“I visited hundreds of homes in my electoral district. I met Mr X, Y, Z. I met all kind of misters and missuses but I never met a Mr or Mrs or a Ms Common Good. I carefully combed the electoral registers. I met all sorts of names and surnames. No one was named Common Good.”

Judge for yourselves whether this statement by a politician I know is a cynical or a realistic assessment of the situation. This statement, if correct, is a damning assessment of Maltese society describing it as a society where individual good trumps the common good.

Before rushing into judgement consider this incident.

A few days before the 2013 election, together with a few others I was having lunch with a sitting minister. The head of secretariat of that ministry was also present. Poor guy, he hardly ate anything. He was constantly answering calls from people wanting to trade their votes for pjaċiri (favours). The request that flabbergasted all of us was made by a woman boasting possession of 30 votes.  She wanted to exchange these for the promotion of her daughter from a cleaner to a nurse! He could not believe his ears.

Whether this attitude of exchanging votes for pjaċiri is widespread or not (a present minister recently said about 20 per cent of constituents expect such help) it still causes problems to the democratic process and harms the common good. However, one should beware of an attitude that considers the personal good and the common good as irreconcilable enemies.

On September 2020, Pope Francis said “that each person’s true good is a common good, not only individual, and, vice versa, the common good is a true good for the person”. The operative phrase in that sentence is “each person’s true good”.

The problem arises when what is sought for is not what is rightfully due. The ask for a promotion from cleaner to nurse is an instance of something which is not rightfully due.

Labour co-opted but not elected MP Oliver Scicluna is justifiably shocked by the attempt of some voters to get undue favours in exchange for their votes. This kind of corruption of the common good should be resisted. However, such requests do not represent the worst enemies of the common good.

The corruption committed by some big businessmen in cahoots with certain politicians, for example, is a far worse offender.

Scicluna will be credible only if, besides berating the corruption of the ‘small fish’,  he will go after the corruption of the sharks.

A woman was in possession of 30 votes and wanted to exchange these for the promotion of her daughter from a cleaner to a nurse- Fr Joe Borg

Perhaps a speech about the web of corruption shrouding the privatisation of hospitals, Electrogas, the Quad, certain projects at St Vincent de Paul, the Montenegro windfarms, the plum jobs given to the klikka people et cetera and et cetera would be a praiseworthy sequel.

The problem is that the country is so mired in corruption that many are fatigued reading about it. Almost every morning when I click on the electronic copy of this newspaper, I find the revelation of a new scandal splashed on the front page. Nowadays, I must make an effort to read such reports. News is about what is new but when corruption becomes the order of the day it feels like ordinary stuff and almost not newsworthy.

The ordinary Joe Bloggs continually sees many making pigs of themselves from the state trough. Is it surprising that, if he cannot put his snout in as well, he would beg to eat at least the morsels that fall from the table of the powerful?

There are, however, other forms of corrupters of the common good. The cancel culture, the belief that truth does not exist, that everyone has her own truth, that all opinions are equally valid are some of them.

They are as insidious, nay more, than the corruption that involves the stealing of millions of euros. Such contemporary cultural perversions steal values more important than money.

During the coronavirus pandemic, for example, this attitude that truth does not exist made many believe baseless information or poorly documented facts as if they were their truth. The virus was the only beneficiary.

In the cancel culture, a modern form of ostracism, someone is thrust out of social or professional circles – whether it be online, on social media or in person. Those subject to this ostracism are said to have been ‘cancelled’.

On January 10, Pope Francis lambasted the cancel culture in an address to the members of the diplomatic corps accredited to the Vatican. He said that the cancel culture “under the guise of defending diversity, ends up cancelling all sense of identity, with the risk of silencing positions that defend a respectful and balanced understanding of various sensibilities”.

Even in Malta the “dangerous one-track thinking” of the cancel culture movement (to quote Pope Francis) is gaining ground and there is an attempt to cancel aspects of our Christian heritage and to consider as verboten Christian positions on a number of ethical issues.

The small fish are not the worst offenders but they have a bigger contribution than the big fish to reverse such negative developments.

As the American political pundit, Alan Keyes, used to say: “Our leaders will serve the common good with better laws and better actions only when we serve it first, by casting better votes.”