If future historians ever want to capture our experience of the many corruption scandals of our time, they might find it helpful to think in terms of vintages.

In 2014, the yield and quality of scandal was markedly different from the one in 2019. For many, the 2016 Panamagate scandal was ready for immediate drinking. But the Vitals scandal, first revealed by Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2015, needed eight years to become widely appreciated.

As with wine, it is the entire environment that makes a scandal. If we’re going to appreciate the 2024 vintage, we need to compare it with its predecessors.

Simplifying, we need to begin with 2013. Corruption and sleaze predate that year but, in 2013, our capacity for scandal had a re-set. In general, the country acquired a greater tolerance for sleaze because the new Joseph Muscat government seemed energetic and competent. It forgave what it would not have forgiven the preceding Gonzi government at its fag end.

Sleaze was discounted. It was justified as cutting corners and charging a small price for effectiveness. You could learn about how the Vitals deal was being stitched up and still not be scandalised because you did not believe the ultimate aim was the pillaging of the health system.

After Panamagate, things changed. For many people, sleaze could no longer be separated from scandal. Panama made clear that money laundering was the core business of senior members of the administration.

The Panama revelations were at first denounced vociferously as a lie. It’s a contrast with today – where scandalous revelations are often ignored by the authorities or accused, rather than denied.

In 2016, it was still possible to deny a scandal by saying that it was completely alien to Malta. Scandalous revelations were the fictions of journalists who were envious of the government’s competence and success.

And when, in 2017, Caruana Galizia was assassinated, it was insisted that the country in which she was blown up was not “the real Malta”, even though the murder was real.

At the end of 2019, we had a new vintage. Scandal was no longer denied. But it was attributed to a few rotten apples that needed to be discarded.

Even though it is less than five years ago, it was before the exposure of scandals such as those of driving licences, disability benefits and ID cards, all of which required a network of accomplices.

Today, there is no talk of single rotten apples. It’s accepted that the rot is an infestation.

This is the first characteristic of the 2024 vintage of scandal: the sense that it is difficult to imagine that there is a single senior person in government, all the way to the top, who is not compromised.

In the fifth year of Robert Abela’s premiership, all pretence that the government can be cleaned up is gone. People can only be recycled and shifted from post to post. But they cannot be removed. They know too much.

Today, there is no talk of single rotten apples. It’s accepted that the rot is an infestation- Ranier Fsadni

The second characteristic of the 2024 vintage is that the revelations make ordinary people feel unsafe. Earlier vintages made for weaker scandals because it was often difficult to show what difference they made to ordinary people’s lives.

The link became easier to show when houses began to collapse and people died as a result of deregulation and lack of enforcement. Even then it was still possible to think of tragic bad luck.

Not any more. Unlike a decade ago, corruption is now twinned to massive incompetence and betrayal of public duty. Everywhere, it seems that public office is a platform for the pursuit of corrupt private enterprise.

The state no longer fulfils many of its basic functions. IDs, security, health and serenity at home are no longer guaranteed. You can’t be sure your legal identity has not been stolen or that your property does not have a set of ghosts registered on it.

Power cuts could destroy a week’s shopping or kill an elderly relative during a heatwave. The next road hog could be driving so dangerously because they obtained their licence fraudulently.

In 2024, a corruption scandal is usually a reminder that the fundamentals of life and quality of life cannot be taken for granted.

The third feature of the 2024 vintage is paradoxical. Scandal is routine. We expect each week to reveal more hidden truths. But, instead of motivating us to act, the revelations are generating a sense of helplessness.

It is, in a way, understandable. The sheer extent of the rot makes the task of cleaning up seem impossible. The helplessness expresses an inability to see how we can ever set the house in order.

We have yet to see anyone punished. The fact that the perpetrators remain in place, or are shifted elsewhere, indicates an environment of impunity.

But, in another sense, the helplessness is unjustified. The wheels of justice are turning, slowly, in the courts. We have yet to see what cracks, in the solidarity of crooks, will be revealed under cross examination.

Above all, the 2024 vintage of scandal teaches us what progress in attitude to scandal has taken place. We no longer deny or minimise the obvious. We are more aware of how corruption can directly threaten our lives.

That should give us a basis for hope, a reason to drop the mask of cynicism and discover, in our sense of vulnerability, the basis of dignity, civic solidarity and action.