Consenting to ethics breaches
Once again, Parliament’s ethics committee has been rendered toothless, this time through the Speaker’s vote, or rather, the absence of one.
Anglu Farrugia decided to abstain on a vote on whether the committee should adopt a report, by Standards Czar George Hyzler, who found that a newspaper advert by Carmelo Abela was intended to boost the minister’s image, rather than give information of value to the public.
More importantly, Hyzler had suggested that Carmelo should pay back the €7,000 in taxpayer money that he had spent on the glitzy advert.
The Standards Committee has once again spent weeks debating an issue, only to then fail to reach a meaningful conclusion.
The two government representatives on the committee, Glenn Bedingfield and Edward Zammit Lewis, tried every play in the book to attempt to derail the discussion or any form of action against the minister who was found to have breached ethics.
Bedingfield even went as far to try to discredit Hyzler. He launched a scathing attack on the Commissioner last week, questioning his intentions, his impartiality and his choice of consultants.
In previous sittings, the two government MPs boycotted the discussion because they felt that the fact that the report had, according to them, been leaked, was more important than its actual findings.
After all these hiccups, the committee finally discussed the contents of the report but, in the end, the minister got away scot free.
That the government MPs voted against adopting the report was no surprise. Perhaps it was also not surprising that the Speaker using his casting vote to act in the government’s favour. After all, this was not the first time that Farrugia acted as a gatekeeper for the government.
But the fact remains that what happened on Wednesday was a travesty of justice and a complete disregard towards ethics and towards the high standards one should expect of politicians.
The Speaker said that, while he agreed with certain conclusions reached by the report, namely that Abela’s photograph was too prominent and that guidelines on adverts should be drafted going forward, he did not feel there was a breach of ethical guidelines and thus decided to abstain from voting.
His decision means that the case against Abela is now effectively closed, and the €7,000 spent on self-promotion will not be paid back. In fact, Abela was quick to declare that the case is now closed, and he will not pay back a cent.
Instead of upholding ethics, the government, aided and abetted by the Speaker, is whitewashing over its misdemeanours.
If politicians are truly to act in a transparent and accountable manner, then money spent irregularly should be paid back, in full.
What is the point of having a Standards Commissioner pointing out breaches of ethics when the Parliamentary committee tasked with handling such reports then decides that no action should be taken?
The system is clearly not functioning, and changes need to be made, now.
And this issue goes beyond just ethics. If politicians can get away with something as ‘small’ as this, imagine what will happen in other cases where millions are spent, such as the €274 million Saint Vincent de Paul contract which is fraught with irregularities.
It is probably quite safe to say in that case too that no political responsibility will be shouldered, that no action will be taken, and that the Maltese taxpayer will once again be short-changed.