Never let it be said that we don’t like our clichés. Look at the way they come pouring out every time a new issue makes it to our front pages.
Has the Nationalist Party lost a round of local council elections? Thousands of commentators urge the Prime Minister to ‘wake up and smell the coffee’. They tell him to ‘think outside the box’ and be more creative in his approach to solving the nation’s problems.
With the BSWC issue and the Auditor General’s statement that he had found smoke but no fire, everybody went a bit overboard with variants of the ‘smoke, fire’ cliché. Now that it turns out that Cabinet has given itself a pay rise and not been very open about it, the cliché of the month is thatif you pay peanuts, you getmonkeys.
According to this old adage, you get what you pay for and it would stand to reason that if parliamentarians are better paid, they would be more inclined to show up in Parliament now and again, and actually read the legislation they’re meant to be debating.
Exponents of this mode of reasoning insist that throwing more money the MPs’ way is justified, as it would provide a reasonable income for them, enabling them to concentrate on their parliamentary duties and not having to earn a living in other ways outside the House.
On the face of it, this would seem to make sense. If you want the best, you should pay for the best. And parliamentarians should be compensated for having foregone their careers for a stressful life in politics. But the peanut-monkey analogy only gets you so far. There is no demonstrable evidence which proves that providing betterpay attracts a better quality of candidates. Nor does it bar politicians from accepting bribes or being involved in fraudulent behaviour.
It is only a steadfast adherence to principles and uncompromising honesty which will prevent such behaviour. If politicians lack these qualities, no pay packet, however large, will prevent them dipping their hands in the till. The attractive remuneration package and perks given to EU Commissioners were no bar to the members of the JacquesSanter Commission becoming embroiled in a corruption scandal. The members of that Commission resigned en masse, showing us that in some cases monkeys may be a better bet than overpaid politicians who stillsuccumb to temptation.
Switching back to the home front, the least you would expect from our parliamentarians is that they have a vague idea of what the law-making process entails.
After all, Parliament is the legislative body and MPs should be able to discuss proposed laws intelligently and after having carried out a modicum of research.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the case, even with MPs who aren’t exactly living below the bread line.
There are instances where MPs who receive considerably more remuneration than their counterparts come up with the shoddiest and poorly-researched of proposals. Take the divorce Bill initially tabled by Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando.
I’m talking about the ‘bombshell’ Bill which he came up with in July. In view of the fact that he was taking a position on a very controversial subject and that he really wanted the Bill to be made into law, you’d think that he would have done his homework well and taken legal advice about it.
Instead, his offering was a copy-and-paste effort, lifted in its entirety from Irish legislation. It must have taken all of two minutes to lift it from the Irish statute books. Of course it was a hurried job, necessitating the tabling of yet another Bill to replacePullicino Orlando’s first attempt. But apparently having an MP table a botched Bill is all par for the course here in Malta. Because – as Pullicino Orlando informed us – he’s only an expert in teeth.
This leads us to conclude that we have a legislator who started off a campaign about an important issue without bothering to ask for legal advice about it. Incidentally, Pullicino Orlando receives his honorarium as a MP and an additional €13,000 per year as chairman of the Malta Council for Science and Technology, the Prime Minister said in Parliament.
He is also given allowances for the use of a car, fuel, telephone and internet. You’d think this would cover the cost of legal advice and more research about legislation he’s proposing. It seems it wasn’t.
Over on the Labour side and yet another Pullicino Orlando who makes a case for accepting the increase in MPs honoraria, Marlene Pullicino Orlando, writing in l-Orizzont tells us that everything costs money, including having her hair and nails done in order to be able to be a fitting representative of her party on television. She doesn’t seem to realise how stunningly shallow this seems.
Are her readers – presumably the ones who are trying to make ends meet – supposed to feel much sympathy for Marlene’s bad hair days? Are they expected to feel good about their taxes being spent on Marlene’s nails and coiffure so she can look like Siġiewi’s version of Eva Peron?
She concludes by stating that she does not trust the Gonzi administration to spend public money wisely, so she will be accepting the proposed increase in her honoraria, and see how it is distributed to charities herself. Of course, we don’t know how much of it will be going towards charity and how much will be spent on nail art.
Call me cynical, but I don’t believe it’s paying peanuts that produces monkeys. Careless and superficial politicians will continue to populate our parliament, no matter what we pay them. Throwing money at them just makes some of them better-paid monkeys.
cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt