Practically every administration relies on the role of political appointees to implement electoral promises during its term of office. In theory, such appointees, who are often described as ‘persons of trust’, should at least have the right qualifications to carry out such duties. In practice, some of them are just being rewarded by their political masters for past partisan services that would have helped the party in government getting elected.
While this is the reality that many democratic countries tolerate, there is no doubt that any officials paid through taxpayers’ money should be held accountable for their actions or inactions. Integrity is the most essential qualification for all public officials, whether they are persons of trust or career civil servants.
Like Caesar’s wife, officials appointed to a public post should be ‘above suspicion’. When serious allegations on breach of trust are made against public officials, their superiors should suspend them until the investigations are concluded, the more so if such an official is a person of trust.
The ongoing saga of allegations against Edward Caruana, a person of trust appointed by Education Minister Evarist Bartolo, puts into serious doubt the administration’s political will to hold political appointees to account when serious allegations are made against them. The arguments made by both the minister and the Prime Minister to justify the way this case is being handled leaves much to be desired.
Junior public officials are often covered by collective agreements signed between the trade union that represents them and the government. Such collective agreements would have a disciplinary procedure that defines how an employee being investigated for a serious offence should be treated. It is quite common that, in such cases, an employee is either asked to go on forced leave or is suspended on half or full pay.
More senior public officials who are not unionised have to follow a code of ethics that often prescribes that senior civil servants should be suspended with no pay until investigations on serious allegations are concluded. Political appointees, apparently, have no strict code of conduct that holds them accountable for their actions.
Mr Caruana’s self-suspension on full pay while he is being investigated on allegations of corruption was approved on the Attorney General’s advice. The Principal Permanent Secretary, Mario Cutajar, is satisfied with this legalistic approach. “The public services is regulated by specific rules or precedents based on strong legal grounds,” he told this newspaper.
When Mr Bartolo declared publicly that he no longer trusted Mr Caruana, the only logical consequence should have been to treat this person as any other civil servant who is being investigated for serious alleged crimes. Mr Cutajar’s argument is a red herring that could mask the seriousness of the irregularities allegedly committed by Mr Caruana.
Precedents that protect former persons of trust from the full consequences of investigations into their alleged criminal behaviour should be discarded and not used as an argument to weaken the ethical standards of behaviour that the public expects from public officials, especially if they recently enjoyed the trust of their minister. Indeed, a person of trust should be more, not less, accountable.
Mr Bartolo was, of course, right to order Mr Caruana’s transfer in the wake of the accusations made by the outgoing CEO of the Foundation of Tomorrow’s Schools, Philip Rizzo. Still, he should have followed through by insisting that Mr Caruana did not benefit from some ‘precedent’ that softened the consequences of the irregularities he allegedly committed and the consequent police investigations.