Half the army awaits justice for individual grievances – despite the conclusion of procedures three years ago. Not to worry, a general election will resolve everything overnight. Thank goodness there’s one coming, probably as soon as November.
You’ll remember that, on the eve of the last general election four years ago, half the army (presumably the other half) was given a promotion. That potlatch claimed to be righting wrongs. It generated its own grievances. Many excluded soldiers reasonably claimed it was an injustice for them suddenly to become the subordinates of soldiers who, only days before the election, had been their juniors.
This coming election will now correct the 2017 correction. Patronage or justice? Whatever, it will pave the way for a new round of justice in 2026.
What will happen in the army will be a concentrated version of what will happen across the country. For much of the legislature, many Maltese will have experienced bureaucracy as victims, given the runaround, or being passed round “from Caiaphas to Pilate” as the saying goes.
As a general election beckons, however, the narrative shifts. A gust of miracles sweeps the land. Across the dusty offices of the state, bureaucrats who were blind to our suffering, now see; those who were deaf to our entreaties, now hear; those who would not utter a word on our behalf, now speak; and political lepers find they are no longer hideous in the sight of those who previously looked the other way.
Clearly, something’s wrong. But is this corruption? Or is it truly the righting of previous wrongs? Or, somehow, both?
Robert Kennedy said: “Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.” Fine. All that means, however, is that we should be careful what to pray for.
Take the Global Corruption Barometer published in June. That’s the study that showed that 62 per cent of EU citizens, on average, thought that corruption in government is a big problem. The figure for Malta was slightly above the average: two-thirds of Maltese (65 per cent), making us the 16th most corrupt (to be exact, most perceived to be corrupt) in the union.
The media still like to refer to one figure: the 33 per cent of Maltese who said they had used personal connections to get a government service in the previous year.
This figure is always cited as damning evidence of a system that’s corrupt with the active, willing connivance of ordinary people. Really? No doubt some people used personal connections to get what they didn’t deserve. But a look at some of the other numbers of the survey reveals a more complex picture.
Yes, a third of Maltese used personal connections but so did a quarter of Finns and of Danes and a fifth of Germans and Swedes. These were among the countries with the least perceived corruption – between 12 and 21 per cent for the Nordic countries and 34 per cent for Germany.
Perhaps the Nordics and Germans don’t know corruption when they see it. Or perhaps they’re aware – as some of the anti-corruption, gluten-free puritans in Malta are not – that you can use a personal connection to get what’s yours by right, where all the connection does is personalise an impersonal, opaque, inefficient, sometimes indifferent process.
The Maltese are not tolerant of corruption for pragmatic purposes- Ranier Fsadni
How credible is this interpretation? Well, here’s the number of Maltese who agreed that “a bit of (government) corruption” is all right “as long as it gets things done and delivers good results”: 12 per cent.
That’s three times more than Denmark (four per cent); two and a half times more than Sweden (five per cent); but only three percentage points more than Finland.
By the way, most Mediterranean EU member states were in Malta’s range (except Cyprus, Greece and Croatia). The states that, as a group, are relatively more tolerant of corruption, for pragmatic purposes, are the central European and Baltic states, ranging from 18 (Estonia) to 33 per cent (Lithuania), with Romania as an outlier at 53 per cent.
As reported, the Maltese are not tolerant of corruption for pragmatic purposes. Those who disagree that even a bit of corruption is acceptable are 77 per cent.
The striking difference between Malta and much of Europe lies elsewhere. The Maltese are eighth highest in fearing reprisals if they expose corruption – 56 per cent. Whereas that fear ranges from 12 to 26 per cent for Finland, Denmark, Germany and Sweden.
A low perceived level of corruption tended to go hand in hand with a low fear of reprisals. Maltese fear is high even when compared with countries with more perceived corruption (such as Poland, Hungary and Romania).
Not only is Maltese fear high. It coexists with a conviction that ordinary people can make a difference in the fight against corruption: 77 per cent, way above the EU average of 64 per cent.
In other words, fear of reprisals is probably suppressing civic activism on behalf of better governance.
These numbers suggest that one conventional picture of Maltese voters – that a majority are out to get what they can, by whatever means they can, morals and public ethos be damned – is mistaken.
A lot of media energy is also being expended to persuade Maltese voters on what they’re already persuaded. Voters do think they can make a difference. But they also want safety and insurance.
Back to what we should pray for. It’s not more moral voters.
We should be demanding pledges from politicians: that they will disband their online armies, which intimidate even minor forms of dissent; that whistleblowers will be protected; that serious corruption will lead to government blacklisting for companies (rather than continuing contracts and consultancies).
Until then, voters will adapt to the political ecology, irrespective of their values, and wish for a better Malta.