There’s a little-known committee in Parliament that has the job of interviewing people the government nominates to important posts. Sometimes the committee comes to the public’s attention. Yesterday, the committee voted on the confirmation of John Mamo as chairman of the financial services authority. The nomination was approved for the simple reason that the government that appointed him enjoys a permanent majority on the committee.
This, perhaps, is why the committee does not attract such attention. The outcome of its decisions is always predictable. The idea is borrowed from a presidential model. Take the most famous example, the United States. The President nominates, for example, Supreme Court judges or ambassadors for the United States, but their nomination requires Senate scrutiny and approval. Since the President (the executive) does not control the Senate (the legislature), sometimes the President’s nominees are rejected.
It doesn’t happen here nor, frankly, is it very likely to happen in any parliamentary system where the government depends on parliamentary confidence as a matter of course.
But that doesn’t make the process useless. Possible reservations about a nomination made by the government are aired openly through this process. Even if the government has their way, the public is made aware of the other side of the story. The Opposition’s vote against John Mamo yesterday underlined the Opposition’s frustration with the failures recorded under his watch, particularly the weaknesses in the financial services authority that partly led to our grey listing.
The flipside was that it was refreshing to hear John Mamo’s response that there’s no good reason to downplay grey listing. He is himself a career investor. His statement yesterday that he would not invest in a grey listed country does not merely come from a government appointee, or even an independent regulator. It comes from someone who holds a personal stake in just the sort of problems this country is facing.
I wanted to write about another nomination discussed at yesterday’s committee. Giovanni Buttigieg has been nominated by the government to be Malta’s ambassador in Dublin. The rules say that ambassadors appointed from among the staff of the Foreign Office do not need to undergo Parliamentary scrutiny. I’m not entirely clear why that is, but it is that way.
Giovanni Buttigieg was nominated ambassador from outside the Foreign Office. He should have first been processed by the Parliamentary committee, but the government clean forgot. Then they went to Parliament with his nomination after it was all already done, to comply, though not quite, with the law they had themselves written.
Mark Camilleri and The Malta Independent report the diplomatic corps is unhappy about the episode which weighs down their list of grievances that could see them strike. Incidentally, I wonder how a strike by diplomats works out. I expect it should be a very polite affair. Maybe they’ll invite the Minister to dinner and whip out a silken glove.
This isn’t the first time the government forgot about the Parliamentary committee it had created supposedly to be more transparent about appointing senior officials. In October 2020 I wrote this article about how a new FIAU Board Chairman was appointed by the government forgetting to first send their choice to the Parliamentary committee.
I headlined that article “Pissup. Brewery. Can’t do it.” They still can’t do it.