Why now?

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George Pullicino, a Nationalist MP, is writing in his today’s opinion that the declaration of assets of ministers and parliamentary secretaries was made compulsary by a Nationalist government 25 years ago to have a full transparency even about the private finances of those who hold public office. Furthermore, in the view of the recent declarations of assets of the PL ministers, he proposes the introduction of a commissioner having the faculty of monitoring the declaration of assets made by a member of Parliament and/or minister.
It is surprising that his proposal is coming in this point in time and that it had been not introduced during the last 25 years of Nationalist governence. His comments on the asset declaration of certain members of Parliament is certainly misplaced when one remembers the forgotten Swiss bank account declaration made by former Nationalist minister Dr Austin Gatt.

The asset declaration as introduced 25 years ago sort of reminds me of a peep show, and per se does not enforce real transparency. The asset declarations are futile, it is more important for a democratic society to have a declaration of business involvements in form of share holdings, directorships, etc of publicly elected members of Parliament and parliamentary secretaries in order to reveal and prevent conflict of interests which might influence proper governmence.

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