While researching an entirely different issue, I came across a Zimbabwean website which, for obvious reasons was exploring the issue of the country being a kleptocracy. Immediately it read like a description of political and economic life in Malta today.
The site went on to describe the term kleptocracy (from the Greek, ‘I steal’) as applying to a state in which the powerful take advantage of widespread corruption to extend their personal wealth and power. They actively pursue a strategy of embezzling state and public funds at the expense of the wider population.
Routinely, this is done without even the pretence of honest public service and eventually without even minimal embarrassment or apology.
The site offered an extended list of kleptocratic characteristics including the fact that political power is concentrated so that the elite holds effective control over government, state institutions and procedures. Additionally, programs intended to benefit society are subverted in the interests of the elite and routinely state institutions are used to squash dissent.
Nothing in the above description will be news to Maltese people, even to those who unswervingly celebrate their party and its anointed leader, come what may.
However, the increasingly urgent question is why so many ‘other’ Maltese continue to accept (or more likely choose to ignore) this reality allowing themselves and their neighbours to be fleeced at every turn?
Clearly maintaining current levels of embezzlement of public funds (and by implication European taxpayer funds) requires micro and macro- management. Malta’s small size greatly facilitates this, with no location or community too distant to escape. Malta’s transactional politics make manipulation all the easier.
Media management is crucial. A proactive and aggressive hostility towards independent media and critics plays a key role. Reading much of Malta’s popular media is routinely a stomach-churning experience.
As with other kleptocracies, the government routinely deploys a narrow and myopic nationalism directed against critics, outsiders and ‘foreignness’.
International critics, the EU, its institutions, the Council of Europe and even the UN can be attacked if they threaten elite agendas or are deemed to question Malta’s ‘integrity’.
But the most vicious attacks are reserved for any form of local opposition (deemed ‘traitorous’), most disgustingly in the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia and the labyrinthine political and legal manoeuvrings since.
Central to the continuity of Malta’s kleptocracy is a public culture that actively chooses to ignore or to participate in illegality at every turn. Disregard for the law and its principles is second nature for many, so much so that it is deemed ‘normal’ even desirable.
As we face another election in which the outcome seems a foregone conclusion – ‘more of the same please’ - it is worth taking stock and discussing the question of what is to be done. What can be done?
As part of such a discussion, it may be helpful to remind ourselves that Malta’s kleptocracy is not immune to external and internal pressures, pressures that have brought other kleptocracies to an end. For example, European and international scrutiny will continue as Malta’s current behaviour threatens international rules and agreements (investment, passports, funds etc.).
The scramble to address Moneyval issues illustrates the point, while reviews of Malta’s use of EU funds is set to become another.
Internally the regime is visibly creaking as its beneficiaries jostle their egos, agendas and opportunities for plunder. Additionally, Malta is no longer simply divided into two dominant political camps but is now much more diverse and complex. Improving levels of education and increased political literacy will accentuate this trend.
Malta’s civil society and its independent media remain strong, despite increasing state-sponsored assaults on both. The country’s voting patterns are not likely to remain static and unchanging.
The future trajectory of the country’s politics is by no means determined, despite outward appearances.