Right, folks. Hard on the heels of the extraordinary success of my runaway best-seller, ‘How to Govern a Country Without Actually Existing’ (subtitled: ‘Lawrence Gonzi: The Unauthorised Biography’), it is my exquisite pleasure to finally unleash upon you all the long-awaited sequel: ‘How to Avoid Doing Any Parliamentary Work Whatosever For An Entire Legislature, While Still Collecting Your Monthly Salary As An Elected MP’ (with a foreword by Anthony Zammit).
Unfortunately, the table of contents is altogether too mind-bogglingly large to reproduce in full here. There is, after all, an infinity of ways in which an elected representative can get away with doing bugger all for five whole years... especially in a country where people don’t really expect their elected representatives to ever actually do anything, except maybe nod in agreement with the Glorious Leader every once in a while. So I have decided to limit today’s overview to a single chapter: ‘How to Give The Impression Of Having Answered a Parliamentary Question... Without, In Reality, Having Answered Jack-S***’.
Below are a few tried-and-tested methods of PQ avoidance, all gleaned from years of close observance of the most experienced MPs in this department (and trust me, Malta boasts the finest and most experienced PQ avoiders in the world, bar none)... but only after a brief digression to explain the importance of not answering Parliamentary Questions in the greater scheme of things.
For the benefit of the less politically-inclined among my readers, “Parliamentary Questions” consist in written or oral requests for information on a wide variety of subjects for which Cabinet ministers are generally (and erroneously, as shall be seen) believed to be responsible. They are described as “essential to the proper functioning of a parliamentary democracy”, and are often portrayed as a tool which bridges the gap between the voting public and the representatives they elect to parliament.
For this reason alone (and also because answering such questions invariably entails the waste of precious time and energy on research, information-gathering, and other pointless activities) on no account whatsoever must a PQ ever be answered. Ever!
Honestly, I cannot stress the importance of this enough. I mean, can you imagine what would happen, if the electorate ever got to find out even one-tenth of what their elected representatives actually get up to behind their backs? Trust me, you don’t want to go there. Just look at the United Kingdom, for Heaven’s sake. Everything was going just fine, until some pesky newspaper editor decided that the general public had ‘the right to know’ how its tax money was actually being spent.
What a load of nonsense. Next you thing you know, there’s an MP’s expenses scandal to contend with, everyone’s calling for the Prime Minister’s head on a plate, England loses to Australia at rugby union... and before you know it the entire country’s gone to the dogs.
Trust me, everyone would have been so much happier if they just never got to find anything out.
But back to Malta: our superior nation, where parliamentary democracy has advanced to such an extent that the general public itself rightly insists on never being informed of anything whatsoever... least of all what its own government gets up to in private, and how it spends their hard-earned cash.
Method 1: Don’t attend parliament.
What better way to avoid having to answer an uncomfortable PQ, than by simply not ever being physically present in Parliament to answer it? Yes indeed. Absence not only makes the heart grow fonder... it also makes an MP’s life so much easier.
And quite apart from the sheer impossibility of answering questions when one is somewhere else entirely, permanent absence has other advantages, too. For one thing, you won’t have to spend hours listening to Adrian Vassallo illustrating the Labour Party’s progressive credentials with a scathing attack on gay rights. For another, you will be spared Tonio Fenech’s declarations of Christianity, while stirring up national hatred of single mothers in order to deny them social benefits.
And besides: being a Member of Parliament is not like being, say, a bus driver... in which case you will sooner or later be unreasonably expected to occasionally drive a bus. I personally prefer comparing an MP to a university lecturer in the Faculty of Law: in which case, none of your students will ever bat an eyelid when you fail to materialise for a lecture (though they may conceivably get a fright if you suddenly defied all expectations by actually showing up).
For, as I remarked earlier: Malta possesses an advanced democracy with highly sophisticated Parliamentary procedures. And for this reason, it is perfectly possible for MPs to collect their salaries without ever having attended a single Parliamentary session… still less engaging in any of the activities we routinely associate with the affairs of the House (e.g., banging their fists on the desk, reciting the Rosary, reading a copy of this fine newspaper, etc., etc.)
I believe Dire Straits even wrote a song about Malta’s House of Representatives once... can’t remember the title, but it went something like: “That ain’t working, That’s the way ya do it!”
2. ‘Can you direct your question to the relevant minister?’
Let us imagine, however, that an occasion arises where you just can’t help but be present for a Parliamentary session. And let’s imagine also that some cheeky so-and-so from the Opposition benches takes note of your presence, and unfairly takes advantage by slipping in an unavoidable PQ.
Hmm. The inexperienced MP will no doubt think he has been cornered. But the seasoned minister will know from experience that Cabinet portfolios have been cunningly devised in such a way that it is technically impossible to determine who the relevant minister is, just from the topic of the question alone.
A few examples. One particular ministry goes by the name of ‘Resources and Rural Affairs’. Naturally, this means that it is fully responsible for all Malta’s resources and rural affairs... except when the resources involve energy (which falls under ‘IT and investments’); land (which falls under ‘Finance’); water (which falls under ‘environment’ which in turn falls under the PM’s portfolio).
What could be simpler and more straightforward than that?
3. The information you requested is ‘commercially sensitive’
Sometimes – admittedly very rarely – an Opposition MP might actually do his homework well enough to squeeze in a question which was successfully addressed to the correct ministry; addressed to an MP who was actually present; and worded in such a way for the relevant minister to need an altogether more cunning plan than usual in order to avoid it.
But never fear: even under such dire circumstances it remains perfectly possible to duck your responsibility by simply citing that the information is of a ‘commercially sensitive’ nature.
Of course, in so doing you will also inadvertently reveal that your true allegiance as an MP is not to general public – which elected you to office in the first place, and whom you are ‘sworn to serve to the best of your capacities, so help you God’ – but rather to those commercial enterprise/s which paid all your personal campaign expenses, and also made regular, secret financial contributions to your party.
But don’t for a second let this worry you, for two reasons I can think of offhand. One, there is absolutely nothing wrong, nothing whatsoever, with a Cabinet minister accepting gifts and/or services from wealthy businessmen against the Code of Ministerial Ethics... and for this, we have the word of Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi in person.
Two: contrary to popular perception, the Maltese general public attaches more value to corruption than to correctness... for the very simple reason that corruption has its uses, whereas correctness patently does not. Put simply, the electorate will always applaud, and never condemn, a minister for valiantly defending the rights of businesses to bribe politicians in order to get what they want. After all, many members of the general public will also own businesses, and might conceivably need their own little favours from government ministers in future.
This way, they will know that whatever it is they want will be theirs for the taking when the time comes, just by slipping a little something nice the minister’s way.
And so it was, and so it is, and so it always shall be, so help us Gonzi... Amen.
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So I have decided to limit today’s overview to a single chapter: ‘How to Give The Impression Of Having Answered a Parliamentary Question... Without, In Reality, Having Answered Jack-S***’.
