Decades after acquiring national independence, there are former colonies that still blame their ex-colonisers for their problems and shortcomings. Unwilling to break free from the culture of victimhood, they continue to hold others responsible for their own failings.
Writing in The East African (May 23), Wale Akinyemi says: “I do not seek to absolve colonialists of their actions but… continually laying blame solely on the colonialists for our predicament is an exercise in futility. It is imperative we reassess our mindset and discard the inclination to assign blame externally. With someone to blame, we evade accountability and remain in denial...”
In our case, the tendency to blame our former colonisers when things go wrong is not as strong but we are conveniently defensive when sanctions are imposed on us or when we are criticised internationally for our shortcomings. Instead of facing facts on the ground and addressing them, we are apt to say that others are picking on us because we are small and vulnerable.
It is true that we live in a world of double standards, where big countries can get away with murder while smaller ones cannot. But it is not healthy for us to find excuses where we have faults that we can and must address.
In his novel Il Gattopardo, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa shocked many with his brutal assessment of the “new” Sicily born out of Italy’s unification, where, according to him, the new ruling class preserved the worst characteristics of the old and, because of their “tenacious greed and avarice”, swallowed up Sicily like “a pack of jackals”.
His character, Don Fabrizio tells Chevalley that the worst Sicilian defect is smugness: “… the Sicilians never want to improve for the simple reason that they think themselves perfect; their vanity is stronger than their misery.”
To what extent does this apply to us Maltese?
Almost 200 years after the destructive raid in 870 had reduced Malta to “a mass of rubble without people”, around 1048, Malta was repopulated mostly by people from Sicily and, possibly, some from Tunisia. Five hundred years later, the priest Jean Quintin (1530 to 1533) described the Maltese as having “a Sicilian character with a mixture of African…”
This does not mean we should put our failures down to our genetic make-up as southerners. The well-known Italian proverb “Tutto il mondo e’ paese”, “it’s the same all the world over”, attests to the fact that there are no substantial differences between different political and social realities. There are common problems and evils in every corner of the globe.
Independent regulators needed
While this is true, the argument should not be used to justify clientelism, corruption, political impunity, weak law enforcement and poor public morals. Nor must we change only in reaction to external pressure.
External pressure on its own does not change society and the way people behave. On the contrary, if unfair and discriminatory, such external pressure can push a society to become defensive, refusing to address its real problems and simply complaining that “the foreigners are picking on us”.
Is it too much to expect Labour to set up something similar to the Board of Vigilance and Discipline that it set up in the late 1980s to deal with ethical issues of political corruption?- Evarist Bartolo
Real deep changes need to come from within our own society. Passing laws and setting up structures to improve democratic and accountable governance are not enough. To operate with integrity and independence from external influences, the people running them must have these qualities.
Taking away the appointment of the judiciary from the prime minister was a step in the right direction. We must do the same for all regulatory bodies. To help them function with the required independence from external influences they should be put under the Office of the President.
As we approach the 50th anniversary of the republic next year and the year of the appointment of the next president, the government and the opposition should seriously consider appointing a person like our first President of the Republic, Sir Anthony Mamo, who does not come from a life in politics. They should also agree to put our regulatory bodies under the Office of the new President.
We must ensure a proper and transparent relationship between business and the government. We must not allow for the disproportionate influence of well-connected business people over the decisions made by the government. This produces only the outer shell of a democracy; on the face of it people choose their representatives once every five years when, in reality, our decisions are disproportionately influenced by unaccountable people in business.
It is dangerous to have a concentration of power that enmeshes together the business sector, the political sector, the judicial sector, the police and all the regulatory authorities. The issue goes beyond any individual.
You can’t say that, once that individual person is no longer in power, the problem itself will be gone. No. Individuals come and go but structures and cultures persist. Apart from devolving power, we need to continue supporting those parts of the local media that carry out serious investigative work and a strong civil society, to keep the people in power on their toes.
The political parties themselves need to clean up their act. Following the benefit fraud scandal, is it too much to expect the Labour Party to resurrect itself and set up something similar to the Board of Vigilance and Discipline that it set up in the late 1980s to deal with ethical issues of political corruption?
We need something even more effective. It was a bad idea to remove that board because it sent the message that ‘anything goes’. We are human beings: weak, imperfect and fragile. As a politician, I felt the need to be protected even from myself, at times. It is important to feel there’s always a spotlight on you. Because, let’s face it, sometimes we slip up even where there is that spotlight… let alone when there isn’t.
Evarist Bartolo is a former Labour foreign and education minister.