Two years of meritocracy, transparency and accountability… yeah, right!

This week marked the second year of the Labour Government. A third of a five-year legislature is sufficient time for anyone to undertake an analysis on the Government’s performance. 

I will assess its performance against its three major promises: transparency, meritocracy and accountability. 

Transparency 

Not only have we been promised that a Labour government would be transparent, but the Prime Minister went as far to state that his government is the most transparent this country ever had. Superlatives must be used very carefully, as they denote extremes, portraying either total excellence or total failure. In our world of humans, it is very hard to be either one or the other. Any politician stating that their government is The Most Transparent in Malta’s political history is rather pompous and quite simply, bullocks. This only shows a high-handed and arrogant way of leadership.

When such comments come from a government that excels in hiding the truth, then it’s even more laughable. Here are just a few examples of how the Labour government has not kept with its promise of transparency. Till this date, we are still not privy to the contracts entered into with the Chinese government on the privatisation of Enemalta, and Electrogas for the construction and management of the new gas turbine.

The Henley and Partners agreement on the sale of Maltese passports was provided only after the opposition made a request for its publication at the Public Accounts Committee. Numerous parliamentary questions have remained unanswered, whilst the answers to others have been evasive of the actual request. One in particular related to the composition of the interview boards of recruitment calls by MEPA. Why should the public not be privy about who is being trusted with selecting public officers? 

Meritocracy 

Do you feel this government has been just in promoting the right people? I would ask army officers – how do they feel about the accelerated promotions given to army officers on the basis of their friendship with Labour? What about the Commissioner of Police – an appointment gone wrong, not once but twice? Another case in point is the Head selected for the organisation of the CHOGM event – her aptitude and preparedness were such that she was not able to conclude an interview with a journalist… let alone head the task force. We have Transport Malta being headed by a former senior Labour Party official and the number of politically appointed ambassadors on the increase. 

On the issue of meritocracy, we’ve had a different kind of recruitment. We have seen over the past few years mediocre positions created for the privileged few. We were given the impression that William Mangion’s task of finding a garage for rock bands was an impossible feat. On the other hand, the principle of appointments through positions of trust seems to have been used and abused repeatedly. How can anyone ever justify engaging a drug sniffer dog’s trainer through a position of trust? 

Accountability 

Having gone through meritocracy and transparency, I have intentionally left accountability for the last. In a matter of months, the Labour administration got itself into two major scandals – the Café Premier and the Azeri fuel backroom deal.

The Café Premier case stinks because it defies all that makes good governance. The Prime Minister’s intervention, the Lands Department being sidelined, the bailout of a failed enterprise, the renunciation of a court case to retrieve arrears, the paying of commissions to the primary beneficiary – all the ingredients for a bad governance soup. Seeing this in the light of a number of pre-electoral meetings, there is no doubt that the deal stinks. The Prime Minister’s word for accountability is such that he thinks that admitting the mistake is enough. Honestly, is this the same person who preached so hard about accountability just two years ago?

The same goes for Minister Konrad Mizzi… indeed the old adage, ‘birds of a feather flock together’, could not have been more appropriate here. Like his superior, Konrad Mizzi feels no shame for having been directly involved in purchasing fuel from Azerbaijan to the tune of €67million. Now that it turns out that Konrad Mizzi was the mastermind for this deal, he should take the flack for having made the consumer pay one of the highest petrol and diesel prices in the EU. What about accountability? That doesn’t seem to be anymore relevant to the Labour administration today, now that they managed to get what they want. 

Happy second birthday then to this toddler government. You promised the people a new power station, but you have instead simply shut down the Marsa plant. Let’s be clear, it’s a good thing that the Marsa plant has been shut down, but Konrad Mizzi has little to boast about. His contribution to this has been minimal, if any whatsoever, if one were to consider that that has been possible thanks to the recently built BWSC power station and the interconnector.

In any case, the interconnector has not yet been plugged in, but the Marsa power station has been already shut down. This is why I believe that we do not need another gas turbine in Delimara.

With the current generation capacity and the interconnector on standby, the demand has been met. This is why lowering down utility bills never necessitated the construction of another gas turbine, but the transition to gas. But Joseph and Konrad have promised that, and now we’ll have to pay for it, while the nation waits.