“If clientelism continues to triumph over meritocracy, then we will not be enjoying the fullness of our democracy and the safeguarding of our human dignity,” President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca said on Thursday.

The President delivered her final speech on Republic Day, given that her term ends in 2019.

That’s thick, I said to myself when I read the report. Coming from a person who in her time as an MP had turned clientelism into an art, barging into government offices even when in Opposition, harassing civil servants to get her constituents’ demands, plying ministers with a barrage of PQs.

The best monument to her so far is that huge elevated bridge over the Qormi Bypass, still unused to this very day, for which she pushed and pushed after some girls were killed while crossing the busy road. Successive governments procrastinated as much as they dared, realizing that the costs of building the bridge and maintaining it with elevators would be high, but in the end the bridge was built and today serves only to exhibit adverts.

Now it is praiseworthy to build a bridge across a busy road – such amenities should be part of the over-riding design – and like bicycle lanes and pedestrian walkways we have not gotten round to include them in road design.

But not because an over-active and persistent MP keeps insisting.

At the same time, that is what MPs, especially backbenchers, are there for. So what’s wrong with an MP raising issues which concern the constituents? She did it in her time as an MP, so why is she now dead set against clientelism?

I think many of us realise what she was talking about. The present administration has become riddled with clientelism – jobs, appointments, promotions – all going to government supporters, with some very rare exceptions to prove the case.

This happened under previous PL administrations, happened too under the PN ones, although with a slightly lesser quantity, and became rife in the first Muscat legislature and even more in this second one.

An organization with access to data, such as PQs and other source material could possible explain the number of people taken on by the government, the persons of trust even for low level jobs, and the bulk of government recruitment exclusively for party boys.

The results of the 2017 election in the face of so many cases of corruption can possibly be explained by so many people, and their families, who preferred to look at their personal honeyed bun rather than at the well-being of the country.

Any time we approach the election (the general election, not the EP one, nor the local council one) the push goes into overdrive. That is, among other things, like the famed fourth floor for deals and commitments with companies with subjects ranging from development permits to oil and fuel importation.

So the President is right to say that when clientelism triumphs, our democracy suffers. But throwing out that statement without clarification and explanation (like most other items in her last speech), and while everyone knows what she did in her time risks people laughing behind their hands and ultimately bringing to nought any good advice she wanted to give the people of Malta.

Because there is good practice and bad. Any MP or would-be MP tells of people clamouring for jobs, houses, promotions and so on, almost as if it were their right to get them. But then an MP worth his salt should know how not to promise what should not be promised and how the rights of others should be safeguarded as well.

But then, apart from the consequences on the country’s finances, exasperated clientelism has been proved counterproductive, like KMB’s employment of some 7,000 at the ailing Malta Shipbuilding. The worrying thing was that it almost achieved its aim and returned to power a party that had persisted in governing with a minority of votes. If that did not happen, there’s nothing to say it cannot happen in the future.

The President’s words, despite her own track record, were the right ones. The song, not the singer.

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