Minister Julia Farrugia was asked a simple parliamentary question. How much of our money are you spending on consultancy fees? Who are these consultants you've hired? Are they qualified for the job?  Were they engaged through a direct order?

Those are perfectly legitimate questions, especially since the whole country knows it's Labour policy to award MPs like Rosianne Cutajar phantom consultancies for which they're paid for doing nothing much.  They're absolutely burning questions considering that two of Labour's ministers conspired to award the girlfriend of one of them a consultancy post for which she was not remotely qualified and which she didn't perform.  Labour's fake consultancy posts are costing the country millions - and we are the ones paying for them.  We're also paying for Farrugia to serve us in cabinet.  And it's her duty to reply to our questions.

Farrugia showed the same disdain and contempt for the electorate as her Prime Minister.  She simply failed to answer the question.  She arrogantly replied that "consultants are engaged according to the manual for recruitment of consultants".  That's no reassurance.  Clayton Bartolo also told us his girlfriend, now his wife, was recruited according to the manual.  "The manual was not broken at any point, not in the way she was recruited nor in her pay, because there are no criteria on how one sets the salary of a person being appointed," Bartolo lectured us in November 2024.  Just 3 weeks later he was gone.

The Standards Commissioner found Bartolo and fellow minister Clint Camilleri had abused their power when they gave Bartolo's girlfriend a €68,000 job despite her manifest incompetence and never performing any consultancy work for the Gozo ministry.

Farrugia's defence that her consultants are appointed according to the manual is no guarantee that she too, like her fellow ministers, isn't abusing her power.  Indeed, the fact she's so desperate to hide who her consultants are, whether they're qualified and how much they're costing us, raises even more public concern.

Farrugia is following the established policy set out by Robert Abela.  He's done everything he can to withhold information.  He's rejected FOI requests, he's challenged the Data Commissioner and lodged appeals against releasing information, he obstinately refuses to publish his declaration of assets and those of his colleagues.  He resists any attempt by the media and the Opposition to obtain information that should be in the public domain.  This isn't the behaviour of a democratic leader.  Transparency and accountability are essential principles to democratic governance.  Abela's Labour government sorely lacks both.

James Madison, author of America's Bill of Rights, commented in 1822: "A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both".  Abela's government is already a farce, and it's hurtling rapidly towards tragedy.  Without accountability and transparency, democracy is impossible.  In their absence, electoral choices and elections lose their meaning.  Abela has no choice but to hide the facts - because every time the facts are revealed, more people realise they've been duped, they're being cheated.

That's exactly why Farrugia is concealing the truth.  It's not because she's proud of the consultants she's recruited, it's not because she's convinced of the eminence of their qualifications for their role, and it's certainly not because their remuneration out of taxpayers' money is deserved.

Transparency and accountability are necessary to stop abuse of power. That's why Abela's cabinet is so intent on blocking information and strangling accountability. James Madison was so convinced of the importance of access to information that he embedded the protection of the free press in the First Amendment of the constitution.  But what is the point of a free press if the overwhelming power of government is used to block all access to information?

We have a right to know what our own government is doing with our money.  Whether to answer our questions is not a choice Julia Farrugia should have.  In the US the right to access government information was entrenched in the Freedom of Information Act in 1966.  That freedom was embedded in France's Declaration of the Right of Man and the Citizen almost 50 years ago. In contrast Malta is witnessing a rapid deterioration in transparency and accountability.  The level of corruption, the abuse of positions of power for personal or group benefit is the main reason why Abela's government cannot afford to be transparent.  His very own survival and that of his government depends on obfuscation, secrecy and stealth.  It's a widely accepted principle in established democracies that government ministers owe the highest level of accountability to the people.  Yet Robert Abela keeps denying us our right to know - to know, for example, how he's managed to acquire so much land and property on his salary while his bank account gets fatter still.

Farrugia's audacious refusal to reply to basic parliamentary questions is symptomatic of the autocratic nature of her party's government.  Authoritarian systems are typically unaccountable, they encourage public corruption.  Authoritarian leaders embed corruption within the governing system - and that's exactly what Robert Abela does.  When Ian Borg was caught sending messages to the man facing criminal prosecution over the licensing scandal, Abela insisted Borg was just doing his job.  Authoritarians encourage nepotism and abuse as a means to control their population and to engender the loyalty of officials by providing them with a personal stake in perpetuation his hold on power and his authoritarian system of rule. And that explains why there is such a direct correlation between our deteriorating position on the Freedom in the World survey and our worsening Corruption Perceptions index.

Malta must confront this ongoing abuse of power.  But the standard mechanisms to fight that abuse are toothless.  The media narrative is increasingly dominated by a hijacked state broadcaster, the opposition is rendered useless in a parliament dominated by a partisan speaker, and our police force is entirely submissive to the governing party. There is no possibility of confronting Labour's abuse outside of citizen rebellion at the ballot box.