Regretfully I have to admit that the ongoing scandal regarding MPs’ expenses in the UK would not have bewildered anyone living here. If it is only now that the British public has seen their dream of an ethical parliament shattered, that is only because, as Heather Brooke (who took the Commons to court and won her case demanding accountability) says, Britain trades on a mythical reputation of democracy. The fact though, that The Telegraph, a Tory paper, was still capable of revealing Tory fraud, still says something about British democracy. It could never have happened here.
The High Court, on 16 May 2008 (it has taken that long) ruled that: The expenditure of public money through the payment of MPs’ salaries and allowances is a matter of direct and reasonable interest to taxpayers. They are obliged to pay their taxes, at whatever level and on whatever basis the legislature may decide, in part at least to fund the legislative process. Although the relevant rules are made by the House itself, questions whether the payments have in fact been made within the rules, and even when made within them, whether the rules are appropriate in contemporary society, have a wide resonance throughout the body politic.
As many commentators have said, the fact that MPs found cheating have pleaded in their defence that they were playing by the rules, showed an alarming deficit in ethical behaviour by those responsible for running the country justly and honestly. In fact the High Court also commented on the reasons presented by the Speaker of the House of Commons for not granting access to the information. These included that disclosure would create a debate that would distract from more important Parliamentary business (have we heard that locally?) and that it would discourage the most able citizens from seeking election to the House. The most able citizens? Have we now reached the point where able excludes honest?
If the British are bewildered by the extent of the revelations that seem to show that most MPs are practising fraudsters (no wonder that one of the Lords, echoing Cromwell, said they should have immediate elections to clean out the stables) they would be much more bewildered if they were given the facts and figures of how the EU works. The generosity with which MEPs help themselves to people’s money has long been known and documented. For the ordinary citizen, the problem is that the EU is such a distant entity that bleeding 27 countries of their cash easily escapes scrutiny.
Moreover, as I have said time and again in my articles, most people in Malta have no idea of how the EU works or what is going on in the myriad structures it has created, which is a labyrinth that defies understanding even to those who work there. We only hear about the EU when elections appear on the horizon or when the government feels the need to boast that we are, in reality, living on EU money rather then earning it ourselves. Once a colony, it seems, always a colony.
Why should a prospective MEP say all this? The answer in little, tribal Malta is that you do not really believe in the EU otherwise you would not criticise it. I see it differently. If the citizen wants to stop being taken for granted and fleeced, he or she should be very careful whom it sends to Brussels.
Dr Josie Muscat is Leader of Azzjoni Nazzjonali and a candidate for MEP elections