A man had a problem with a building site next door to his home. Exasperated, he contacts the Office of the Prime Minister. Within less than an hour, the mayor phones him and, next day, public sector officers were on site and the case was solved. It is called government customer care. It works but it is wrong.
Either this country’s public service is immensely dysfunctional or the Labour government has usurped all power to itself. It is probably a combination of both.
Malta is a small country, so it is easy to take over the public sector with a few hundred positions of trust. The civil service, and the supposedly autonomous authorities, have become an extension of the government of the day. The government takes credit for what they should be doing by themselves and for what is the citizen’s by right.
It is, unfortunately, a reflection of public perception that any decision by a public entity is seen to be a policy decision by the government. By default, political responsibility for government entities has been translated to hands-on responsibility at a micro level. It is a waste of resources at best. People heading government entities are paid handsomely from taxpayer money to do their jobs and should do it without prodding.
The government has a duty to intervene in the operation of its entities when the system fails. But to have such intervention institutionalised is not what governance is all about. It opens the door to abuse.
We have seen it in Gozo. On the eve of the election, employment in the public sector was so widespread it left the private sector with personnel problems. The recruitment exercise smacks of partisanship and may constitute a corrupt practice. But it also brought in votes by the spadeful.
The Labour Party has won handsomely and its theory of customer care has proven successful. Government customer care, even if abuses are made, keeps people happy. It is a terrible verdict on the country’s political maturity.
When outgoing Nationalist Party leader Simon Busuttil campaigned for truly independent institutions, he ended with egg on his face. People want to be served not exercise their rights. It is like Independence never happened half a century ago.
Customer care is flattering, even if the one providing it should not be doing so. Even more flattering is a customer care that differentiates between customers and discriminates against others. The new Nationalist Party leadership has this scenario to face: a government that keeps its people happy, rightfully or wrongfully, and reap the rewards at election time.
Political instinct, one would suppose, would be to offer people the same as Labour in government, maybe even go further. That would be so wrong. People will want to see an alternative in the Nationalist Party, not the same Labour in different colours. Government big brotherliness insults human dignity. It is the very opposite of the liberalism that Labour boasts so much of.
To accept that political patronage is here to stay is to give up on politics. The country does not deserve to be treated as a child and it is up to the Nationalist Party to tell it to grow up and start behaving as an independent adult who knows his rights and will be subservient to no one.