Small stakes, vicious fights

Henry Kissinger famously said that university politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small. He could have made the same observation about Maltese politics (or Maltese journalism, but that’s another story).

I can’t help thinking of Kissinger’s words when I read the insults flying across the barricades in the Great MPs’ Salary War. The members of parliament who have decided to donate their salary increase to charity speak to the newspapers as though the relatively paltry amount will save Africa or find a cure for AIDS.

Clearly, their Christian education hasn’t extended as far as the bit where those who give are instructed to do so in silence, communicating the information to nobody, and that boasting automatically devalues and degrades any act of charity.

Christianity, Pharisees and coins aside, that kind of vulgar boasting about personal ‘generosity’ is crass and irritating. Instead of coming across as the boaster intends – “oh, look how generous I am” – it merely appears self-seeking, oddly, in a way that grabbing the raise and banking it does not.

Then there are those who are mesmerised at the thought that a minister of the state might be earning €90,000 a year. They have thronged the internet to voice their envy and objections. Are they still thinking in liri and are they a little bit confused, perhaps? That’s €90,000, not Lm90,000. For those who want it in liri, it’s around Lm38,000. If they think that’s a disproportionately high salary for that kind of job, then they’ve spent too long in their village, cut off from reality, while busy accusing politicians of living in the ivory towers they inhabit themselves.

In those ivory towers, there is apparently no income tax and national insurance, because the way these people talk, you’d think the recipients of those salaries, which are big only by Maltese village standards, are taking home their €90,000 and using them to bathe in asses’ milk, the price of which would come down immediately if the new Renzo Piano building were to include an automatic milking system.

I’m not going to sit here working out how much each and every minister pays in tax and national insurance, because it depends on so many variable factors, but on average the Treasury is going to keep roughly a quarter of those €90,000 and possibly rather more in some cases.

That makes it a whole lot less scintillating.

I’m not saying this to defend the salary increases that ministers and members of parliament have got. I don’t think they need defending because they are entirely justified. Their salaries before were rubbish. They were one big reason why we found ourselves having to choose between such junk contenders in general elections, who see parliamentary work as a part-time activity in between creaming in their main income from their professional practice.

So no, I’m saying it because I am not a communist and the earnings of others do not exercise me. What I find upsetting is the reminder from time to time that in these minuscule islands of small stakes and peculiarly vicious battles, the idea that others might be earning a reasonable sum provokes such hatred and consternation even among those who earn reasonable sums themselves.

Few seem to understand that members of parliament must be compensated not only for the work they do while actually members of parliament, but for what they must do to get there – that whole ghastly carnival of setting out your stall while crawling, creeping and backstabbing for votes, losing your privacy and quite often your peace of mind.

Yes, most of them love it, which is why they do it. But that is precisely the point: with poor salaries we get the sorts of people who get off on the thrill and the kudos of being a village elder and who find those dubious things reward enough. It is too idealistic to say that those who go into politics shouldn’t do so for the money but for the public service factor. We’re not talking charity and volunteering here, so the financial compensation must be adequate.

The smaller the stakes, the more vicious the battles, and it is a particularly depressing thought that our political parties and members of parliament are tearing each other apart over an MP’s salary (not a minister’s salary, which is different) that is roughly what a new graduate earns as a starting salary in London.

European Union or not, our minds and spirit are still in Lilliput. I watch the scathing battle over these salary increases, and I can’t help thinking of starving people scrabbling for crumbs and killing each other to get at them. Whatever we like to think, we are inevitably the cultural and genetic descendents of desperate people fighting to stay alive on a barren, dangerous and inhospitable piece of rock, prepared to do each other in for a turnip.

This article is published in The Malta Independent today.