There is meant to be an Office of the Commissioner for Public Standards, a watchdog over the House of Representatives. It has been long in coming, since 2012, and the law was finally signed by the President last year. Clearly, there was no urgency to see it through and, incredibly, the promised commissioner is still nowhere in sight.
He is to check the demeanour and the financial assets of parliamentarians and receive complaints from citizens about their hallowed representatives sitting in the great hall of privileges and immunity. Our representatives are in no hurry. They were keen to change to a new Parliament building but not so much the rules to follow.
Even Speaker of the House, Anġlu Farrugia, is getting restless because the situation has gone beyond the ludicrous. A House that readily passes rules and laws for all to follow cannot bring itself round to regulate itself. Dr Farrugia urged the two large political parties to make a “bigger effort” to nominate the person who would act as an ethics watchdog for MPs.
The law was approved 15 months ago but the government is still to publish a legal notice to bring it into force. It is not effort that is needed but intent. An intent to get off the high horse and to stop imitating the colonial masters that went away more than half a century ago.
When this newspaper tried to unravel the cause of the stalemate, the Nationalist Party said it had nominated someone for the post of commissioner eight months ago but received no feedback. The Labour Party was less forthcoming. It did not reply.
Democratic Party MP Godfrey Farrugia called the situation a “vacuum” but, really, it has always been this way.
He also emphasised the need for a lobbyists’ register saying it would offer more transparency and “help remove the threat of pecuniary interests”. Those points are debateable though superfluous at this stage. There is no Commissioner for Public Standards.
An office similar to the one planned already exists: the House of Commons’ Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, who oversees British MPs’ conduct and propriety. The post was set up in 1995.
In Malta, the first Bill in this regard was proposed in a White Paper launched in 2012 by Tonio Borg, then leader of the House. The Labour Party’s 2013 electoral manifesto had proposed a commissioner for standards. Now in its second term in office, people are still waiting for Labour to act. In May last year, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat had even pledged to remove parliamentary privilege, to stop politicians shooting from the hip and make allegations that are pure fantasy. Of course, nothing happened.
Dr Borg, writing in this newspaper, says the parliamentary privilege should remain because he fears that, without it, powerful corporations and banks would “start harassing” MPs with unnecessary and unjust legal action. He is, however, aware that, through the privilege, ordinary citizens cannot sue in a court of law if they are slandered and sees the Commissioner of Public Standards as intended to grant redress in such cases. Still, there is no commissioner.
The law was approved unanimously by the House and, yet, the government does not move. The so-called people’s representatives remain happily privileged and the country continues to wait, for nothing.
This is a Times of Malta print editorial