A gale in an espresso cup

Cabinet ministers have bnen asked to refund the money they have received over the last couple of years after a decision was taken to increase payment to all MPs, from 50% to 70% of the civil service’s pay grade 1.

The root cause of the problem is that cabinet ministers have been receiving their pay increase as members of parliament (not as ministers) for the last couple of years, straight after the decision was taken, while all other MPs were about to start receiving it now.

The anger began when the rest of parliament discovered that those MPs who are cabinet ministers have been receiving their pay increase since 2008, while those MPs who are not cabinet ministers have had to wait until now.

The Labour Party’s smoke and mirrors have obscured the fact that the pay increase is not for ministers only, or for ministers because they are ministers, but for all MPs.

The stumbling-block is that ministers began to be paid way ahead of the rest. This happened, I and told, because of administrative bungling, and the decision to rectify the error was postponed pending talks with the Opposition. The fact remains, however, that ministers must have been perfectly aware that they were receiving a pay increase as members of parliament when other members of parliament were not.

They cannot possibly be so grand that they don’t bother to analyse the structure of their salary.

So it was only a matter of time before the situation imploded because of justified anger and resentment among those MPs who thought, rightly, that they should have begun to receive more money at exactly the same time their ministerial colleagues did, and this because the pay increase was for MPs and not for ministers only.

By selling this story to the electorate as being all about the huge salaries cabinet ministers are paid – which really are not huge at all because cabinet ministers should be paid considerably more than, say, clerks – the Opposition and the government’s backbiting MPs have now painted themselves into the tightest of corners.

With the root cause of their anger removed by a refund and the equalisation of the situation between all ministers, whether MPs or not, they have found themselves bound to their impulsive commitment to brush away their own pay increase and give it to charity (after first having to pay tax on it, they have since discovered).

The Opposition has once more sold the electorate a prize canard by deliberately fudging the fact that we’re not talking about a pay increase to ministers here, but a pay increase to all members of parliament, and that the bone of contention is the fact that ministers began to receive their pay increase straight after the decision was taken rather than later on and along with everyone else.

Seen in the cold light of dawn, it is now obvious that what the Opposition should have done is focus on the unfairness of ministers getting a two-year head start on the rest of parliament, and on the duplicity inherent in not making this information known to your parliamentary colleagues, clearly and unequivocally.

It is unconvincing to claim that the information was reported by a newspaper and so was public. If you wish somebody to know something, you must make it clear to them specifically and directly. Anything else indicates a desire for concealment for whatever reason, and a lack of respect towards the individual. The inevitable result is a conflagration which could have been avoided, but this sort of conflagration always happens when people feel cheated or that things were hidden from them.

The total sum that each minister will be asked to refund, again if a decision is taken hours after this article is sent in, is €14,000. Then the matter will be resolved among the objectors because they’ll be square with each other.

I am particularly keen to focus on the sum because it puts matters into perspective after the exhausting hysteria of the last few days, during which ‘lanzit’, envy and the desire to ensure that nobody earns more than you do and that the pay gap is as narrow as possible between shop assistants and those responsible for running the country were amply on display in a most disturbing fashion.

When each minister refunds his or her €14,000, how is this going to give us cheaper electricity? In the grand scheme of things, exactly what will have been achieved, except for the temporary satisfaction felt by those sad individuals who must at all times know that they are the puppeteers and that they have been able to deprive a cabinet minister of €14,000?

It is just and fair that they should return the money because the only alternative is backdating by two years the pay increase to all other members of parliament, and so the first option costs much less. But that’s about it.

Unfortunately, the Opposition has been able to make the link, in the minds of the more befuddled and resentful parts of the electorate, between what cabinet ministers are paid and the price of diesel, electricity, gas and milk. There is no link in reality – how can there be? But when people are overcome by hatred and anger they cease to think clearly, and that is if they ever did in the first place.

Those who have been fomenting the new form of class hatred – hatred for those with perceived privileged access to resources rather than for those privileged by birth – can claim victory because ministers must now each write a cheque for €14,000. But tomorrow morning, they will notice that the price of milk and diesel are unaffected.

They might even notice that, given what is happening elsewhere in Europe, those who have a home, a job and a car shouldn’t be complaining about the cost of filling that car’s tank or the price of electricity for a home that hasn’t been repossessed because they’ve been made redundant along with 50% of their employer’s workforce.

This article was published in The Malta Independent yesterday.