Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1158119
10 OPINION maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 21 AUGUST 2019 Not only does Muscat's offer of a second car contradict his own government's transport policy objectives... but it was also designed to be largely invisible to the tax-payer I'LL admit that accountancy has never exactly been my forte – and this article is going to be about MPs' remunera- tion, so there's a fair chance I might get some of the math wrong. But what I can't understand is: how can government claim that parliamentarians are be- ing paid less today than in 2008… when some of its own MPs are declaring more than they are supposed to be earn- ing in their annual declaration of assets? OK, let's rewind a sec. Last week, Opposition MP Jason Azzopardi must have sudden- ly realized that he hadn't ac- tually stirred up any new con- troversy for almost a full five minutes… and so - while most of us were trying to enjoy our Santa Marija weekend break – he seized on an article by Shift News to claim that Joseph Muscat had surreptitiously given his parliamentary a pay- rise behind everybody's back. You know: just like Azzo- pardi's own government had done in March 2008 (but we only got to find out about it three years later)…. causing a national outcry that arguably set the PN on the downward tailspin that landed it roughly where it is today. Which also means that – if the allegations are true – Jo- seph Muscat will have been guilty of (shock, horror) pre- cisely the same behaviour that he himself had once criticised in Lawrence Gonzi, when in opposition. And given that the 2008 honoraria increase was one of the factors (alongside wa- ter and electricity bills) that catapulted Muscat's Labour Party into power in 2013 with such a spectacular major- ity… I think we can all agree that the implications of Azzo- pardi's claims could be pretty damaging, both to the Labour Party and to Joseph Muscat in particular. But all that depends on the veracity of the allegation it- self. There is no question, how- ever, that it comes from Jason Azzopardi: one of the Nation- alist parliamentary secretaries who, in 2008, had absolutely had no qualms whatsoever about accepting the sort of pay-rise he now screeches about in Parliament… only to later have to refund part of it, as his prime minister was forced to somehow defuse the catastrophic consequences of that ill-fated error of judg- ment. Nonetheless, we are left (as usual) to pick up the pieces of a mountain of vague allega- tions. And the issue of how much our MPs really do get paid, re- ally does turn out to be slight- ly more complex than it first appears. For instance: reacting to Azzopardi's claims, govern- ment published a detailed breakdown of MPs' salaries and allowances, from March 2008 – i.e., when the 24K honorarium was introduced - to the present. On paper, the figures seem to bely any notion of a pay- rise since then: in 2008, a par- liamentary secretary received almost E70,000 a year in sal- ary and allowances. Today, the same parliamentary sec- retary gets just under E54,000 (though, paradoxically, the actual salary has increased by around E4,000 in the mean- time, as the result of a new collective agreement covering the entire public service.) Meanwhile, the figures for other Parliamentary posts – Prime Minister, Speaker, Op- position leader, Cabinet Min- ister - all vary slightly… but their revenue can be seen to have decreased by roughly the same percentage: which also broadly corresponds with the removal of the 24K pay-rise introduced by Gonzi in 2008. So far, so good. It all seems to add up. Only snag is that – as I mentioned earlier – not all parliamentary secretaries are declaring annual incomes of around 55,000 a year. At least two – Silvio Parnis and Chris Agius – last year declared earning over 60,000…. which admittedly may not seem like a huge discrepancy (it hovers around the 7,000 mark), but a discrepancy it remains none- theless. Clearly, an explanation was needed. And sure enough, the principle permanent secre- tary – i.e., the head of the civil service, and not a government representative – had to make a rare appearance to clarify the issue. There has been no change to the salary structure since 2013, he confirmed; the only difference is that parliamen- tary secretaries (and Cabinet ministers, PMs Opposition leader, etc.) have since 2013 been entitled to a "fully ex- pensed second car other than the official one. If they choose to use their own personal car as their second car, they are given €7,000 annually as car- cash allowance". Not that it was really nec- essary, because that detailed breakdown I mentioned ear- lier had also mentioned the 'second car' freebie… as a footnote. Strangely, however, neither the value of this second car, nor the separate offer of a 7,000 lump-sum, is included anywhere in the government- released figures themselves… even though the subdivisions of the breakdown clearly in- clude 'allowances' alongside 'salary'. Erm… sorry to have to point this out, but this does change things slightly. For now it emerges that those 60K+ asset declarations were by parlia- mentary secretaries who had opted for the cash hand-out instead of the car. In other words: all those oth- er ministers and parliamen- tary secretaries who declared their proper salary… they must have accepted that sec- ond car – "fully expensed" by the Maltese taxpayer – with- out breathing a word of it to anyone. Not to mention the small matter of the State dishing out private vehicles to parliamen- tarians… and then somehow managing to omit the expend- iture from its calculations of how much Parliament actually costs the country… At this point, the 7,000 op- tion really does become just a footnote. How much do all these 'second cars' – one for each Cabinet minister and parliamentary secretary, amounting to well over 30 ve- hicles – actually cost the ex- chequer, anyway? OK, admittedly it is less of a recurring expense than an honorarium paid annually – even the cheapest, shittiest Yugo should last you more than a single year, I suppose – but it can't exactly be a one-time expenditure, either. There would have to be a con- tract with a car importer to provide a steady supply… and this has already been going on 2013. Yet there is no mention, any- where in the official data pub- lished this week, of how many vehicles have been purchased to date (still less from whom, and for how much, or whether there was a call for applica- tions… this is, after all, public procurement we are talking about here). Well, the last time I walked past a car showroom (and I live in an area full of them) I didn't see a single one on sale under E30,000. And while it is most likely a coincidence, an online es- timate of the cost of living in Malta today (numbeo.com) values a 'Volkswagen Golf' or a 'Toyota Corolla' (or 'any equivalent new car') at - lo and behold! - E24,000: i.e., al- most exactly the same amount Gonzi secretly gave his MPs in 2008, with such devastating consequences for his govern- ment and himself. So yes: I suppose that makes Joseph Muscat perfectly right to insist that he "didn't in- crease MPs' salaries" since 2013. Because he didn't give out any cash, did he? Oh no: he just gave out a bunch of free cars worth roughly the same amount, that's all… Much more significantly, though… the present scenar- io doesn't represent any real change to the situation since 2008. Leaving aside the question of 'how much was spent on MPs by whom' – for the original 2011 controversy was always more about politics than eco- nomics… what's the real dif- ference between Muscat's and Gonzi's approach to this one issue? Not much, that I can see. Not only does Muscat's offer of a second car contradict his own government's transport policy objectives (why not en- courage MPs to set an exam- ple by actually using public transport, like the rest of us mere mortals?) – but it was also designed to be largely in- visible to the tax-payer. In 2018, Gonzi did this by charging the additional E24,000 honorarium to the respective ministries' budgets, instead of listing it in the 2008 money vote for the House of Representatives (where it would have appeared in gov- ernment's annual accounts). In 2013, Muscat did it by translating the same sum into a bonus perk, which somehow got omitted from inclusion in the official list of allowances published this week. In both cases, the upshot was (roughly) the same. And this should hardly surprise us, because the underlying cause for both decisions remains the same, too. There was even a report, commissioned by Joseph Muscat himself in 2013, which concluded that parliamentar- ians' salaries should in fact double… i.e., up to 80,000, from the 40,000 of 2013… and that allowances should be done away with altogether. What both Gonzi and Mus- cat separately did, however, amounts to effectively the opposite: they both doubled MPs' allowances, and left their basic salary more or less the same. And if that's not a classic case of 'same difference', I don't know what is… Raphael Vassallo Gonzi gave cash, Muscat gave cars. What's the difference?