When Prime Minister Robert Abela reshuffled his Cabinet earlier this month, he broke the record he had himself established two years ago when he had named his ministers and parliamentary secretaries soon after he won the election in 2022.

That time, he had appointed 18 ministers and six parliamentary secretaries who, added to himself as their chief, made up a staggering 25 members.

That record has now been broken, as the list has grown by another two. The number of ministers, after the 6 January reshuffle, has remained at 19 (including the PM), but the number of parliamentary secretaries has increased from six to eight.

Now we have a team of 27 Cabinet members. The table around which they sit when they have meetings at Castille is becoming too small.

An exercise The Malta Independent on Sunday published a few days ago shows that, proportionately speaking, Malta has the second largest Cabinet when this is compared to the number of Members of Parliament.

Malta has 79 members in the House – yet another record, following the gender mechanism adjustments that were put in place to have more women representatives. With 19 ministers, this means that 24.1% of our MPs are sitting on the Cabinet. The percentage would grow even more if the number of parliamentary secretaries is added.

Since not all parliamentary systems in Europe are the same as Malta, the exercise we carried out was limited to the number of ministers. Only the Cabinet of Luxembourg, which has 15 ministers from 60 MPs, is proportionately bigger than Malta’s, at 25%.

Germany, the largest country in the European Union, which has also the largest Parliament, has the smallest Cabinet in proportion. From the 736 representatives, only 17 are ministers, a minute 2.3%.

Having so many ministers and parliamentary secretaries means more expenses for Malta’s coffers. Every member of the Cabinet has his or her own team, needs a place from where they operate, and runs day-to-day costs that are paid for by the taxpayers.

But, aside from money matters, we do question whether Malta needs to have certain ministries and parliamentary secretariats which can easily be absorbed in others.

In these cases, it appears that the Prime Minister is making such appointments to extend his grip over his MPs by giving them a title – and a higher salary than that of a simple MP.

It could also be that Abela wanted to make sure that each electoral district is represented in his Cabinet. Some have more than one minister on Abela’s team; the only district that does not have a minister is the first, given that Aaron Farrugia has been relegated to the backbench. This will soon be made up for when Andy Ellul will take over from Chris Fearne as Minister for European Funds when the latter becomes Malta’s representative on the European Commission. Ellul, however, was not elected from the first district; he made it to Parliament from the third.

The point we’re making is that Malta has too many ministers and parliamentary secretaries. Malta’s Parliament is also too large. But that’s another story.