Possibly the most used word in discussing the government scenario is corruption. The political debate in Malta is such that everyone seems to suspect that some sort of corruption is going on. This refers to a crude definition of corruption where money talks. Money certainly is not mute in the public sector. Over the years there have been cases which cried out foul, even if corruption was not proven.

There have been indications of overt or hidden favouritism. The discussion should be how to avoid repetitions in the future. More so, the discussion has to widen the meaning and understanding of corruption to ensure that the debate about it is not just a waste of time. This point is fast emerging as the backdrop to the hearings of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) regarding Enemalta.

The hearings seem to concentrate on two issues. One was a shameless offensive by opposition members on the committee against the Auditor General and his staff. Instead of standing up for them, as any member of a properly functioning PAC should, they did their best to discredit them, to the extent that the authority of the committee was severely undermined.

That was ironical since the Auditor General’s office is the major instrument through which the PAC tries to watchdog government expenditure and economic performance.

The other issue, pushed by the government members on the PAC, was that there were dubious dealings at Enemalta such that they suggested corruption was rife. Nevertheless no evidence was brought forward or elicited during the hearings that corruption in the traditional sense had taken place.

To the extent that government members do not recognise this and continue to flog the dead horse of suspicion, they will be losing an opportunity to bring to light what is wrong with the public sector and how to remedy faults.

Corruption, to my mind, does not simply mean wrongdoing through illicit agreements whereby money in its crude or fancier forms changes hands. It relates, I feel, to how a system works. By my definition the PAC hearings have proven Enemalta Corporation corrupt beyond the shadows thrown on it by the report of the Auditor General on oil procurement running into millions of dollars.

The broad political debate and political frays has ample space in the House of Representatives. The PAC should be above all that

Nowhere has it been proven that Austin Gatt made as much as a cent out of Enemalta being part of his portfolio. But it has been proven that he failed in his ministerial responsibility as the overseer of Enemalta. It has been proven that the whole system of the corporation was in shambles. If anyone doubted that the evidence of a former CEO David Spiteri Gingell earlier this week blew away such doubts.

The gentleman, widely respected by all sectors, lasted 11 months into his job. He resigned, to move into unemployment, because he could not stand the shambles the corporation was in.

He had reported on that shambles in 1997. When he moved into the chairman’s role he found that none of the shortcomings he had identified had been remedied. Rather, things were worse and made so through the political interference of the Ministry of Finance.

Mr Spiteri Gingell exonerated former Minister Austin Gatt from any interference. Fine. But that only increases, rather than diminishes, Dr Gatt’s exposure to criticism.

As the corporation’s minister it was his responsibility to see that the corporation was well run. His secretarial system, with an individual monitoring a main component of the portfolio, should have ensured that he was aware of what was – or was not – going on at Enemalta.

His political responsibility also demanded that he face off the Finance Minister in the Cabinet over the way his ministry was treating Enemalta.

Maybe he did, but without success. Maybe he did not. This is what the PAC should try to establish.

At the bar is the overall system through which Enemalta was run. It was inefficient and ineffectual. Are there similar shortcomings in the way the rest of the public sector is run? For if there are, that is a state of corruption which does not refer to money changing hands. Wasting public resources capriciously though a tattered system of operations is a sure means of saying that an entity is corrupt.

That is what the PAC should be ferreting. Without conclusions in that area the meetings of the PAC may be dismissed as one jamboree of taking a political sance, instead of a serious exercise to determine that taxpayers’ funds are being spent correctly.

It will leave whatever is rotten in various public sector entities in its putrid state. That is not what the Public Accounts Committee was set up for.

The broad political debate and political frays have ample space in the House of Representatives. The PAC should be above all that.

To turn it into a political tool would be to corrupt its very essence of existence.

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