Muscat can yet ‘buy’ MPs to the electorate’s gain

Simon Busuttil’s reply to the Budget on Monday left much to be desired when it came to his dissection of Labour’s measures for 2015. The Opposition criticises Labour over the rate of public debt when long-term indications for lower spending actually forecast lower debt; he ignored the unprecedented €300 million amassed by the PN government in the first ‘election’ quarter of 2013 alone.

He protested the socially unjust Budget at a time when his finance spokesperson proposed universal tax cuts (again?) and when Labour committed, at the very least, a €35 top-up to low-income earners. Surely Labour panders to the middle-class voters that once belonged to the PN, who now enjoy tax credits and tax cuts while lower-income groups have to make do with top-ups and a COLA ironically pushed down by the energy tariff cuts.

Even the Opposition leader’s justified umbrage at Edward Scicluna’s scapegoating of the ‘benefit classes’ can be taken with a pinch of salt. Yes, Scicluna panders to a perception of a middle class outraged that its taxes support ‘lazy people’. In the process of coming down hard on abuse, Scicluna also berates vulnerable, impoverished and even mentally infirm beneficiaries.

But this is a caricature that only serves (negatively) Labour’s Budget narrative. Busuttil’s shadow finance minister Tonio Fenech himself singled out single mums in 2009 because during those difficult days, they were the easiest scapegoats for their austerity budgets. As irritating as Scicluna – one of the more ‘privileged’ and hard-working of Labour ministers – sounded, in reality it is Labour that has made a revolutionary step forward with universal free childcare.

But it was the Sheehan shooting that gave Busuttil a golden ticket to explain to voters how to reassess Muscat. It will not make Labour voters waver, and it might not win back many switchers. But the Sheehan shooting wiped out any feel-good factor from the Budget, and politically became the kind of traumatic event that brought out the repressed feelings over the unfulfilled promises of the ‘Taghna Lkoll’ narrative.

Busuttil’s speech flipped the ‘making work pay’ narrative and held up a mirror to a backbench of well-fed Labour MPs whom he accused of “having a ball at taxpayers’ expense.”

There is a problem at the heart of Muscat’s ‘Taghna Lkoll’ promise today, because it was the self-serving largesse of the Gonzi administration at a time of austerity cuts and high energy bills that pushed voters to repudiate the PN government. The shameful roll-call of part-time MPs now doubling up as government appointees with salaries higher than that of the Prime Minister raises serious questions over their service to constituents when their bread is buttered by the State, and with no form of parliamentary accountability possible.

To reverse such a deleterious state of affairs, MPs must be brought back to the parliamentary arena. Paying MPs for executive appointments does not save the State money.

It is still possible to make Taghna Lkoll meritocracy a reality: create parliamentary committees for backbench MPs to regularly grill all political appointees and ministers. Across all government ministries, board chairpersons, regulators’ chiefs, company CEOs, commissioners, committee presidents, and even ministers will be questioned on an almost daily basis to give the electorate proper accountability of the work they do.

With a daily committee honorarium, backbench MPs from both sides will be incentivised to take up full-time commitments inside the House of Representatives to run a public appointments accountability committee (or committees); and in the process turn Taghna Lkoll into a practical process of democratic politics, not an aspirational tale of idealistic politics turned sour.