretaries who, before their appointment, were in employment of a continuing nature. Thus, a lawyer would be able to finalise cases in hand, if that is up to him. If not, he can hand over to a colleague without indecent haste; similarly an architect.

A doctor would phase out his private practice gently and properly, with due respect for his patients’ interest and feelings. I do not think that the tears shed by minister Godfrey Farrugia when he spoke of what he felt when he gave up his practice were crocodile tears. I do not feel that minister George Vella was insincere when he said he could not, according to his oath as a doctor, overnight turn his patients away. I do not believe that former minister Joe Cassar, a psychiatrist, was bluffing when saying some patients of his may have been suicidal.

Similarly, a surgeon should phase out his private workload over three months, operating himself or having due time to consult properly with a colleague. He should continue keeping a hand in at Mater Dei.

Non-medical lecturers should not be expected to turn their back on their students in mid-term. I am sure other examples can be given but I have made my point. The common thread justifying exemptions is the need for continuation.

Of course, one can be rigid and say – there should be no exception whatsoever. That would be a legitimate view, treating equals equally, rather than equals unequally as is the case now. Yet would it be wise? Would it be in the country’s interest?

It would limit the catchment area of those prepared to serve as ministers. Do we really need that? Is it not limited enough already, what with the pittance they are paid, and the insults they receive from other members of the political class and from the public?

A rethink is necessary. A deep rethinking; not just about codes of ethics, but about the way we do politics in general.