The public has every right to be disconcerted.

There has been, over the past few days, a spate of scandalous stories involving various local councils, all with PN majorities.

We had the Santa Venera mayor’s resignation for the unauthorized use of council premises. Then we had the whole saga of the Sliema council, about which later. Now, over the past 24 hours we had the resignations of the Zebbug Gozo mayor for his daughter’s alleged use of the council laptop to access Facebook. And the rather more serious resignation of the San Gwann mayor following the arraignment of his son on charges for demanding a back-hander on a council contract.

But what must take the cake is the entire saga of the Sliema council, which has become a national joke as well as the inspiration for countless adverse comments.

The PN Secretary General foolishly and naively walked into a trap and was filmed and recorded harassing an elderly PN councillor allegedly using words that, seen on print, smack more of a hoodlum in a dark alley than a suave well-connected lawyer.

This has been manna from heaven for the anti-government spin-doctors, but there is much more than meets the eye. As Michael Briguglio, AD Chairperson and for six years (2003-2009) local councillor in Sliema, said: “It is an open secret that different Nationalist councillors in Sliema have their own alliances, though it is difficult to understand why certain Labour councillors have been making strange alliances in the past months. Things were looking bleak after the last local council elections, which were characterised by character assassinations through whispering campaigns – sometimes between candidates of the same party; by electoral promises to various constituents that have nothing to do with political vision; and by telephone campaigns of the ‘big brother is watching you’ type. Unfortunately, Sliema is now reaping what has been sowed.”

Let us first dispose of what may be a popular misconception: it’s not as if one side – PN – is full of demons and the other side, Labour, is full of angels.

The truth is that a recent change in the law regarding local councils has led to a greater input by the Local Government Department in the appointment of council secretaries and most of the changes so far have affected mainly PN-majority councils. Labour-led councils may, and do, have their problems but they have not come to the fore so far.

In the case of Sliema, the former mayor, having admitted to the police of asking for a kickback, now seems to be attempting a ‘Morto Sansone e tutti I Filistei’ at 360 degrees. Other mayors who have resigned under a cloud have more sensibly stayed quiet.

One is immediately led to ask what kind of vetting took place before such councillors and/or mayors were recruited as candidates. It would seem that as long as one exhibits generic political affiliation, one is accepted and more so when his contact with voters is deemed to be fruitful come election day. The problems began later.

The Nationalist Party brought local government into being, against the opposition of the Labour Party in this as in many other issues. Local government was meant to bring democracy close to the grass roots. But some 20 years down the line, it seems to have brought closer to the grass roots the defects that have bedevilled national politics for so many years – corruption, influence-peddling, the lot. This is not what local councils were created for. On the contrary, one would have wished that local government shamed national government into more, and not less, transparency, impartiality and objectivity. The more money they were given, it would seem, the more openings were made for corruption – a case in point apparently being the recent changes in waste collection.

But rooting out corruption is still a very small part of the essential ongoing review of local council operations. Beyond any kickbacks and more of the same, an even bigger issue regards efficiency, value for money and the like. It is clear that going to the polls every four years does not punish a lazy council or reward an efficient one, since people only vote on party lines even in local elections.

There is much dross in these Augean stables and it is a thankless job cleaning the muck, especially when, as in recent cases, the muck happens to be in councils led by the same majority as the government. Still, clearly, such cleaning up is what must continue to be done without looking at people’s political allegiances.