In our 50 years of independence, has there been any week, other than this one, which has seen all the country’s major institutions dealt a major blow to their credibility? To their very claim to stand for justice and liberty?
As everyone would have noted, the most scandalous aspect of the allegations being made against Fr Charles Fenech op is not the allegations in themselves. If they are true, they point to abuse that’s terrible, tawdry and, in the nature of things, also difficult to eradicate completely.
The bigger scandal, rather, is that it has taken the Church machinery eight years (and counting) to ponder the charges. Well might the bishops now condemn the delay and let the blame fall on the Response Team. But, throughout, where were the bishops themselves? Whichever way you look at it, their hands-off approach has opened the institution itself to the charges of not knowing the meaning of justice or person-centred care or commitment to either.
Meanwhile, the allegations concerning Leisure Clothing are even worse. If it is true that, over three decades, the factory has been run on the backs of workers who are in debt-bondage, then the web of corruption – and collusion in virtual slavery is corruption – includes every government minister, civil servant, politician, trade unionist and policeman who knew about it.
We have to wait to ascertain if the charges are true and to what extent. But I have yet to come across anyone – personally or on the comments boards – who is convinced that they cannot possibly be true. On the contrary, the allegations are disturbing because they sound plausible. At most, we might refuse to believe that this or that individual politician could possibly have known; but we are prepared to allow that our institutions, collectively, could let such abuse take place for years.
The proving (or disproving) of the allegations will be fundamental. Truth matters. But so do perceptions.
What the two episodes say about our perception of our fundamental institutions of State and civil society is that we do not trust them to do the right thing.
Our reactions are of a piece with the country’s slide down the perception of corruption index. The perceptions are not triggered by a mere crisis of leadership. We face a crisis of institutions, the likes of which we did not have 10 years ago.
Let us not underestimate this crisis. It is not something that we can just muddle through. Such is the scale that, before we ask ourselves what can be done to reverse the slide, we need to ask whether we can actually stop the rot.
There are various pressures contributing to the malaise. I would highlight four factors, in particular, that look set to increase public distrust and loss of confidence.
First, the second decade of EU membership is, so far, seeing an economic shift: from using membership to grow new industries to using membership itself as a commodity. We are preparing for the winding down of EU development funds by re-establishing ourselves as a rentier State.
This time round, we won’t be renting out military bases. We will instead be renting out the benefits of European Union membership – to individuals who buy our passport and States, like China, that buy up a significant portion of our debts.
Irrespective of whether you approve or disapprove of this shift, in itself, one result will be less transparency and accountability. These rents will increase our dependence on individuals and powers that are unaccountable to our system of governance – particularly if the details of Malta’s transactions with them remain outside the public domain. This is a situation that is ripe for conspiracy theories.
We face a crisis of institutions, the likes of which we did not have 10 years ago
Second, there is the continuing pillaging of public goods. There is no public good nowadays – certainly not the environment – whose worth is not measured and judged in terms of the money it would get on the market. The result has been a negotiable price on everything. Public ownership increasingly means a share of the spoils of sale.
The public interest increasingly seems like the sum of private interests rather than a common good.
A society with a tattered sense of the common good is a cynical one, with no faith in institutions that purport to serve the whole, particularly if the institutions are themselves increasingly represented by the personal decision of a minister.
Third, there is the increasingly overt presidentialism of our political system. My own view is that the system, in practice, was always more presidential (with the prime minister being the de facto president) than the Constitution admits. There need be no difficulty, in principle, with a formal constitutional shift to a presidential system.
But what is happening now is an accelerating and informal shift. It is recognised explicitly but casually. It comes with no redrawing of the checks and balances, say, in the relationship between the executive and the legislative branches. The result – even as we speak – is a centralisation of power in Castille.
The principle of subsidiarity and the devolution of power were meant to maximise popular participation in decision-making. Centralisation without oversight will transform that into a patron-client system. That might help individual access and prove more ‘flexible’ but it will breed faith in patrons not institutions.
Fourth, there is the paradox of information. Our society thrives on it. We measure our liberty in part by the freedom of our access to information. But, around the world, what has happened is that the State’s power to access information – including our private phone calls, e-mails and browsing – has grown exponentially without a corresponding growth in oversight.
In Malta, this condition is exacerbated by the difficulty of obtaining information even through the established channels of oversight. The media sometimes seem resigned rather than outraged. Whatever the reasons, suspicions and cynicism can only grow when governments are reluctant to tell us what they’re up to.
After 10 years of EU membership, Malta finds itself in a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, it has recognised civil rights that were off the political agenda when we joined. On the other, faith in the institutions that protect all civil rights is at its lowest ebb.
The reason for the paradox is not difficult to understand. The political, economic and social freedoms of Europe depend on certain institutional safeguards – like separation of powers, subsidiarity, freedom of information and a rich conception of public goods. Without these safeguards, there is no reason to trust institutions. If they cannot be checked, they can only be rumour mills.
ranierfsadni@europe.com