Now that the horses have bolted, it’s all hands on deck to shut the stable doors.

Yes, a court action will be launched ton try and recoup the lands that crossed hands in the Gaffarena affaire but the outcome of said court case is far from certain.

We had a resignation that does not seem exactly like one, more a sacking if one wants to be pedantic, and an appearance, on Xarabank, wherever else, where the person who resigned fulminated against the Audit Office just stopping short from announcing he will sue for unfair steps (Dismissal? Enforced resignation?) in his regard.

Now that the horses have bolted, the government has announced a top to bottom reform of the Lands Department. Announcing a successor just does not seem to have been enough.

And this, even just this, is rather confusing. If the prime minister has defended the previous incumbent and called him an example for all men, why then wait until he has gone and announce a thorough upheaval of the whole department? Why was the first step that was taken after the change in the parliamentary secretaries to send in the police and send out the employees?

Does this mean that Dr Falzon was to blame for not realizing how rotten the department was and what needed to be done? Or is this another camouflage that creates such an upheaval so as to avoid saying Dr Falzon was wrong, very wrong?

That the department was undermanned, heavily undermanned, was not a state secret. Everyone knew it. Many times in the past this had been mentioned in Parliament. The last straw was when it took over also the work of the Joint Office and the administration of former church property which were not kept by the church in a pristine manner, to tell the truth. Yet the Lands Department did not see a heavy investment in human resources except for a project set in motion by the previous administration for the digitization of the files, which the present administration starved of the necessary investment.

Anyway, so instead of admitting that the proper procedures were not observed, instead of boosting up the resources, both human and technical, to enable the department to cope with the workload, the government has seen fit to order a thorough upheaval of the department, creating an authority ex nihilo and unleashing what, to our eyes at least, seems like permanent upheaval for many years to come.

Regardless of whether this will work or not, this is extremely delicate. The department holds the information regarding a huge chunk of land, Malta’s most valuable resource. Our fear, let us be clear, is that somehow files will be lost, and lands disappear from the record books while all this is going on. We would like to get an assurance this will not happen and that care will be taken to ensure public property remains public. In a word, we want assurances that what happened will not happen again in all this confusion as the authority is set up and the department split in two.

At this point, we are not speaking of the persons who have been announced will lead this reform, but yes, they do matter. In our opinion, if a reform was thought needed, such a reform needs the care of an auditor or an accountant rather than persons with visions. But maybe we are wrong. An accountant will bring accountability, ensure proper lines of communication and ensure proper authorization.

We stand to be proved wrong: that this is not just spin to get the government out of a sticky hole.