Who is lecturing whom? Malta, land of clientelism

It is not uncommon for MPs recounting anecdotes from the electoral campaign to speak of the bizarre moments they experience when meeting constituents.

From the old lady who offered an MP a glass of orange concentrate without diluting it with water, to the family that mistook a candidate’s political party for their favourite one, the anecdotes are many and funny.

But there are also the requests, which candidates laugh over when recounting in informal settings. Invariably, the all-time favourite is the solicitation for a government job as a watchman or else the family’s 10 votes will remain in the drawer.

These stories elicit smiles whenever they are told on television or written about in autobiographical books but they take on a different twist in the light of what MaltaToday revealed last Sunday.

An extensive cache of emails showed how Nationalist Party politicians between 2009 and 2013 solicited jobs for constituents at Wasteserv, a government entity.

The emails show a systematic approach with MPs, candidates and other politically-appointed officials channelling requests through then resources minister George Pullicino’s head of secretariat, Ray Bezzina for onward transmission to the Wasteserv CEO.

The email exchanges got more intense before the 2009 European Parliament election and the 2013 general election. At one point Bezzina even insisted that Wasteserv refrain from making changes to employee conditions because the election was just a few weeks away.

Pot calling the kettle black

The publication of the emails revealed, possibly for the first time in black and white, how the clientelistic system operates in government. The PN MPs whose names cropped up in the 60-page-long cache said they were only ‘recommending’ people for employment.

However, the emails tell a slightly different story with the ultimate concern being that of votes that can be won by appeasing constituents.

The legislature-long saga – it happened between 2009 and 2013 – goes a long way in punching holes in the mantle of good governance the PN tried to claim its own over the past five years. The justification that these were just recommendations makes the argument more pathetic.

But nothing is really new in all this. On election eve last year, hundreds of people were employed at Wasteserv and the Water Services Corporation as the Labour government went into overdrive trying to placate pockets of discontent.

The employment on the public payroll of people close to the Labour Party on the basis of trust was perfected by the current administration and used very liberally over the past five years.

The scene at the Public Accounts Committee in Parliament last week was symptomatic of the pot calling the kettle black. MPs on the committee are discussing the significant increase in employment at Wasteserv in the weeks before the June 2017 election.

PN MPs have cried foul because the new workers at Wasteserv were engaged at the same time that the Marsaskala recycling facility was heavily compromised after a massive fire destroyed the main shed. The explanation so far to justify the increased employment is tenuous.

But three of the PN MPs on the committee – Beppe Fenech Adami, Jason Azzopardi and Claudio Grech – were among the politicians, whose names appeared in the email cache.

Forgetting their own wrongdoings, the Labour MPs hit back and cried scandal.

Antica Roma

Clientelism is a malaise that has long dogged public administration. As far back as 1955, the incoming Mintoff administration had axed from the public service some 800 people, claiming they had been engaged irregularly.

The group became known as the ex-800 and the Nationalist Party, then in Opposition, pledged to re-employ them with the State when elected to government despite the irregularity of their initial engagement.

By the time the PN was in power in 1962, most of these people had found jobs but a telling memo to Cabinet in 1964 by the works minister at the time sheds light on the pressure that the ex-800 were putting to be re-employed with the government.

The memo formed part of the Cabinet documents released in 2014, covering the Borg Olivier and Mintoff administrations of the 1960s and 1970s until 1981.

In the 1964 memo, the minister complained that these former State employees believed they had “a right to a government job”.  He also noted that some of the ex-800 opted to register for work to get a better chance of being employed with the State.

It appears that obtaining a government job has remained an aspiration for many people and a favour politicians dispense quite willingly.

On the eve of the 1987 election, the Labour government of the time under the stewardship of Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici had engaged some 8,000 people on the State payroll in what was a last-minute attempt to prevent electoral defeat. It was the last in a series of favours the government was dispensing to its own. Getting access to a colour television, at the time a luxury, also depended on political patronage.

The deteriorating situation had even prompted former foreign minister Michael Frendo, then an upcoming PN candidate, to adopt the slogan ‘mhux pjaciri, imma drittijiet’ (not favours, but rights) for his personal 1987 election campaign.

The Nationalist administration that followed started with a lot of promise. Life changed radically, much like what happened in 2013, but a few months into the legislature, then minister Louis Galea concocted the auxiliary workers’ scheme. This ended up being staffed by many people from his electoral district.

Bad habits clearly have no political colour.

Elected from a restricted pool

Clientelism is partly the result of a district-based electoral system that sees politicians depending on a restricted pool of voters to get elected, according to academic Godfrey Pirotta.

Speaking on Hinek Twiegeb, an interview programme on One TV, last week, the public policy professor said clientelism was a natural consequence of an electoral system crafted by the British colonial masters to return weak governments.

Pirotta suggested doing away with the 13 electoral districts and leaving candidates to compete on the whole of Malta and Gozo. In this way, he argued, the electoral base candidates have to tap will be much wider, making it harder to accede to constituents’ requests.

Whether it would work to banish clientelism in public administration remains unclear. Even Pirotta did not seem too convinced but it could be worth a try.

It appears that obtaining a government job has remained an aspiration for many people and a favour politicians dispense quite willingly

Prior to the last election PN leader Simon Busuttil had come up with the idea of creating a Cabinet minister specifically dedicated to dealing with complaints on injustices. The intention was to have a ministry focused on citizens’ rights but this risked turning into a complaints ministry inundated with unreasonable requests by constituents.

And while the relationship between the proposed ministry and existing complaint structures such as the Ombudsman was never explained, it is clear that even in Busuttil’s good governance narrative, he had to leave space for constituent requests.

A freeze too far

Former prime minister Alfred Sant knows all too well about the backlash of adopting a hard-line stance on public sector employment. When elected to government in 1996, he froze public sector employment as part of a cost-cutting approach to address the deficit his administration inherited from the PN.

But the freeze irked many. Some were bona fide people such as nursing students expecting to be engaged with the health service after terminating their university studies, who found their career trajectory truncated. But others were Labour sympathisers expecting a slice of the cake now that ‘their’ party was in government.

Joseph Muscat learnt that lesson fast. There was no holding back on employment of teachers, nurses and LSAs in the last legislature but along with these came the jobs for the boys and girls.

Muscat’s redeeming factor is the expanding economy, which partly justifies the growth in public service employment. Whether it is being done in a correct way is another matter altogether.

Wasteserv-gate serves to outline how politicians succumb to the temptation of dispensing jobs and favours. It is a malaise that dogs Maltese politics and one which few people in either of the major political parties can lecture the other side about.