An example of why partisan appointments are so very wrong

Mrs Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando II (left) – she gets to decide on the ARMS payment plans for the Labour Party and the Nationalist Party

Meritocracy or the lack of it, and cronyism, are only two factors. Another fact is the scope for abuse, or even just the perception of it, which doesn’t allow people to feel comfortable.

We have been told that the Labour Party and the Nationalist Party, both of which owe huge amounts for water and electricity, are discussing payment plans with the billing agency ARMS.

And who has been made CEO of that agency, and is ultimately responsible for approving those plans or not? Why yes, it’s Carmen Ciantar, who is still technically Mrs Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando Mk II.

She is a member of the Ghaqda Nisa Laburisti and was a prominent campaigner for the Labour Party in the last general election, regularly positioned carefully behind Joseph Muscat on a rotating basis with the woman who turned out to be her nemesis, Lara Boffa.

So is Carmen Ciantar likely to be independent and impartial in her working out of payment plans for the two political parties? Even if she somehow manages to be that way despite the fact that she is a Labour Party campaigner and activist and owes her job to Labour, we are going to think that she hasn’t been.

Ditto in her working out of a payment plan for the Nationalist Party, which is now in the rather awkward position of not really being able to criticise her actions lest she call in payment – the same situation, incidentally, as pertains with the prime minister’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri, who is a major creditor of the Nationalist Party. The PN is handicapped in its democratic duty to pursue him, too – and his role is far more significant than that of the second woman to run out on Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando.