Life is rotten with a bad sheriff. His friends jump the queue. The rest wait for months. The good folks’ turn never comes as others keep getting ahead and waiting time gets longer. The sheriff’s friends can’t drive but still get their licence.
Accidents keep rising. Road injuries and deaths mount. But the sheriff and his deputies don’t care.
“Unless the vehicle is splattered with blood, he must pass,” one ordered. Another commented that “it’s his problem” about one driver who’d illicitly got his licence despite his gross inexperience.
In the sheriff’s town, the good folks are getting restless. The downtrodden have opened their eyes and realise their sheriff is a lying, rotten scoundrel who keeps bragging he’s just doing his job, that it’s the way the system works. After years of cheating his own townsfolk, the ground beneath the sheriff’s feet is shaking. The good folks know there’s only one way to restore justice and fairness to their town ‒ the rotten sheriff must go.
Everybody knows that the sheriff’s ways are wrong, immoral, corrupt and destructive, except the sheriff and his deputies. The sheriff insists he’s just helping the people when he’s inflicting hardship on the majority of them. He praises his deputies and their underlings who wrecked the lives of their townsfolk. He says he’s “within the parameters of the law” when he’s the biggest outlaw.
The sheriff’s in it, not for the town, but for himself. They don’t call it the Wild West for nothing.
In Malta’s wild west, Robert Abela insists there’s nothing wrong with fast-tracking driving tests for the chosen few. He maintains that when Ian Borg reminded Clint Mansueto about a candidate whose test was due the next day, he was only doing his job. He claimed: “it’s clear that nobody (from his customer care office) ever pushed anybody to commit any irregularity.”
“This is evidenced by the fact that there were some who were referred and named in those messages who failed their driving test,” Abela commented.
Abela’s argument is that since one, who Mansueto referred to as a “killer”, didn’t pass the test, then surely Abela’s customer care officers did nothing wrong. Since only the really bad referred candidates passed while one dreadfully dangerous candidate didn’t there was no criminal racket, Abela reasons.
“What the minister [Borg] was doing is how a minister is expected to operate,” Abela insisted. “Ministers, MPs and government entities have a sacred duty to help the people,” he maintained. “Every ministry from the OPM downwards has officials employed specifically to assist people irrespective of their political persuasion.”
So why did Ray Mizzi, Abela’s own customer care officer, comment “He probably isn’t with us, f**k him” about a person who requested ‘assistance’?
Abela is the only person who thinks there’s nothing wrong with the driving licence scandal. For everybody else, including the Malta Employers’ Association, it was “blatant corruption”.
According to the MEA, Abela’s shameless defence of the indefensible amounted to “a radical invitation to anarchy which encourages individuals and businesses to bypass what should be established trusted structures to either get fast-tracked to obtain what they are eligible for, or worse, to acquire entitlements which they should never have at the expense of others”.
Cycling advocacy NGO Rota were deeply alarmed. They condemned Labour’s illicit assistance of favoured individuals to pass their driving tests. They noted that “the consequences of placing unqualified drivers behind the wheel are nothing short of a catastrophe waiting to happen”. They urged authorities to revoke licences obtained illicitly.
The Malta Insurance Association want those who got their driving licences undeservedly to sit their driving test again.
Doctors for Road Safety expressed concern and want all such licences reviewed. They called for the necessary governance to ensure licences are only issued according to transparent, objective and standardised criteria that stand up to scrutiny.
Robert Abela nurtures a culture of corruption. He rewards crooks, he encourages them, he promotes them, he recruits them, he protects them- Kevin Cassar
The Malta Association of Public Health Medicine expressed its serious concern over the licensing racket and demanded an overhaul of the system and a complete re-evaluation of the licensing process.
Abela believes it’s just the way his political system works. But the MEA insists “this is not the way a political system should work at all”.
Why are you defending this abuse, Abela was asked. “We assist many people,” he replied, “even to perform medical tests.” Is that the next scandal to be exposed? Has Abela and his customer care officers been fast-tracking patients’ medical investigations too?
Abela’s ministers, customer care officers and officials were caught misbehaving badly. Instead of condemning the wrongdoing, Abela heaps them with praise. What to everybody else is evil, Abela calls “just doing their job”. And therein lies the problem.
Experts who study corruption always question why public officials misbehave.
The classical view holds that it’s because the rewards of misbehaving outweigh the punishment and the chances of getting caught. The ethical view holds that those public officials fail to understand the immorality of corrupt acts or why it’s wrong to give incompetent drivers a licence. They fail to realise they’re not “helping the people” but harming them.
The positivist reason holds that peer pressure and external forces push them to make corrupt decisions. The structural approach pins corruption on a culture that promotes bad behaviour usually because a crooked leader encourages underlings to misbehave – where corruption is normal, just their job, their political system.
It’s usually one or two of the above. In Abela’s Malta it’s all of the above.
Abela and his underlings misbehave because the rewards are huge – and they know they’ll never face justice with Abela’s police force.
Abela thinks it’s only right to “help” dangerous drivers get their licence, it’s right to “help” undeserving citizens get disability benefits – as long as he gets the votes and retains power. That’s the very definition of corruption – the abuse of public power for private gain.
The main reason for the pervasive rot is Abela. He nurtures a culture of corruption. He rewards crooks, he encourages them, he promotes them, he recruits them, he protects them.
Abela is our bad sheriff. And Malta that sad, rotten town.
Kevin Cassar is a professor of surgery.