As I write, we still do not know if we will have a bus system or none at all today.

Whatever happens in the intervening hours, my comments here should not be taken as comments on these turbulent hours (or maybe, as things evolve, they may) but on a more general level.

I am reading, these days, the chatty book of reminiscences (Tifkiriet) by Carmel Portelli, one of our mandarins, top civil servants. He was, as he himself says, everything – from Permanent Secretary to Chief Electoral Commissioner, and much else in between.

He was one of the breed of civil servants who started working in the days of George Borg Olivier, lived through the turmoil-filled Mintoff years and rose to prominence in the PN post-1987 renaissance.

His reflections, now in retirement, are the same one hears from other similarly retired civil servants.

They all uniformly pride themselves on their personal integrity (and knowing Carmel, I vouch for his) and reminisce about the hard work they put in.

Then they look at today’s public servants and say that an army of public servants today do the work they and a few others used to do in those days long ago. That’s true, for today the government machine has been doubled by the creation of the authorities which ideally were meant to be a counterfoil to check and balance the government machine. There are also a number of agencies, bodies and a host of other government quangos.

In terms of headcount, the people on the government payroll may have actually increased, if seen from this wider angle.

That bears qualification: the government has ‘lost’ the employment of the dockyard workers, the Telemalta workers and soon maybe the Air Malta workers who will unfortunately be declared surplus to requirements. However, the government’s payroll has ‘acquired’ all those employed in the various authorities, quangos, and what not. All very handy, I’m sure, when it comes to parking constituents and their relatives and ready votes come election day.

(Don’t say that Greece is all that different from us).

But has the service improved? I leave that to the experience of each one of us. I will come back to this later.

I am incidentally also reading Tony Blair’s book and even he, (that is, from the other end of the spectrum) now speaks with the benefit of hindsight that his first Labour administration did not really come to grips with the problems and delivery of the national public service. Well, we all know, he did not come to grips with the non-delivery neither in his second, nor in his third term.

However, he says now, with the benefit of hindsight, he sees his party promised too little by way of electoral manifesto in 1997. And what it promised was just scratching at the surface of the problems.

Together with Gordon Brown he threw money at the problems – in education, healthcare, etc – and the money did not solve the problems for the issues should have been tackled at a far deeper level. The only result was that the British finances were further skewed down. What he may still not be seeing is that maybe his party, even with its reformist mindset, could not see the structural faults that obstructed a clear view of the problems involved. Even his administration, for instance, tried to do something about the widespread welfare benefit scroungers but had to desist for reasons that can well be understood.

Let’s get back to Malta.

I think the blight of this administration (maybe that of past or even future ones) is not exactly corruption, although there may be corruption in various guises, but, rather, gross inefficiency. The government machine, in other words, is grossly inefficient – was always so, still is, and maybe will still be.

As I see it, the problem does not really lie at the top, but at the intermediate levels. If I were to blame the top, I see it (and Carmel Portelli exemplifies the top levels of civil servants who cannot perceive this) as a game of musical chairs of people succeeding each other at various top levels and bringing with them their good intentions but also their personal faults and inefficiencies.

But worse than the top levels are the intermediate levels. There party allegiance holds the fort, their claim to being there is purely and simply party allegiance. They form a cartel and rigorously keep out anyone not from that background. Thus the country loses the service of many good people who would have wanted to contribute but is not allowed to.

I am saying that the government civil service is only nominally non-partisan but actually rigorously excludes those who do not come from the party in government from the most important and key decision-making places.

I know this assertion will be hotly denied and people will come up and whisper about so and so who is Labour-supporting and still has a key role in government.

I also know that, if Labour were to win the election, things can only get worse. It is enough to understand what is meant when people say the Alfred Sant example (of keeping Nationalists at the top levels) will not be followed by a new Labour government to understand what this means.

There are ministries and there are government departments. I get the impression the ministries work hard, at least to promote their ministers, but the departments are left mostly to their own devices. Proof of this is that generally speaking, ministers focus more on programmes and initiatives – each having his or her particular hobby horse, while generally speaking the departments are left to do what they are there to do.

Thus we have ministries which focus on programmes and initiatives, but then we also have ministries which deliver, or try to deliver, the services the country needs. These are the health, social policy, foreign, justice and finance ministries.

In my daily dealings with the government ministries, or rather those of their communication officers who bother to communicate, I am often left astounded by the superficiality, the mediocrity, the unpreparedness of them. It is amazing how they even got there in the first place.

I only speak about what I see, touch and experience. This has been said before, but I can amply confirm it. Many of the people I come in contact with have absolutely no idea what communicating with the general public through the independent media means.

Many are glorified ministerial go-fers who the ministers find comfortable to order here or there. Many do not have the moral strength to stand up to their ministers when things are going badly. Many feel they are there to defend the minister, right or wrong. Not the government, mind you, nor the policy, but the minister. Many simply have no grasp of the policy implications of the decisions being taken by the government or the minister. Nor can they cogently explain it.

Thus when the minister goofs (and this administration has had a record run in this sense) there is nobody who stops him from making a fool of himself. This goes up right to the very top – even Lawrence Gonzi over-awes those around him or, to put it differently, those around him have been carefully chosen for what they may think is loyalty but what to others may look like being spineless cheer-leaders. Maybe that can also explain the present Cabinet structure, too.

There, I’ve said it.

What a difference from other times, and other administrations.

This flurry of focusing on programmes and initiatives will no doubt accelerate as we near the election. Today we have, fingers crossed, Arriva arriving. (Even so, we have not been spared government blushes, such as the intra-ministerial conflict exemplified by the Bisazza Street chaos). Then we will get the Barrakka Lift. Then the Parliament building and the opera house. Hopefully, we will also get the Ċirkewwa Terminal ready on time and maybe some of the roads now under re-construction. Programmes and initiatives.

The ministers, the government must think this is what the public will be judging them by, come the election. Dr Gonzi himself encourages this mindset when he continually speaks of having delivered such and such a percentage of the electoral commitment. Had he read Tony Blair carefully he would understand how an electoral manifesto is the last thing an electorate judges its government by. That maybe explains why the government is consistently deaf to what the people judge their government by – the state of their personal and family finances.

This should be the time when the party in government starts to plan ahead and see what will it offer voters in two years’ time. The question is thus crucial.

First, will the government be judged by this ‘check against delivery’ measurement, and how will it be judged?

Secondly, if the government will still be in this mindset over the coming months, will the party be robust enough to take a long, hard look at what is happening in Malta, in the Maltese society, in Maltese families and what can the party commit itself to do in order to make the quality of life better? Can the party force the government to commit itself to the conclusions of this study?

Maybe I am taking a narrow view of things, but the inability of the party to get beyond the divorce referendum and the subsequent theological disquisitions inside the party when what the party really needs is to get closer to the people at ground level and see and feel things as they do, makes me think the party is not just losing it, but has long lost it.

As a man I respect (Ranier Fsadni) has said, there is no guarantee at all that a spell on the Opposition benches can make things any clearer. On the contrary, a defeat can plunge the party into a maelstrom of finger-pointing, cross-vendettas and strife.

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