Significant messages emerged from the Nuremberg trials, which started 75 years ago next month. Among them is the fact that claiming you were merely following orders is no defence. Another is that your wrongdoing will catch up with you, even years later.
Past, present, and future politicians need to bear that constantly in mind. We may not be speaking about wartime atrocities or crimes against humanity or following military orders. However, what may appear or be presented as political transgressions can have devastating consequences too – and arguing you were just following policies is the equivalent of abdication of moral responsibility because you were ‘following orders’.
Behaving badly is a habit for some politicians across the globe and Malta is hardly immune to the phenomenon. Some, especially the politicians themselves, tend to discount such practices as mere venial sins. But minor lapses can easily lead to vice. Hence, it is imperative that standards in public life, fraught as it is with all sorts of temptation, keep being raised.
The commissioner of standards in public life, George Hyzler, is, therefore, quite right to keep on insisting that the codes of ethics governing MPs and ministers and parliamentary secretaries should be revised to strengthen ethical standards.
He repeated his call just a few days ago in a report of an investigation in which he found that former prime minister Joseph Muscat did not breach ethics when he travelled to Italy with his family on the invitation of an acquaintance who is also a successful entrepreneur.
Muscat was still an MP when he attended Diane Izzo’s birthday party at a luxurious venue in Italy in August 2020. As it stands now, the code of ethics bars MPs from accepting “gifts from persons, groups or companies that had any direct or indirect intent in legislation before the House of Representatives”. Since, at the time, parliament was not considering any bills that would be of interest to Izzo’s business, Muscat could not be found in breach of the relevant clause.
So it was on a technical rather than substantive point that he was let off the hook. Substantive in the sense of the spirit of the code of ethics, which, one would like to think, is meant to guard against MPs exposing themselves to undue influence.
As he always did when faced with allegations of wrongdoing when prime minister and which gave rise to a web of impunity that proved deadly, Muscat raised purely legal rather than ethical or political arguments to defend himself.
That was then, I am now a private citizen and, as the speaker noted in a ruling, the law does not allow the parliamentary standards committee to sanction ex-MPs, he seemed to have been saying in his letter to Hyzler. Also, he went on, there was nothing before parliament that could be linked with the invitation in question and, in any case, he had nothing to do with any laws since he did not take part in any parliamentary debate after he resigned as prime minister.
That is precisely why, more than a year ago, the standards commissioner had recommended a revision of the code of ethics.
He is suggesting, among other things, that MPs do not accept “any gifts, benefits or hospitality either for themselves, any members of their families or any other persons or bodies” unless in accordance with guidelines drawn up by his office.
Regrettably, his recommendations have yet to be decided upon. In the meantime, MPs can continue to behave badly thanks to loopholes and a little help from colleagues.