Unfortunately, it is a measure of the widespread skepticism that has come to cloud anything the government announces that each new announcement by the government has people asking who is this going to benefit?
Take, for instance, yesterday’s hurried announcement by the government on an ‘updated’ Code of Ethics for the ministers.
People immediately reacted to the possibility that some ministers may be allowed to continue with their private practice ‘in the national interest’ by speculating who this ‘improvement’ can benefit with former Parliamentary Secretary Franco Mercieca being mentioned by many as the intended.
Whether this is true or not still has to be seen. But once again, we seem to be back in the ‘ ad hominem’ legislation - at least that is among the most benevolent reactions.
There may, of course, be further conclusions to be derived from this seemingly innocuous change. Is this tidying up and streamlining of regulations to be limited to the Cabinet or will it be widened and percolated further down?
On a wider perspective, will the ‘national interest’ now be used to overcome all sorts of rules which may be perceived as being obstacles to some persons’ personal ambition? Such as, one speculates, rules limiting the access of people with criminal records to highly sensitive government dossiers?
You see, by allowing itself to fall prey to such personal ambitions, the government may have tainted all it does because, rightly or wrongly, people will look for a personal angle in anything the government does.
The Tagħna Lkoll mantra of pre-election times has come to mean Tagħhom Biss as regards the widest Cabinet in history, the plethora of ministerial hangers-on, the golden packages for the select few.
It would have been understandable if an incoming administration put its persons of trust in key places, because every administration has to have this inner core, but this new core must be competent and knowledgeable in the first place and secondly, it must be efficient in what it does.
It goes without saying that the quality, or lack of it, will surely come out, in the short and even more in the long term.
In the coming months, we will be having the CHOGM, for which the government has already made some wrong moves. As its time nears, we will see whether the team put in place is worth anything or not.
Beyond that, we will soon be engrossed in the Maltese Presidency of the EU and this will be a forum where mistakes, shortcomings on our part will be shown up on the EU level. We cannot afford to become a laughing stock as so many illprepared countries were. The people who will be handling sensitive dossiers have already been chosen and are being trained. One only hopes that they will not cause misgivings that the previous holders were eased out.
And then, in 2018, Valletta will be the European Capital City of Culture. Maybe this is objectively not as important as holding the EU Presidency but from our point of view, it may be even more important. There are widespread misgivings on the people who were chosen, the policy choices that have been made and on what should have been made but so far, there is no notice of it.
Hence the absolute importance of urging the government to change tack, to stop taking decisions to please this one or that one and to begin legislating for the over-arching benefit of the country as a whole.