The courts of law remain the people’s ultimate bulwark when seeking justice. However, as the rule of law and good governance in this country face clear and present challenges, law-abiding citizens also increasingly turn to and rely on three other guardian angels.
The National Audit Office is the guardian of the public purse. The first public audit institution in Malta goes back more than 200 years and many can still remember the department of audit, within the finance ministry.
A law passed in mid-1997 empowered the National Audit Office to encourage accountability of public officers and to contribute towards better management of public funds and resources.
It has been a success story, keeping public officers on their toes, even if many of its recommendations went unheeded or only partially implemented. Still, the officers who manned the institution along the years remained steadfast in their constitutional duties and were not disheartened by successive governments’ inaction.
The Office of the Ombudsman – a new experience for Malta – was established in 1995. Just like the auditor general, the guardian of good public administration is often ignored by the powers that be.
Again, it is thanks to the resilience and determination of the ombudsman himself, his commissioners and their dedicated staff members that this office always puts the citizen first, and considers good governance as it main and only mission.
The third and most recent guardian angel is the commissioner for standards in public life. Legislators had approved the relevant law in early 2017 but long months had to pass before a legal notice was published bringing it into force.
Agreement between the two sides of parliament on the first appointee followed in the last quarter of 2018.
It was a slow start for this much-needed office whose main duty – to use the wording in the objects and reasons of the law – is “to investigate breaches of statutory or ethical duties of categories of persons in public life, and for matters ancillary or related thereto”.
There is broad concensus that standards in public life have hit rock bottom. The first standards commissioner – George Hyzler – slowly but surely tried hard to raise the bar. So hard, in fact, that he seemed to be stepping on the toes of some politicians and senior public officers, and was unceremoniously ‘kicked upstairs’.
Possibly because of the manner in which he was appointed – by a simple majority in view of opposition objections – there were doubts on whether his successor would follow suit.
There could have been a few ‘hiccups’, but Joseph Azzopardi, a former chief justice, is proving he, too, has bite.
His latest investigation – into the controversial consultancy job given to Clayton Bartolo’s wife – is a classic example of the sort of standards that should prevail in public life.
Towards the conclusion of his report, he made a clear warning: let nobody think the standards commissioner can be restricted in what he investigates.
The commissioner, he declared, “is empowered to set the parameters of an investigation as he deems fit and is not bound to limit himself to the points raised by the complainant”.
That is the spirit that motivates institutions that truly want to work, like the courts, the auditor general, the ombudsman, and the standards commissioner.
If only other institutions, like the attorney general, the Planning Authority, and the Environment and Resources Authority, would take a leaf out of these guardian angels’ book.