Politicians accept that to get elected they will have to satisfy individual requests for favours in return for their votes – the politician is complicit in a bribe by his constituent.

The Maltese suffer from two besetting sins: greed and hypocrisy. Hypocrisy, the claim to moral standards to which we do not then conform, may be explained, though not excused, as the direct reflection of our small island mentality and our Catholic roots.

Maltese greed, however, belongs in a league by itself. It manifests itself in a corrosive corruption that infects Malta’s body politic. As the most recent Corruption Perception Index by Transparency International reports, Malta lies 45th in the world rankings for corruption – at the bottom end of the European league table, with a bare pass mark of 56 per cent and still nowhere near our top dozen north European allies with an average score of 84 per cent.

A report on corruption in the European Union by the European Commission broadly supports these findings.

Over 60 per cent of those surveyed described corruption as being “part of Maltese culture” while 83 per cent “considered corruption to be a widespread problem”. Fifty three per cent thought Mepa officials to be most likely to accept a bribe, while 48 per cent indicated the judiciary.

Perhaps the most depressing aspect of the perception survey, however, was the response that over 70 per cent failed to do anything about corruption in Malta as they thought “nothing would happen” or because “everybody knows about it”.

This is a counsel of despair. It implies an acceptance of cheating or corruption in which everybody is prepared to join.

Civic responsibility is neither taught nor respected. The Maltese citizen, sheltering in his family bubble, feels no duty or ties of loyalty towards the State. It is born of an attitude that regards the State’s finances as ripe for plucking.

These surveys have the weight of history behind them. From the judiciary to politicians, to the police, to tradesmen and businessmen, to public officials of every kind, the number of cases of corruption exposed have come not in a trickle but a torrent.

A number of judges – the very epicentre of Malta’s judicial system – have been caught taking bribes or otherwise bringing their office into disrepute. Public officials in the VAT Department aided and abetted others in tax avoidance. Governments have connived at the stealing of public land by squatters. Cases of misappropriation of public funds have come to light in the Fisheries Department and of EU funds in the solar panels scheme. Government credit cards have been abused by Malta Air Traffic Services employees.

Enemalta, the organisation responsible for inflating Malta’s public debt by almost €1 billion, has been exposed as riddled by the most appalling mismanagement and corruption, including widespread electricity theft over many years. The smart meter racket is only the latest in a line of scandals involving this organisation.

The most scandalous, in a case which is still being pursued in the courts and through the Public Accounts Committee, involves alleged oil procurement extortion, amounting to many millions of euros annually, by a former Enemalta chairman with a private oil bunkering interest.

It was rife under previous Nationalist administrations and – despite all the promises to the contrary before the last election – has been endemic since last March

In a blatant and undeclared conflict of interest, another former Enemalta chairman enjoyed a business relationship with a major construction magnate when he was actively pursuing a multi-million euro tender for the construction of the extension to the power station.

Tax evasion is rife as regular amnesties to Maltese citizens with undeclared assets abroad amounting to millions of euros, in contravention of Exchange Control and Income Tax Acts, attest. Driving and mariners’ licences are issued to people not qualified to receive them in return for a bribe. Construction industry magnates and individual landowners and developers bribe planning authority officials. Public procurement tenders for government contracts go to contractors who donate generously to party funds.

These instances are but the tip of the corruption iceberg for it seems rare to find an area of public life which has not been tarnished by corruption.

A culture of corruption and lawlessness – the two are related – appears to permeate every aspect of our society in a spectrum which ranges from nepotism and clientelism to the wilful and largely unregulated law-breaking seen daily on our roads. It stretches to the bribery, embezzlement, theft, fraud and political and judicial abuse of power for private gain that ends with the recent Eurobarometer survey highlighting the corruption allegations that led to the resignation of Malta’s European Commissioner and which, it says, “intensified the debate on corruption in Maltese politics”.

Why is Malta so corrupt and what can be done? Why, as the experienced political commentator Michael Falzon so perceptively defined it, have swindling the State and corruption (the abuse of power for private gain) become a way of life in Malta?

The answer clearly lies in the way Maltese politics is conducted. It starts with nepotism, cronyism and clientelism, then seeps into every pore of political life. It was rife under previous Nationalist administrations and – despite all the promises to the contrary before the last election – has been endemic since last March under the new Labour government, with party apparatchiks filling virtually every public sector post, making the battle cry Malta Tagħna Lkoll ring hollow. Clientelism and the favouring of one person over another purely on grounds of political colour regardless of merit is the most pernicious and unscrupulous form of corruption. It is where corruption in Malta begins.

It leads ineluctably to the stage where even casting one’s vote has become a commodity for sale. Politicians accept without demur that to get elected they will have to satisfy individual requests for favours in return for their votes. The politician is complicit in a bribe by his constituent. Both are guilty. Neither bats an eyelid.

The start of corruption in our politics is so insidious that neither the voter nor the politician realises where the slippery slope leads. Well, it leads to undeserved social benefits, to preference and promotion in the workplace, to job placements, to tax avoidance and, ultimately, directly to the abuse of public power, undue influence and impropriety to benefit private or party political interests.

It is a simple progression thereafter to the political parties making electoral promises which they know they cannot keep. It leads to a gullible electorate becoming more jaundiced with politics and the widespread acceptance among businessmen and construction magnates that funding political parties is the only way to wield influence over public policy.

Rampant cronyism and clientelism, by both the Nationalist and Labour administrations, has produced a vicious circle in which politicians are expected to meet entirely unrealistic expectations. Governments are then punished for failing to fulfil them. And, when they get into power, the corruption manifests itself in the use of influence and public power to benefit private interests or the use of personal connections to obtain favours.

Thus, corruption becomes the rule rather than the exception. This undermining of the political process invites public sector corruption. It leads to a loss of trust in politics and the public institutions of the State, weakening not only our faith in good governance but also the reputation of the country in one of its most important economic sectors, financial services, where probity is key.

What is to be done about it? Three key actions are urgently needed: political, institutional and moral.

I shall expand on proposals for cutting out the cancer of corruption in Maltese society in my column next week.