The words of Labour secretary-general Jason Micallef surreptitiously lifted off YouTube from a filming of a party gathering should surprise nobody. That a party in Opposition promises its supporters that it will provide jobs for the boys or other cushy appointments, at least as vaguely embodied in Micallef’s promise that Labour will be “a government for Labourites… as well”, is part and parcel of Maltese politics.
Every single administration, Labour or Nationalist, has ushered in its closest supporters, acolytes, and friends of friends to the highest seats of appointment. The labyrinthine structure of government boards, authorities, commissions and so many other quangos is an opportunity for the government of the day to place trusted and favoured individuals at the helm of decision-making bodies.
Politically, these positions serve a strategic purpose to ensure government’s policy is being managed as intended by government. Ministers choose those who have served them or the party well, as people who have displayed unbending loyalty will also be loyal to the government.
But it would be cynical to take this state of affairs as the fait accompli for any new government. Malta’s commissions, authorities and boards have served as nothing other than a prize for these party servants in times of victory, or to mollify dissenters. The honoraria paid to these people are often not commensurable with the contribution they are expected to give to the state. In short, chairmanships and similar positions tend to be the equivalent of peerages, handed down to a select few individuals who are intimately linked with the party in government.
The same goes with the swathe of consultancies and other government services ‘outsourced’ to private individuals, one of these being legal services and office space. Despite government and the civil service having its own body of legal officers and premises, hundreds of thousands of liri are squandered on contracts to law firms and on costly rents to house authorities’ headquarters.
This newspaper has in the past criticised this practice for its betrayal of the spirit of meritocracy that this country deserves. Many are those whose valid contribution to society has been forgone for the sole reason of political allegiance.
After 20 years of Nationalist government, the result seems to be evident. Everybody seems to have closed ranks in a bid to take the biggest slice of the government pie once in power. Labour are evidently warming their supporters to the news that, if elected, they will be handed those coveted honoraria, chairmanships, consultancies and legal contracts in a swooping change of the guard. It’s the hardened resolve of an embittered Opposition that wants to ensure it will have trusted individuals within its structures once in power.
It is not entirely an unreasonable logic: the Labour administration of 1996-1998 had complained of having found untoward individuals in certain high civil service positions, which rendered the job of government problematic. The Nationalist minister Austin Gatt himself had expressed his own conviction that a government needs people it can trust to implement its policies.
To express shock and umbrage at the words of Jason Micallef, as the Nationalist Party media did over the weekend, is rather flippant considering that for the past two decades, the Nationalist government has effectively lubricated a public sector with its own apparatchiks and trusted individuals.
If anything, it is this very present system that should be dismantled in the name of meritocracy.