As is traditional, the Prime Minister took some time off to meet members of the public who lined up outside Castille to convey their New Year’s greetings.

Alongside the Prime Minister was a government aide who took the contact details of those who came for more than an exchange of greetings: they came with requests, inappropriate as the occasion was. It showed the sad state of politics in the country – begging bowl politics.

Joseph Muscat’s government is partly to blame for this, though he certainly did not invent clientelism. Back in 2013, after Labour’s landslide victory, one had naively hoped that a quality change in politics would come about, that the new administration would break from the past and implement what it had after all promised to do. It was not to be.

Instead we had ‘customer care’ officers installed in government ministries, catering for all and sundry. Presumably, they encountered innocent requests and, most probably, less innocent requests that effectively meant abusing the system to favour one over another. It is institutionalised corruption – favours for votes – and the Labour government was generously rewarded in the 2017 election.

This way of thinking, and governing, is why the debate over the fundamental issue of rule of law never got off the ground after Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder. It is why talk of independent institutions falls on deaf ears. No constitutional reform will ever change such a subserving mindset.

If people continue to look upon institutions, set up primarily to protect their rights without fear or favour, as mere instruments of government, that is what they shall remain – puppets. To expect nothing else from these institutions means people prefer them that way too. It is so unjust on those who will not beg.

Former Nationalist Party leader Simon Busuttil promised a clean government and was soundly beaten. There may be many reasons for that failure but, clearly, the message did not sell, especially to those people who regularly crowd politicians’ offices with their requests.

Ideology has practically disappeared on this island and been replaced by the word “movement”, for which read populism. The end result is a big success for Labour that is increasingly more rightist than the Nationalists. With no ideological focal point, it is easy for one party to wade into the home ground of the opponent, as Labour did. The PN may do the same but the country will not be better. The problem will remain.

Labour is unlikely to drop such a successful patronage system which reaped spectacular electoral victories. As public institutions crumble in the government’s tight grip, so does human dignity.

The PN in Opposition should drive the point home that it is undignified to go with a begging bowl to obtain what is your right and corrupt to get what you do not deserve.

Back in the golden years of Labour in the 1980s, obtaining a colour TV set needed government patronage. The fact that one had a colour TV and his neighbour did not was an added bonus to the man stooping with a begging bowl. He may have gotten what he wanted, and maybe even felt powerful too, but he had lost his dignity in the process.

Begging bowls do not bring dignity. They denigrate and corrupt.

This is a Times of Malta print editorial