No, not all is well in this country of ours. There is one common factor in the majority of pressing sociopolitical issues we are facing. It is governance. Governance describes the way we manage our affairs politically and the way power and authority are exercised. For the poorest and most vulnerable, the difference that good, or particularly bad, governance, makes to their lives is profound. The inability of government institutions to prevent social conflicts, and provide basic security, or basic services can have life-or-death consequences. A lack of opportunity can prevent generations of poor families from lifting themselves out of poverty, and the inability to grow economically and collect taxes can keep us trapped in a cycle of aid dependency. Understanding governance, therefore, is central to achieving development and ending potential civil strife.
Too often, our government leaders have failed to adopt and implement policies that they know are necessary for sustained economic development. Political constraints have often prevented our leaders from following sound technical advice, even when they had the best of intentions. We need to make politics work again for development. Two forces are needed for this to come about. Citizen engagement and transparency hold the key to solving government failures by shaping how political markets function. We need to learn how to align political incentives with the interests of society with an eye to making change happen even in the face of any eventual political opposition.
True Maltese citizens not only queue at voting booths, but also take to the streets and use modern communication technology to select, sanction, and pressure our leaders who wield power within the government. This political engagement can function in highly nuanced ways even within our formal institutional context and across the political spectrum. Political engagement becomes unhealthy when leaders are selected and sanctioned on the basis of their provision of private benefits rather than public goods, giving rise to a range of government failures.
Transparency, that is to say, citizen access to publicly available information about the actions of those in government and the consequences of these actions, can play a crucial role by nourishing political engagement. Even so, unhealthy political engagement may persist, and we have lately witnessed something of the sort on these islands. But to build institutions that are capable of tackling public goods problems, politics needs to be addressed and cannot be side-stepped. Targeted transparency is one way to move in the right direction. It complements everything else policymakers do and holds the potential to make politics work for development rather than against it. This is definitely one void that still needs to be filled in Malta.
Our survival as a democracy should not depend on the detailed management of the society or close governmental control over social processes but should be the result of sensitive political response to the forces of change, of flexible adjustment of the structures of the system to meet the pressures of innovation, and of open political processes that allow gradual and orderly development. This is all the more so as we face new political philosophies, a population increase, industrial and technological innovations, and many other social and economic stresses. Such evolutionary change is possible when representative institutions provide effective channels for the communication of demands and criticisms to the government that relies upon majority support.
Of course, we have big issues in various sectors, be it educational, financial, health, housing and credit accessibility. Many of them are critical, but not insurmountable. Many have seen concrete progress over the past few decades, and all of them have the attention of different groups and organizations working to improve them. However, over and above all this, I perceive two particular sensitive issues that have long been irking me and, surely, many others.
It is common knowledge how powerful companies, entrepreneurs and super-rich individuals are exploiting our rigged financial system and tax regime that allows them to avoid paying their fair share of tax. And it is the country’s poorest people who pay the price. This small nation is not short of wealth. The size of our economy keeps on expanding, at least on the face of it. Yet, the gap between rich and poor gets wider, with a massive increase in wealth at the top, while the total wealth owned by those at the bottom is falling. Such extreme economic inequality is being fuelled by an epidemic of tax evasion and avoidance that has reached an unprecedented scale.
When it comes to paying taxes, there is one rule for the super-rich and big companies and another for ordinary people. While the most powerful get away with paying little or nothing, ordinary citizens are left to foot the bill for government spending. This has to stop, and our government needs to lead.
On another front, suspension during investigations and suspension as a form of disciplinary sanction has been a regular news feature over the last few years. The news cycle has ranged from coverage of a school teacher being suspended during an investigation to more than one health worker facing suspension until the outcome of ongoing inquiries, investigations or judicial proceedings that usually take too scandalously long to terminate.
The question of whether or not to suspend an employee under investigation is always a difficult one for the government and employers to grapple with and has only become more of a live topic in the wake of some high-profile incidents in our country. This decision is often taken in a highly pressured and time-sensitive environment at the outset of the investigation process when nobody would have all of the information available. However, it is a crucial decision and can have significant reputational consequences for those involved. I would generally recommend that where the suspension has been deemed necessary, it is crucial that the employer carries out the investigation as quickly and efficiently as possible to minimise the time the employee remains suspended. This is particularly difficult where there is a criminal or regulatory angle.
At the end of the day, it all has to do with social justice which needs to be an all-encompassing idea that unifies us in the achievement of common goals.
Dr Mark Said is an advocate