Standing up to corruption

Mayors are fal­ling like dominos. As accusations of cor- ­­­­­­rup­tion and financial mismanagement are levelled against mayors from different towns, you wonder if local councils have become bribery depots instead of innocuous little committees taken up with suggesting street names, giving bumpy roads the occasional lick of tarmac and organising exchanges with remote Sicilian hamlets.

Police officers are being investigated for allegedly being on the take, and tipping off convicted criminals. There has been an allegation about a political party official directing a mayor to choose one tenderer instead of another.

These recent incidents come in the wake of the VAT scandal and the perennial mess that is Transport Malta. The perception that corruption is rife in Malta – a perception which seems to increase every year, according to the Transparency International Index report – seems to be vindicated.

We may be a few nautical miles south of Italy and Sicily and not be subjected to the same displays of mafia violence, but the general feeling is that corruption is widespread here as well.

Palms need to be greased to speed up transactions, donations to political parties have to be made to keep them sweet, and to secure public works tenders, jobs and consultancies.

Under-qualified constituents are elevated to secure government jobs by their patron politician and they continue warming desks within ministries long after they have repaid their debt in the currency of votes or canvassing.

Despite this constant backdrop of corruption, things seem to be boiling over and many are thinking that it is time to stop the rot, to root out perpetrators, and have a general clean up.

Before we get all excited at the prospect of having our very own version of Mani Pulite, I’ll remind you that we’ve been here before.

In 1987, following the tumultuous years of socialist rule, the electorate wanted to shake free of the Labour Party and its complicity or tacit approval of certain flagrant forms of corruption. Permits, television sets and even financial survival depen­ded on paying ‘sweeteners’.

Having promised justice not patronage, the Nationalist government was obliged to make good on its promises.

It set up the Permanent Commission against Corruption and we all waited for the corrupt lot to be brought to justice, so we could have the satisfaction of knowing that Drittijiet mhux pjaċiri was not just another slogan. Well, we waited and waited, perhaps better sustained by imported chocolate, but it’s not as if there was anything remotely approaching a clean-out.

Let’s assume that this was not possible because of the more pressing need for national reconciliation in a deeply polarised country.

Still, this did not excuse the incoming Nationalist government from doing its utmost to prevent a recurrence of the corrupt climate of the 1980s, albeit without the physical violence.

Alternation of government should not mean that a new lot get a chance to bury their snout in the public trough, or that clientelistic networks should now comprise blue-eyed boys instead of Labour supporters.

And if we decried the lack of transparency under old Labour, why has this been forgotten now? Wouldn’t it be desirable to know who is pumping money to the PN and the PL and who the major parties are in hock to?

Somehow I don’t think many people are very exercised about this and similar issues, preferring to latch on to more tangible benefits (such as an electoral promise to reduce the tax burden) of voting for one party or the other. Then there is the high tolerance towards certain types of corruption.

Hardly anybody bats an eyelid when appointments to public office are made on the basis of political allegiance or family ties. Conflicts of interest do not seem to be unduly worrying to the majority of the population.

Clientelism and patronage are dismissed with a shrug and the Bettino Craxi justification of: “Così fan tutte”. Alternatively, they are described as networks which are present in every society. The tribalistic mentality of many voters contributes to political corruption as they are willing to excuse wrongdoing committed by exponents or politicians of “their” party as long as it keeps the other party out of office.

Moreover, there is the nauseatingly lazy approach of those who cannot find the backbone to stand up and be counted and criticise those who want change as ‘quixotic’.

I suspect that the lack of sustained interest in anti-corruption measures and a certain fatalistic attitude is what perpetuates corrupt practices in society.

This was also the conclusion reached by the Italian scholar Alberto Vanucci in his recently published study about the legacy of mani pulite. After listing the many factors which led to the widespread investigation, he concluded that none of them – not the media nor the reform of anti-corruption institutions – could result in lasting change if the public will to oppose corruption was absent.

He wrote, “The mani pulite inquiries courageously exposed, but could not solve the issue of widespread corruption in Italy. An enduring improvement in the quality of public ethics would have required the specific interest and consequent action of leading political actors, or strong and enduring social support for an anti-corruption agenda. Neither condition, however, has ever been realised.”

His words are an apt if depressing description of the situation in Malta too.

cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt