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Are ministers required to be full time?
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David Eade
Last week an email arrived in my inbox from Mark Ashbey who had posted on the Politiqueo page on Facebook – Where is Gilbert? This of course referred to Gilbert Lucudi and quoted an article from Panorama’s “Political Notebook”.
The piece queried the political whereabouts of Lucudi who had seemingly slipped off the GSLP’s leadership challenge and some say has kept a low profile in his transport portfolio.
Well Lucudi is quite capable of answering for himself. However he and many other people involved in Gibraltar’s politics are young men with families to support. Lucudi is a lawyer which to many means wealth but of course lawyers only become wealthy by working and not just holding a law degree. So you can understand when family comes first and politics has, for a time at least, to take second place.
I discussed this situation with Dr Joseph Garcia who has himself had to take a decision on how to balance his business, personal and political life. He told me: “There is no requirement in Gibraltar for Government or Opposition Members to be full time. During the days of the AACR Governments, for example, from 1972 until 1988, all Government Ministers bar one were part-time. Some would tend to their Ministries in the morning and then to their other interests in the afternoon. The only full time Minister was Sir Joshua Hassan’s deputy Adolfo Canepa who had to resign from his post as a teacher in order to contest a general election.
“When Joe Bossano came into Government with the GSLP in 1988, he established the present convention that Government Ministers should be full time. This was continued with the GSD, even though Government Ministers, for example Joe Holliday, have had private business interests. I recall Caruana once defining full time as being in the 9am to 5pm sense and not in the sense that Government work was all that a Government Minister should do. There is a Register of Members Interests in Parliament where all MPs are supposed to declare their private interests.”
Ministers obviously have a government job to do but what about opposition members?
Garcia explained: “In the Opposition, there is no requirement or indeed even a convention that Members have to be full time. Joe Bossano is a full time member of the Opposition who dedicates himself to politics only as does Charles Bruzon and also myself. The other four members of the Opposition are lawyers and balance their political career with this.”
But surely the workload is heavy even for opposition members?
“You have to bear in mind that the Gibraltar Parliament does not sit on a continuous daily basis like other similar institutions in other parts of the world. The agenda and the meetings are driven by the Government and this starts with questions.
"There have been three meetings of Parliament for questions in 2010, in February, June and September. These start with question time and when questions are over we then move onto Government business mainly legislation. These sessions then get adjourned to different dates again and again for more legislation until a meeting ends sine die which means that the next meeting will start with questions again.
"However, all Opposition Members have to prepare for sessions of Parliament, particularly for question-time and the presentation or discussion of Government legislation. There are also surgeries with constituents conducted practically on a daily basis as well as other party business which may arise.”
So how does Dr Joseph Garcia balance his act?
“I used to run a family business that had been established in Gibraltar since 1982 selling office equipment and computers. It became impossible to balance the business, the politics and a young family so a few years ago I took the decision to divest myself from the business and concentrate on my political and parliamentary work alone. This is all I am doing at present.”
One of the young lawyers on the opposition benches is the GSLP’s Fabian Picardo so what is his view on balancing a career with politics? He said: “Balancing any job and politics is not easy; and a job as demanding as the law is particularly difficult to reconcile with the demands of political activity but it has been done very successfully in the past by Sir Joshua, Peter Montegriffo and others, so I don’t complain.
"The important thing is to be available to people (whether party members or citizens generally, whoever they may support). I think I am, insofar as is reasonable and possible, available to anyone who wants to see me and will continue to be, whatever post the people decide I should hold in future.”
17-12-10
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