In 1987, with an election around the corner, the KMB Labour administration employed as many people as it could with parastatal corporations. It lost the election, just barely, but the public purse was burdened for many years to come with the cost.

Perhaps we are still paying these people’s salaries almost 30 years down the line. Over the past two-and-a-half years since this government’s election, we have often heard stories about people who were engaged with the government, mostly on the strength of their partisan (Labour) leanings.

The exhumation of past Labour practices began right at the top, with Malta’s largest-ever Cabinet. We have grown used to seeing them rush here and there, getting in each other’s way, and inventing media events for which there was many a time hardly any reason.

The practice has percolated downwards. Ministers’ staff have expanded and exploded, as can be seen by anyone venturing into any ministry, and as a stone cast in a lake produces widening ripple effects, so too does this practice, as it seems to have grown and spread. We are not saying the record low unemployment rate has been the result of this, but this practice has no doubt contributed. One understands that a newly-elected government must get the tools it requires to do its work properly and that at least a certain amount of foot soldiers would be needed.

But anyone with eyes in his head can see this has now grown beyond what is needed and what is useful. Besides, while some appointments seem justified (after all, these people, if qualified, must have been waiting for quite a long time to get what should be theirs), other appointments seem to have been made solely on the basis of party affiliation. This, from a government which solemnly promised to be a government for all Malta; tagħna lkoll. Recent parliamentary questions have elicited the information that most of the newly-employed at many ministries, have been employed on the basis of their status as posing no security threat (to the minister himself and to the party in government).

Procedures have thus been short-circuited, rules bent and promises fulfilled. The party, the government that allows such procedures, clearly does not fully comprehend what this means to the country at large. In short, it means putting incompetent, unqualified and mediocre people in places of high responsibility. Maybe these people, many wearing unaccustomed-to suits and ties, may have felt they are in heaven, but those who look on from the sidelines are torn between commiserating and despairing at the state of the State machine.

Just to give one example, let us look at what is called the communications structure of the government. This paper used to bring up this beef with regards to the previous government, so no one can call it partisan or one-sided. In fact, this administration has not only continued in the bad habits of its predecessor but actually made a far worse show. Instead of a single government communications team, we have a communications person for every minister. Some are fast and some are extremely slow.

For many, it would seem, communications is all about sending us the minister’s latest speech, which would usually be indigestible, even to the minister himself while reading it, let alone the general public. Other than that, nothing, nada. No simple, easily digestible information about what the minister intended to say and in what context. As long as that press release is accompanied by a photo (or many) showing the minister from all angles, and hardly any of the audience or occasion, that would be OK.

From received wisdom, it would seem there is a rather high turnover among these recruits, so the hapless minister has to begin anew with a new person. Even so, however, there is still a very wide Labour constituency out there, angry that it has not had its time at the trough.