The fact that a story, like the one about the Law Courts cleaning contract, has been broken by the party in Opposition does not mean, ipso facto, that the story is simply spin, or that it should be consigned to the daily cut and thrust between the parties.

In itself, the story is of rather limited import: there are far weightier things to observe

regarding the administration of justice than who gets to clean the toilets. This newspaper, especially over the past weeks, has been highlighting some of the weightier issues, such as the role given to the Commission for the Administration of Justice, appointments of the judiciary and the like.

The original outcry was raised after it transpired that the contract was assigned by civil servants, who decide such things, to a company whose shareholders included close relatives of a man serving time at Corradino.

Then the story turned ugly, as this man serving time in prison is also the person accused of attempting to bribe two judges, one them the Chief Justice. This same person then allegedly proceeded to insult and allegedly threaten two Opposition MPs who had raised a storm about the contract and last week tried, unsuccessfully, to block a television programme on the subject.

The government was caught napping on this scandal and embarrassment. It had no idea who was behind the company that won the contract until the Opposition pointed it out. It blocked the contract but then proceeded to bluster its way through a denial and ultimately self-defeating approach, which must have made the Opposition jump for joy.

It is simply not enough now, as the Minister for Justice promised last week, to identify how such eventualities can be avoided in the future. The issue is wider than that. Ultimately, with Malta being such a small country, it is inevitable

that the criminal fringe gets to rub shoulders with lawyers and, since this is the nature of

things here, with politicians of all hues (the defence counsel of this person at Corradino was a Labour MP, as was pointed out by the minister last week). In other words, there cannot be that total separation of power, which happens in other countries.

No one is asking that any contract, even one to clean toilets, even one at the courts, should be vetted by the minister. That way, as happened so often in the past, leads to all kinds of mischief. The present administration came to power in 1987 precisely to enforce separation of ministerial responsibility and civil service accountability. But while it has created all kinds of authorities and given all kinds of independence of action to civil servants, and removed the ministers’ hands from the till, we still get cases, such as this but not exclusively so, where all kinds of blunders are made. And the ministers, who carry the political responsibility for the departments in their remit, carry the blame for all that goes wrong. Which is why the Opposition has been calling for the ministers’ heads. And also why the Opposition, time and again, harks back to the pre-1987 status when ministers decided everything.

In this case, it is clear that a mistake had been made, otherwise the minister would not have rescinded the contract. To say the administration of the courts followed the rules when it adjudged the contract is, however, to tell only half the story: surely it must have been a nose-less administration that just looked at the figures without looking at the people behind the figures.

Is it fair to ask for the minister’s head while allowing the nameless civil servants to carry on just because they followed the rules?

A government that is already more than beleaguered needs such massive embarrassing situations like it needs a hole in the head. People are asking if the present government, almost 20 years in power, has still not managed to have its civil servants get it right. And if they have not succeeded in 20 years, can they be trusted with more years to get it right?