Is this what is meant by standards?

What a strange decision the debut oeuvre of the new Commissioner for Standards in Public Life was.

Arnold Cassola, he the indefatigable conscience of our shady public affairs, complained that Clayton Bartolo ignored a request put to him in a Parliamentary question to provide details of the employment terms of a public official.

The official was Pierre Fenech, hired by the government to work as CEO of two different agencies, and identified by Rosianne Cutajar in a chat with Yorgen Fenech as the go to guy if you wanted extra government money flowing in your pockets with no strings attached. Għax kulħadd jitħanżer.

So, Cassola referred Minister Clayton Bartolo to the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life.

Meanwhile, the Opposition tried again and asked Clayton Bartolo the same question a second time. This time, presumably concerned about what an investigation by the Commissioner might find, Clayton Bartolo released the information.

Commissioner Joe Azzopardi ruled that Arnold Cassola’s complaint was not worth investigating because eventually Clayton Bartolo provided the requested information.

Eventually, we are all dead.

The notion of not investigating a failure of keeping to standards because of a belated cure is just absurd. The Commissioner for Standards is a Parliamentary official and the least he could do is take sides with Parliament in an issue like this. Ministers are accountable to Parliament and Parliament is entitled to expect prompt, accurate, complete, and transparent replies to its questions to ministers. Ministers should not time their replies to Parliament to fit their political convenience and Parliament should not have to beg for answers or wait until Arnold Cassola rattles his cage and insists on an investigation.

Joe Azzopardi should have investigated the complaint and would have found the complaint valid. The fact that Clayton Bartolo eventually provided the information without explaining the delay proves that the complaint is justified. For if he could provide the information when he did, why didn’t Clayton Bartolo answer the question the first time round? His failure to do so amounts to misleading Parliament, and withholding from it information it is perfectly entitled to demand. That’s a failure in standards which should not have gone unremarked.

The Commissioner is not there simply to investigate manifest wrongdoing (though with people like Rosianne Cutajar on the benches that clearly is part of his brief). He is there to uphold standards and improve them. This would have been the right opportunity to remind ministers that they report to Parliament and not the other way round.

Not a good start.