A report in Times of Malta last Tuesday, ostensibly about the celebrations organised by Valletta FC supporters every time they are crowned champions, quoted an anthropologist, David Zammit, saying Maltese society is saturated with a strong egalitarian ethos.
“No one should be better than anyone – if they are, then they must have cheated. The Maltese don’t accept that anyone can be better than them – if someone did, then they complain that they were victims of discrimination,” Zammit explained, hitting the nail square on the head. I must admit that I have never read anything that profiles the Maltese character in such clear terms.
I always thought that rather than a democratic republic founded on work, as the Constitution proclaims, ours is a democratic republic inspired by envy. But obviously the phenomenon goes far beyond plain envy. Perhaps we should have included the lyrics from the musical Annie Get Your Gun as the opening article of the Constitution:
“Anything you can do, I can do better. I can do anything better than you.”
The perceptions of discrimination and corruption in our society are, more often than not, the result of the mentality as expounded by Zammit, rather than because of any reliable evidence pointing to the existence of discrimination or corruption.
I still have to hear someone who lost a bid for a government contract saying that the decision was correct and that his or her bid was treated fairly. Or people who failed to get a post for which they applied saying that the best candidate was chosen in an objective manner.
This is not to say that corruption and discrimination do not exist, but simply that the attitude of not accepting that anyone is better reinforces the perception of such allegations. The small size of our island, with everybody practically knowing everybody else, also adds to this attitude towards life in general.
Many – more so politicians – have played on this Maltese characteristic since influencing people became an important ‘game’ in society. When in Opposition, the Labour Party’s historical record shows that it has perfected the art of alleging that corruption is the motivating factor for practically all PN government decisions. On the other hand, the PN in Opposition has excelled in alleging discrimination in the way Labour governments tend to do things.
This is no exaggeration. These patterns are quite visible over the past 50 years or so, irrespective of who was leading the PN or the Labour Party. Yet as I grow older, I do not perceive that one side is more prone to one negative trait than the other, and different administrations led by both parties have erred in one way or another.
Although the two parties tend to approach economic and social problems in a different way, I believe that in the end it is the positive and negative traits – besides the idiosyncrasies – of the individuals within the higher echelons of the party that tend to sway things one way or another.
As a minister, I practically became paranoid as a result of people misinterpreting whatever I decided by attributing ulterior motives. In one of those melodramatic moments that sometimes I resort to – rather over the top – I once surprised someone by going down on my knees thanking him for coming to tell me why a particular decision of mine was wrong.
He could not understand anything before I explained that nobody thinks I make mistakes – as I did and still do – and everyone was attributing every decision with which they disagreed as the result of some conspiracy motivated by corruption or discrimination.
The small size of our island with everybody practically knowing everybody else also adds to this attitude towards life in general
In the life of any administration, there are moments when one realises that sticking strictly to every written rule undermines the very reason why these rules were written in the first place, and one feels justified to take shortcuts. This gives rise to suspicions, based on the assumption that one could have done things better.
Trying to justify circumventing the rules so as to be more cost effective and therefore do things in a better way is utterly foolish and would only be considered as a lame excuse intended to cover up some nefarious plot.
All this is a matter of emotion, not logic. Not accepting that someone else could be better is not logical, and trying to deal with people’s emotions in a logical way is doomed. This was perhaps the greatest problem that the PN could not overcome in the 2013 election campaign and it is still facing it today.
This is in stark contrast with the fact that Eddie Fenech Adami had the aptitude to sense how some decision would be interpreted ‘out there’. I have seen him refusing to go along many a proposal because of this innate instinct, in spite of the fact that the proposal appeared to make sense in many ways.
Perhaps it is time for the PN leadership to delve deeper into how the man in the street would react to whatever it decides to do, by giving more importance to emotion and less to cold logic.
micfal@maltanet.net