“Some public officers and politicians make the mistake of thinking that because society has changed irredeemably over the last few years, with thousands of people ‘living in sin’, to use the old-fashioned term, a third of babies born out of wedlock, rampant use of cocaine, and a nihilistic take on life, then public tolerance for similar behaviour on their part has increased.”
The hoopla surrounding the behaviour of one magistrate and the politician-cum-controversial-architect with whom she lives has brought to the fore the role of the media in policing the excesses of those who hold public office and those who aspire to it.
These two people, and a great many members of the public with confused ideas about the differentiation between public and private, might now have learned the hard way that when one holds public office or seeks to hold it, the border between public and private disappears.
I make a point of adding that this applies only to those who are accountable to the public, because they are paid by the public, and not to other public persons whose salary does not come out of the state coffers. The fact that one writes a political and polemical newspaper column, for example, as I do, or hosts a television show, as others do, does not mean that one gives up the right to privacy.
The public does not have the right to know what occurs in my private life or the private life of a television newscaster. But the public most certainly does have the right to know when the private lives of politicians and of public officers are of the nature that may call their public role into doubt.
Let me get this straight. This is not about sex and it is certainly not about marital breakdown. Marriages break down all the time and magistrates and politicians are no exception to what is, beyond dispute, a personal tragedy and a profound shock to the system. I think it is wrong to discuss in the media the marital difficulties of public officers, of magistrates and politicians. The situation is painful enough as it is without having to live through it in the public eye. I believe any such discussion to be vile, prurient and pointless, and there is no ‘right to know’ argument in favour of it. The public does not have the right to know that Magistrate X has left his wife, or that Politician Y had an argument with her husband. It is quite simply no one’s business except that of the couple, or ex-couple, involved. The public’s right to know comes into play only when the personal conduct of these people is such that it brings their public role into dispute, ridicule, contempt or contention, and when there are suspicions of wrong-doing, rule-breaking or corruption.
The ‘right to know’ argument applies not to the public officer’s or politician’s marriage, but to his or her view of marriage. It is quite possible, for instance, to be in the throes of a broken marriage while still holding the institution of marriage in the highest regard. You respect marriage; it is not your fault that yours has broken down. And even if it is your fault, you still have respect for marriage in and of itself. But then, if you treat your marriage cavalierly because you don’t think much of marriage itself, that is something different. The public has the right to know that this is your opinion, if you are in a position to take decisions or make policies which impinge on marriage in general or even one marriage in particular.
This is precisely why Alfred Sant’s opinion that he does not believe in marriage, which is recorded in the official documents pertaining to the annulment of his own, was so very relevant when it became public in his brief tenure as prime minister. There was talk of a divorce law. If he pushed a divorce law through, it could have been seen as a personal interest. If he did not push it through, given his own view, he would have been seen as hypocritical.
I rush to point out that despite popular misconceptions to the contrary, I was not the one who brought that document to light or wrote the front page news story about it. My editor at the time will attest to that. Until today, I remain clueless as to the identity of the person who sourced the document and the person who wrote about it. The story was as much of a surprise to me as it was to everyone else, though the then prime minister’s opinion about the institution of marriage was not news to me at all. I did, however, write an opinion column about it, given that it was the main talking point of the week.
The Labour Party had objected on the grounds that this was prying into the marital privacy of its leader. This was quite obviously not the case at all. The news was not that the prime minister’s marriage had been annulled, for that was a matter widely known and acknowledged, and nobody was going to give him a hard time over that. So no, the news was that the prime minister did not believe in marriage as an institution or a way of life. This was his personal choice and his personal opinion, but when you are the prime minister and chief legislator, your personal opinion about something as fundamental as marriage becomes of public relevance. Now, nobody cares what Alfred Sant thinks about marriage because his opinions are no longer relevant. But when he was prime minister, when he was leader of the opposition, his opinions were of the utmost importance.
Public officers and politicians are free to find new relationships after their marriages break down. That is not the point at issue here. There are several such persons who conduct their subsequent relationships with dignity and who win the respect of others rather than drawing their contempt and ridicule or worse, suspicion. It is when their private life starts to come across as seedy or suspect, as being too much involved with unsavoury elements, too much mixing of the wrong sort of business and pleasure, that the personal – as opposed to private – lives of public officers and politicians should be thrown wide open to public scrutiny.
If the situation is allowed to run and run, then the public officers and politicians involved begin to feel that they have some sort of immunity from the public gaze and that they are and should not be answerable to anyone. Boundaries are pushed further, behaviour becomes more and more extreme and increasingly reckless, the tribute of a necklace worth a few thousands becomes a nudge and a wink over a land development contract, parties for friends expand before long into parties for a network that mixes the shadier elements of business and society, and before you know it, these public officers and politicians find themselves at the centre of a demimonde which lays them wide open to corruption, crime and the bending of rules.
It is what happened to Noel Arrigo, who should have served as a salutary example but didn’t. The irony is that Arrigo went down for a fraction of what certain other persons are up to, because his position was the highest and he was stupid enough to take a bribe directly rather than having suppliers pay for the catering at his parties or expensive jewellery sent to his door, or cuts on major development deals.
Some public officers and politicians make the mistake of thinking that because society has changed irredeemably over the last few years, with thousands of people ‘living in sin’, to use the old-fashioned term, a third of babies born out of wedlock, rampant use of cocaine, and a nihilistic take on life, then public tolerance for similar behaviour on their part has increased. The opposite is true.
When standards of behaviour plummet among the public in general, then the public’s tolerance threshold for similar behaviour among politicians and public officers plummets with it. The reverse is also true. When standards of behaviour are high in society at large, the public’s tolerance threshold for behaviour among its leaders is high too. Put simply, when the public is behaving badly, it wants its politicians and public officers to behave well. And when the public is beset by social strictures, and is forced to behave itself, then its tolerance for bad behaviour by politicians is high. Malta had two rampantly and publicly adulterous prime ministers within living memory, when society was very rigid about such things and separated or adulterous people were pariahs, and yet nobody really cared that much or made an issue of it. It was not thought to be relevant. It would be impossible, today, for a prime minister to be adulterous, still less to be publicly so and take his girlfriend to parties, even though so many electors are and do so.
The basic message is that the worse people behave, the better they want their leaders to be. They don’t want their leaders to be as they are. They want to look up to them for being straight (and I don’t mean sexual inclination here) and correct. They don’t want politicians and public officers who play the field, sleep around or party. It makes them nervous. They find it offensive. They wonder what will happen next. Why? Because they have been there themselves, and they know. They don’t want their leaders to be the same.
This is the mistake that Joseph Muscat makes in his confused view of what constitutes progressive behaviour. Even if their politicians can’t do it for them, electors are quite able to distinguish between liberal politics and a debauched attitude to life. The two have nothing to do with each other.
By packing his new movement of progressives and moderates with people whose only common factor is a messy private life and a complete disregard for standards of behaviour or for sticking with your spouse come hell or high water, he is sending out the wrong message. He fails to understand that in the public eye, and with good reason, there is a strong correlation between private debauchery and public corruption.
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