This will hardly be the first year to end with special appeals from the great and the good for the Maltese to seek unity over division and to tone down the escalating language of political vituperation. But can we at least try to make it the first year in which we keep track of the calendar during which the tempers rose?

In brief, the background is this. By last month, a Malta Independent/iSurvey poll showed that almost half the interviewees (47 per cent) believed the government is corrupt, while 13.4 per cent were undecided.

Of those convinced of government corruption, there figured 80 per cent of those who voted for the Nationalist Party in 2013. But almost a quarter of those who voted Labour (22 per cent) in 2013 also believed that the government is corrupt.

One motive for the appeal to tone down language – coming from no less than the President of the Republic – is that the angry language and rhetorical attacks might put young people off politics. But the same survey found that 51 per cent of people aged 18 to 24 believed in rot at the heart of government. That figure rose to a whopping 59 per cent among those who will be first-time voters at the next general election.

We cannot divorce the forms of speech from the content of the issues

These figures should call for pause – particularly from those appealing for toned-down language. What message does it send to young people when almost two-thirds of the youngest cohort believe the government is venal?

That corruption doesn’t matter? That allegations of corruption should be ignored? That one shouldn’t be angry about such piffling things?

Remember, the figures are high enough to show that only just over a third of the people surveyed (37 per cent) believe the government is clean. Such figures cannot be explained away in terms of partisan polarisation.

It does, of course, mean, that criticism of the behaviour of many Cabinet ministers has been believed. But that criticism is not necessarily partisan.

Apart from this, the criticism coming from the Labour government’s side towards an array of institutions has also, essentially, been made up of chargesof corruption.

Labour MP Michael Falzon, has been unrelenting in his criticism of the office of the Auditor General (under two different auditors general) as being partisan in its operations.

One of the Prime Minister’s communications advisors, Glenn Bedingfield, has targeted this newspaper and its Sunday sister and various of their journalists and columnists. He has likewise targeted The Malta Independent.

He has also targeted the Church, in particular the Archbishop, and the Chamber of Advocates. And, of late, every institution with a pedigree has been targeted broadly as being ‘the establishment’.

Put to one side whether the attacks from the government side are right (or even proper, given that governments need to be especially careful in how they criticise other instititutions, so as not to intimidate freedom of expression).

Let’s even assume that Falzon and Bedingfield are right and that many institutions whose integrity depends on their partisan impartiality are, in fact, partisan in their operation.

Given such assumptions, it cannot be ethical to tell youth that these things don’t matter. And that the language is unwarranted.

If our aim is to teach the young something about ethical behaviour, then perhaps we should take a leaf out of Aristotle. Even the philosopher of moderation in all things believed that, sometimes, anger was the best ethical response.

If your dignity is being slighted, Aristotle argued, then anything less than anger is wrong.

So the argument we should be having is not whether angry rhetoric should be toned down. We should be arguing about two questions. Is anger ethically justified? How is ethical anger best expressed?

Anything less than that is not a ‘mature discussion’. It’s a sell-out. Collusion with one side or another. It is actually to teach the young not to cultivate a sense of dignity.

Discussing whether anger is justified takes us away from discussing rhetoric to discussing facts.

When the Gaffarena case broke out, in which Marco Gaffarena was deemed (by the Auditor General) to have enriched himself thanks to a corrupt property deal involving a government department and the collusion of the then Parliamentary Secretary Michael Falzon.

Was public anger justified then? Was Falzon’s anger justified? If the Auditor General was right, was not the public’s intelligence being insulted when we were told, by the government, that Falzon was a gentleman to resign?

In February, the news of the Panama companies held by Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri was broken, first, by Daphne Caruana Galizia, and later by the news organisations releasing the Panama Papers.

Did Schembri’s refusal to address the press, despite being the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, not justify public anger?

And Mizzi’s sliding from one excuse and prevarication to another?

Even the Prime Minister acknowledged the public anger. Could it have been expressed better? The local experts on modulated anger had better tell us, so that we can watch and learn.

In March, some prison inmates accused a dress designer, associated with the foundation chaired by the Prime Minister’s wife, of exploiting them: engaging them for sub-standard wages and then delaying payment inordinately. The issue was never satisfactorily explained.

In April, we found that the government was standing as guarantor for €360 million (out of a €450 million loan) borrowed by the consortium building the new power station.

Were we too angry or not angry enough during those months? Should we have left ourselves enough space to get angrier later?

Say, in May, when we found out that Mizzi’s accountant had assured banks that his company would be able to deposit €240,000 annually (despite this being several times his annual salary as minister) and that Keith Schembri would effect €600,000 annually?

Or, at least, in November, when we found out that the government was committed to buy that power station from the private consortium in case the European Commission did not approve of the power purchase agreement? (Meaning that the private entrepreneurs were going to get rich, no matter what, while largely risking our money.)

In November, we had the additional news that the government would be paying €55 million of public money per year – for the next 30 years – to a consortium whose ultimate ownership is not even known.

Given that 30 years covers almost the entire working lives of the 18 to 24-year-old cohort, should we be worried that 2016 is ending with this age-group cynical about government and politics? Or should we be worried more if they were not cynical?

We cannot divorce the forms of speech from the content of the issues. By all means, let us teach the young how to behave ethically and to engage politically.

Sometimes, however, that means teaching them how to be angry and indignant at forms of politics that treat them with contempt.

Let 2017 be the year when truly contemptible behaviour is deemed worthy of public contempt. We can argue about the most politically effective, civilised and intelligent ways to express that contempt. Let the contempt be impartial. But anything less than contempt would be a scandal.

ranierfsadni@europe.com