The questions come thick and fast and in increasing numbers. The more enquiring and insistent they become, the more embarrassing, even mortifying, it becomes to try to answer them meaningfully. 

Over the past decade, I have become used to the ability of many Maltese people to be neither shocked nor embarrassed by what goes on daily around them. 

In fundamental ways, Maltese society has become inured to its rapidly deteriorating condition (a situation by no means unique to Malta). This condition of ‘abnormality’ - this Maltese ‘virus’ - has become routine, familiar, ‘normalised’, and even celebrated despite the damage it inflicts.

It appears that very many Maltese people individually, collectively, and institutionally have developed viral ‘antibodies’ and are experts in ignoring it or simply deeming it irrelevant to life. At the official level, Malta is indeed ‘world class’ - in verbal vacuity and ducking and dodging - as society becomes oblivious to the needs, rights, and contexts of others.

This condition is profoundly damaging for Malta domestically but when transposed internationally, it becomes increasingly inimical to the country’s needs and image in the world. The wound of approved corruption is routinely deemed congenital in Malta and is a source of deep embarrassment to those who genuinely care about the country.

Two recent events highlighted the condition graphically.   

At the beginning of May, the High Court in Ireland awarded €3.1 million in damages to a man severely injured when hit by a car in Sliema.  He suffered traumatic brain and other injuries and remains severely disabled. The accident and its consequences have been life-changing for David Cooley, made more distressing by several issues. 

His solicitor alleged that the car driver had been five times over the alcohol limit when arrested. He further asserted that there had been no effective prosecution of the crime and no communication from the police service in Malta or the Justice Ministry (who now claim the case is concluded, with the defendant receiving a conditional discharge).

Observers of Maltese news at home and abroad will not be surprised by this, being aware of similar behaviour and outcomes (often with similar or even fatal results for the victims) in the cases of German teenager Mike Mansholt, the deaths of two people in a ‘hop on, hop off’ bus accident in 2018, the murder of Lassana Cisse and the death of Miriam Pace in 2020.   

Additionally, the ongoing scandals around the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia deepen this ‘Maltese virus’ and its attendant conditions even further.

These events (and the surrounding attitudes and behaviours) have been extensively reported internationally to Malta’s cost. The questions they have generated are almost impossible to answer without recourse to lazy stereotypical assertions about the country, its people and its legal system as being both historically and hopelessly corrupt.

But the questions cannot be brushed aside – they are clearly legitimate (and are constantly posed by many Maltese themselves). Where is Malta’s police force and legal system in all of this? Why can’t the most basic policing and legal accountability be enforced? 

Have these foundations of a democratic society really been hijacked or muzzled by political and economic interests? Why do Maltese people put up with the current situation? While many in Maltese society (especially online) are often quick to point fingers at others on similar questions, they remain resolutely ambivalent or simply silent when challenged in their own backyard.

This finger-pointing, shrugging of shoulders and blame-shifting reached truly embarrassing levels during the recent visit to Malta of Laura Codruța Kövesi, the EU’s Chief Prosecutor. Last October, she met with the National Audit Office, the Commissioner of Police, the Attorney General and the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit.  

In her subsequent and very public reporting to the EU parliament, she noted that after these discussions, she was unable to identify the Maltese institution responsible for detecting financial crime. She also recorded that nobody could provide her with answers on ongoing and previous fraud investigations.

This (and the cases cited above) should be sources of deep embarrassment for the Maltese state and society, but not so. Shoulder shrugging, silence and smirking remain the dominant responses with an unspoken agenda of ‘stupid foreigners’.

Malta’s utter disregard for the damage its behaviour and institutions inflict on others as well as on itself should be mortifying but sadly isn’t.

Needless to remark, it shouldn’t and doesn’t have to be this way, the ‘Maltese virus’ is a condition and like all conditions, it can be treated – if the will is there to do so. And there lies the challenge.