The money the government spends mostly comes from taxes, so people have every right to know exactly where public funds are going. Still, the barest minimum is usually dished out voluntarily and details that could be embarrassing only emerge via reports by the National Audit Office, hearings before the parliamentary public accounts committee or requests under the freedom of information law. Sometimes, it is by pure coincidence that a detail surfaces.

The €120,000 severance package given to former prime minister Joseph Muscat after he stepped down in early 2020 had caused a stir.

It was not only the amount, quite high when compared to what had been paid to other politicians who occupied public office for a longer period of time.

What had also raised eyebrows was that the country should reward a former prime minister who turned a blind eye to multiple cases of corruption but on whose watch a journalist was assassinated.

It now emerges that, under his successor, Prime Minister Robert Abela, Muscat was also allocated public property to use as a private office.

This became known only when the police searched his home and within the ambit of a magisterial inquiry into the Vitals Global Healthcare deal.

Details about Muscat that could be useful in completing the narrative that tells the full story of what his premiership was really all about keep emerging in dribs and drabs.

Whether to avoid embarrassment or because Muscat is too much of an ‘untouchable’, the authorities do not volunteer any such information, not even when public funds are involved.

Even the mere hanging of his portrait inside the cabinet room at Castille was kept hush-hush. The prime minister’s office has tried to come up with every sort of explanation to avoid having to give information.

Details about Muscat’s severance package had already been given, Abela said recently. Two years ago, his office had declared “no specific agreement exists” and that “all ministers and parliamentary secretaries who are no longer members of cabinet benefitted from [the] same scheme”.

Surely, this “scheme” lists some sort of specific criteria, otherwise it could discriminate between one former politician and another.

To defend himself, Muscat said the compensation scheme had been devised by a Nationalist government. That was only partially true if what Abela had said in parliament is correct.

A memo drawn up under a Nationalist administration in 2014 determined terminal and transitional benefits applicable to cabinet members who lose their position through their resignation, sacking or a change in government. However, Abela told parliament, this was amended in 2018 and again in 2019. At the time, Muscat was prime minister.

Independent media houses, including Times of Malta, have had to resort to the Freedom of Information Act to obtain details on the severance package.

Still, the situation on the ground remains far from clear, as the latest development about the office clearly proves.

Thousands of euros in public funds have been paid to retired politicians for many years and taxpayers still do not know how the system works exactly.

It has even been claimed that details involving individual cases cannot be divulged on the pretext that cabinet decisions are not published.

That makes it even more imperative to make severance packages a parliamentary rather than a cabinet decision, with all documents having to be tabled by law.

Perhaps the Public Accounts Committee can set the ball rolling.