Conflicts of interest: How many truly have nothing to declare?

From time to time we hear of a politician or politically appointed person who is discovered to be wearing just one or two too many hats. By night they are in Parliament discussing and deciding on laws and legislation which will shape our future and by day they will be sitting in boardrooms as directors on the very same issue they have been legislating about. Or else, because so many lawyers seem to be so mysteriously and magnetically drawn to the world of politics, you can find them in Court on any given day, representing clients on a myriad of issues: from the worst crimes to the most trivial, petty misdemeanours. The disparity hits when they argue one thing as politicians and another as lawyers.

What always strikes me is not only that the politician sees absolutely nothing odd (or even downright unethical) about this constant switching of roles, but that even many members of the public simply don’t bat an eye. Anzi, they pat you on the back for your shrewdness. “Oh you got Dr X as your lawyer to represent you in that dispute with your neighbour? He’s good, and plus he’s an MP, smart move.”

Despite the fact that Malta has moved on in so many ways, I find there is still quite a parochial attitude and unhealthy reverence for politicians who also happen to practice a much-respected profession: lawyers top the list, followed by doctors, and of course, the perit (architect), a nomenclature which will forever be associated with Mintoff who was so famous for his chosen profession that, like Cher, he was known simply by that one word and everyone would know immediately who you were talking about, Il-Perit.

Of course, there are obvious, in your face reasons why lawyers and doctors gravitate towards politics – the sheer amount of people they meet means that they are already widely known among their prospective constituents. If you manage to get yourself on TV in a regular slot that practically seals the deal. But because the remuneration for MPs is hardly comparable to what they were making from their profession, it is practically taken for granted that backbenchers continue with their “day job”, even though the potential for a conflict of interest is always hovering close by.

In Malta, “where everyone’s related” as that song in the musical Porn so succinctly put it, it’s practically impossible to maintain six degrees of separation from a possible conflict of interest. Sometimes, when you trace the family and professional connections, the degree of separation is as little as three.

And often, it is only when an alert and diligent journalist points out the connections that the public cottons on to what is going on (although even then you are very likely to be met with a shrug and a weary “so what” because, like corruption, conflicts of interest don’t seem to make a dent on people’s conscience any more).

Then there are the political appointees: here you have even more of a slippery slope. It is not just the clearly biased choices of those who stomped for Labour and allowed their faces to be used on billboards, in exchange for which they got some Chairmanship or other, thus nuking any chances of ever being looked at as “objective” ever again. More difficult to pinpoint are those who keep everything on the down and low, until someone accidentally stumbles on some kind of connection between them and the interests of a powerful businessman whose latest venture hits the news because he has breached the law.

Sometimes it is only when they are “caught out” that these wearers of so many hats finally admit (grudgingly) that yes, there might, could be, perhaps be some conflict of interest.

But the worst culprits are those who try to brazen it out, and try to defiantly hold their ground, claiming that there is “nothing wrong” with sitting on both sides of a very pointed fence.

It is this high-handed arrogance which gets me the most; this refusal to see that what they are doing is patently not done. It always makes me wonder whether it is because they have actually lost the ability to distinguish between right or wrong, or whether they really have taken us all for fools as we plug away day after day to earn a decent living, while they are gobbling up everything in sight for as long as they possibly can.