Monkey business

I have known Austin Walker before he ascended to the electrical throne at Floriana. He is a good and pleasant man. But as he himself has publicly admitted with Ms Vanessa Macdonald, before that ascension to the throne he had been as conversant with the planning laws much as the milkman is.

This notwithstanding, he compared himself to an expensive car in order to justify his astounding salary. He earns about three times what a Chief Justice or the Prime Minister earns. The morale behind the story of what Mr Walker is trying to relay to the public in general is, if you pay peanuts… you get monkeys. On the other hand, we must avoid employing monkeys who get paid handsomely.

The appointment of people to public posts, when they do not even have the slightest inkling of what the job is all about, is not only counterproductive, but it is also draining our coffers.

Now Austin Walker is an upright and good meaning person. On several occasions we have crossed each other’s paths during the course of our respective professions. I have always found him courteous and competent in his line of work. But was he the right person to take the chairmanship of the Planning Authority, when important matters which the authority has to decide, are at times determined by him casting his decisive vote?

Just before him, that same seat was occupied by another person who may have been extremely successful in the management of his commercial companies, but knew nothing what planning was all about. He may have come to know that planning laws exist the day after he was appointed to the post of chairman of the Planning Authority.

What I am trying to drive home is that the manner of appointment and removal of persons from key positions has always shed doubts on the institutions these people were meant to lead. At times, matters are further compounded when the most competent of persons fall victim to undue criticism from the powers, for simply doing their work to the best of their ability and in a seemingly honest manner.

The current auditor of MEPA comes to mind. Joseph Falzon, a planner by profession who has done an impeccable job, found himself under siege for having exposed what it seems others would have left unearthed. For having done this, and in a sense “embarrassed” Castille, he has now been put against the wall. The law has been changed to the effect that we have to bid him adieu. This we must do not because he fell short of our expectations, but because he has fallen out with those that count politically.

On the other hand, when obvious mismanagement was pointed out by the Auditor General, those responsible were not only protected, but even rewarded. A case in point was the way the radio station known as The Voice Of The Mediterranean run by Richard Muscat, an eminence grise of the party in government. During one of the sittings before the Public Accounts Committee, with great legal pride and a sense of political glee, Austin Gatt came out with the technical hitch that the regulations of public expenditure did not apply to Mr Richard Muscat.

Instead of finding it preposterous and unacceptable that there was a loophole in the law, Austin Gatt used it as a technical escape route to save the “perpetrator”. On that occasion, Dr Austin Gatt, in his capacity as a representative of those that put him Parliament, acted much more as a lawyer to Mr Muscat and less as a representative of the taxpayer, who at the end of the day had to make good for the mishaps of how VOM was managed.

Worse, from what I could gather, the said regulations have not been changed in order to avoid a repeat of the VOM experience. To further rub the salt in the public wound, some time after VOM was closed down, Mr Richard Muscat was appointed Ambassador of Malta to Ireland and where, I am sure he must have visited the Ring Of Kerry to taste some juicy Irish oysters.

Until such time that true national interests do not come into play when it comes to the appointment to and removal of people from key public  positions, this area of the public administration shall remain farcical and tragic at the same time. Other controversies will unavoidably come to haunt us.

Having the government laying down a national policy on how things are to be managed is one thing, appointing the right people to implement it is another thing. This, I believe, is fertile ground for a true and honest debate about necessary institutional reforms. Until such times come, we’ll be having more monkeys and less peanuts.