The declarations circus

There has always been a tradition to query the veracity of the declarations of cabinet ministers and parliamentary secretaries. When the declarations were finally presented in parliament, it was time to giggle and joke about how funny the whole thing was.

It always made me wonder how someone with such a miserly income could pay off a gigantic loan.

On the other hand, looking at some of the immense wealth accumulated and self-attributed by some politicians, we ask ourselves why anyone would want to enter politics with such a comfortable lifestyle.

Local politics pays badly unless you are commissioner or an MEP, and most of the time you waste your tenure, serving constituents who ask for impossible favours, and, more importantly, it opens you up to immense public scrutiny.

I guess I could say the same about my job, which is thankless and which puts me and my family in the limelight.

But at least I do not present myself for elections every five years and promise the electorate Shangri-La.

Over the years, journalists have questioned or queried the amounts declared.

We constantly reminded our readers of those parliamentarians who had opted not to declare their revenues and assets.

Of the farcical electoral expenses and of the dishing out of favours which, when translated into a monetary value, simply ran into incredible figures.

We underlined the phoney method in which politicians filled in their declarations. Or more interestingly, the intelligible handwriting in their declarations, as if they were in a hurry to rush off for a late dinner.

Most of the declarations resembled the minutes for the fuel procurement under Mr Tranter, in the Golden age of the murky purchase of oil for Enemalta.

Politicians remind us of prostitutes trying to lecture us on the need to fight promiscuity.

Which means it is no wonder that Joe Citizen does everything in his power to shaft the system, when he is very conscious of the fact that the politicians who preach and invoke the high moral ground just break all the rules themselves.

Malta is no exception to the rule. When it was revealed that Francois Hollande's budget minister, Jerome Cahuzac, failed to declare a bulging Swiss bank account as he waged a war against tax evasion in France, I could only recall the beautiful Italian expression Tutto il mondo è paese.

On the other hand, many readers have looked through the declarations with a magnifying glass and a big smirk on their faces, because people in general simply delight in learning about other people's wealth. There is an element of envy, which is of course natural and endemic.

The truth is that people cannot believe what is presented to them. They are aware that there are a hundred and one ways of hiding real income and assets.

When Home Affairs Minister Manuel Mallia declared he had around 450K cash in hand, instead of being lauded by the public for being open about his riches, he attracted open resentment.

A PN journalist was the first one to ask Joseph Muscat what he thought about it. Which is of course rich, considering that for 25 friggin' years, none of the PN journalists dared question the ludicrous declarations of Nationalist ministers.

When Chris Cardona declared his income for 2012, it was €23,400. We all laughed, of course, and wondered whether we should ask his partner, Mark Vassallo (who also happens to be a Where's Everybody? shareholder and was the PBS lawyer before March 2013 and after) to contribute something to his ailing partner.

When former minister and EU commissioner John Dalli flew from Malta to the Bahamas on a private jet for just 14 hours and, according to him, discussed charity in the air, no one believed that he went off to pilot a charity project. And when I say no one, I mean no one. (Get it?)

Our disillusionment with the political class is so deeply rooted that we can understand why freak politicians, such as Italian comedian Beppe Grillo, have made such inroads.

For my part, I declare that my respect for the political class has reached rock bottom.

Now if there is any politician with any sense, and I guess when it comes to money there is quite a number who suddenly discover they have a lot of sense to spare, they would do one of the following things.

The first thing that I would do is to put some or a sizeable amount of monetary assets or property into a trust.

In a trust, no one will be able to track you down.

Another, most obvious way of avoiding any wealth and assets under one's name is to use a family member or a trusted associate.

An expert in this form of evasion was the former Labour minister Lorry Sant, but let us not believe for a moment that this does not happen today with other politicians. Lorry Sant passed on his assets to those he thought were close, and some of them made a killing with wealth the corrupt minister had accumulated when he presided over the board of the permits factory.

One possibility for hiding income is to allow your spouse to be the sole shareholder of your company. It works well for practising doctors, architects and lawyers. If, for example, a politician wishes to purchase a boat, the way to do it is to have a company in his or her spouse's name and then to have the company directly purchase the boat.

An effective way of discovering whether a person is really hiding wealth is to investigate his or her will.

In a will, you distribute all your riches and assets - what you are really worth.

The other way is to gauge people's lifestyles, though that is an unreliable measure of their wealth.

Declarations, if they are to be made, must be transparent and watertight. They must also be verified by facts and documentation.

We do not need to reinvent the wheel: many parliaments have the same procedures in place.

If such measures were ever introduced in our House of Representatives, I have no doubt that some people would choose to think twice before putting their name to the list of candidates.