The government’s efforts to boost the feel-good factor with generous budget measures were short-lived.
The publication of an investigation report by the Standards Commissioner concluded that two government ministers abused their position of power by giving lucrative consultancy contracts to the partner of Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo, despite being underqualified for the job, with no evidence that she carried out the work. Sleaze is one of the shameful hallmarks of this administration.
Democratic politics is not just about people voting once every five years. We must assume that the people we elect to lead us do not have a free hand to engage in whatever practices they consider legitimate, including clientelism, corruption, nepotism, fraud and other forms of sleaze.
The latest case of sleaze involving the ministers for Gozo and tourism is not reducible to the moral failing of two individuals. It is a symptom of an administration that sees no wrong in the decline of democratic values, where persons elected through voters’ trust are held to high standards of ethical and moral behaviour.
People will be interested in politics and more likely to see it as legitimate if they think their leaders care about their interests and the country’s wellbeing. Instead, we see the prime minister accepting Bartolo’s half-hearted apology as sufficient to absolve him of his serious abuse of trust.
Despite the often slick communications strategy, the government underestimates the anger that many ordinary people, who work hard to make ends meet, feel when they see their political leaders more interested in re-election and pleasing their friends and supporters than in addressing their concerns. Clientelism, receiving benefits in return for political support, just widens the gap between people and politics.
The prime minister must have made political expediency calculations on whether sacking the two ministers involved in this saga would do more harm than good for the Labour Party. Ultimately, he decided to grant them absolution without even openly repenting.
From polling, market research, and social media sentiment analysis, the government knows what to offer to enough social segments in the right places to remain in power
On the contrary, in today’s interview with Times of Malta, he seeks to shift attention onto two PN MPs he claims were getting a government salary despite barely reporting to work - as if two wrongs make a right.
From polling, market research, and social media sentiment analysis, the government knows what to offer to enough social segments in the right places to remain in power.
It must have concluded that the reaction of the hardcore supporters of the ministers for Gozo and tourism could be adverse enough to make the difference between winning and losing the next election. This is why this administration cannot address the long-term problems the country is facing, like growing social inequality, infrastructural and environmental decay.
To retain its support from party loyalists, donors and business interests, the government must continuously reward them. This approach is based on clientelism and partisan calculations on what is to be considered politically expedient rather than what benefits the country. Independent political oversight is shunned. Breaches of the ministerial code are ignored. Parliament is marginalised.
These are not deviations but steps in the process of making it easier for the government to direct resources to where political calculation deems it necessary. The public realm is reduced to a fiefdom of the party in government.
Rather than brokering between people’s different wants, the government is increasingly relying on lobby groups, and public communications professionals, to define policy, leaving a void between people and politics.
This is not the way forward for a healthy political democracy.