An old problem which recently cropped up again is the question of how a minister or a parliamentary secretary who is also a doctor by profession can go on practising without compromising his public office or his patients’ well being, or both.

These parliamentary offices, all agree, are important government posts which in a global international context are becoming more onerous, and demanding. They are also adequately remunerated by the State. What is more, one often hears that ordinary Members of Parliament should be better paid and made full-time public officers if they are expected to discharge their parliamentary duties efficiently.

The history of our House of Representatives since 1921 tells us that many doctors served as Members of Parliament without compromising their public duties or their medical profession. Most were general practitioners.

There was an instance however in 1947 where a Minister of Health who was also a surgeon resigned his ministry after a few months because he realised that he could not pursue his two careers simultaneously without falling short of doing justice to one or both of the duties he had assumed.

The Public Services Commission later ruled that a consultant in a public hospital could not stand as a party candidate in a General Election and keep his hospital consultancy. This measure helped to avert the undue ‘politicisation’ of the medical profession.

Unfortunately, the ruling was ignored when a senior member of the Nationalist Party, who also held a post as Consultant in a public hospital, decided to contest a General Election in the 1960s. He was also an ophthalmologist.

We now have a class of doctors cum politician who exploit their ambivalent situation to further their careers in both fields. This, I hold, does not advantage either calling.

To be a proper and efficient minister or a parliamentary secretary requires the incumbent to be fully engaged and no exception should be made to this rule.

It is after all the free choice of a medical consultant to venture into the arena of national politics, and this does not make him or her an indispensable specialist.

We are fortunate to have more than sufficient talent to go round.

Joseph A. Muscat

TA’ XBIEX