Leaving aside the recent musical chairs game in the appointment of CEOs to leading governmental agencies, authorities and entities, it is surprising how nobody has ever questioned how these CEOs are being appointed.
As it is, there is hardly any distinction between how persons of trust and such CEOs are appointed by the government.
We already had the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life stating that the term "person of trust" is commonly understood as referring to political appointees, or individuals who have been given a job by the government of the day without a competitive selection process.
It is presumed that persons of trust engaged by the government based on a contract for services are not government employees, even if their contract involves full-time work. In legal terms, they are simply providing a service, and they are paid a fee rather than a salary.
On the contrary, CEOs are paid a salary. Yet, they are essentially becoming political actors assumed to have political agendas. These top business roles are more and more being seen as stepping stones to political careers. Consequently, the government expects a CEO to behave like a politician even while they simply occupy a business seat.
These CEOs appear mostly unprepared for the role they are entrusted with and may be seen as aloof at best and inauthentic at worst.
Perhaps the thorniest issue of all is connecting with employees and customers by taking public positions on politicised issues. CEOs are having their reporting line lead directly to the Minister concerned rather than the entity they head.
The appointed CEOs can easily be defined as current or former government bureaucrats, that is, current or former officers of the central government. Because the government claims, possesses and retains the right to appoint the CEO of a listed authority, agency or other entity, the CEO's political affiliation provides a suitable proxy for government influence.
Why shouldn't such roles be open to public competition based on suitable qualifications, experience, competency and merit?
These kinds of CEO appointments remain a governance minefield.
What's with all these inquiries?
I have long thought of how public inquiries were unusually increasing in numbers and subject matters and that they were going to continue increasing.
For the time that each public or other independent inquiry takes to be concluded, they become slow journalism. These inquiries must be the worst value for money in the Maltese government. Most are just kicked into touch by some embarrassed minister, producing a day's headline some months later before gathering dust.
The majority of them tell us little or nothing that a bunch of assiduous investigators could not have discovered in a few weeks. In most cases, the money would surely have been better spent on victims' families. Ministers fight against giving a penny of compensation while the sky is the limit for remunerating the chairman and members making up the inquiring panel, not to mention also the legal fees involved.
What is most intriguing are the subjects that get inquiries and those that do not. Most are into accidents, which means the assessment of risk. Normally, inquiries tend to be an emotional response to even just one human death, attracting money and lawyers like moths to the flame, and to victims' sonorous demands for justice, as if to a public execution.
Justice is for a court, not an inquiry.
Blame is thus deflected from wider political issues such as rampant corruption and abuse of office or bureaucracy. The unwritten rule is that no blame should be attached to the machinery of democracy, central government or parliament.
In each inquiry held, the same problems recur. There is a lack of useful communication within the public bodies concerned. There is little or no meaningful accountability for those who have made bad decisions. There is reluctance or outright opposition to the inquiry being given relevant materials by officials. State failure galore!
Apparently, now, only a public inquiry can be able to get to the bottom of what goes wrong with policy and administration, and why, if at all. Our 1977 Inquiries Act is now a fundamental constitutional instrument, albeit not embedded in our constitution.
One would assume that the government has now become accountable to judges and lawyers at public inquiries, rather than to elected politicians in our House of Representatives.
When our country cannot get to the truth in real time and must rely on a process several months afterwards, something has gone very wrong.
In defiance of constitutional pronouncements
Remarkably, almost eight decades after the inception of Malta's Constitution, the effect of a declaration of unconstitutionality by our superior courts remains obscure.
The principles relating to when a court should make a declaration of unconstitutionality and, if so, on what terms, have been the subject of extensive debate and exhaustive, sometimes exhausting judicial discussion, not without a few red herrings. However, the absence of debate and discussion about the effect of a declaration of unconstitutionality continues to leave a large gap in our legal landscape.
We cannot afford to continue laying out contradictory analyses of the effect of a declaration of unconstitutionality.
When such a constitutional judgment is forwarded to the Speaker, the latter should have the duty to put it on the agenda of the business of the House and give it top priority over other pending, even if pressing, issues. It should then result in a positive repeal of the unconstitutional law or provision.
It should be clear and logical that declarations of unconstitutionality issued by a superior court with jurisdiction over the parties, subject matter and remedy have binding force 'ab initio' against the world at large. They apply nationwide, transcending the parties to the case and affecting all Maltese.