This is an incredible country where at night people go round honking horns, waving flags, drinking and making a terrific noise and fuss, just because the national team of another country won the World Cup in the final against the national team of yet another country.

But during the day, bar a few who still run around with flags attached to their cars, or who still have flags hanging out of their windows, all is normal, placid and law-abiding. People go to work, rage at the state of the roads, queue in the summer sun, and try to squeeze the most returns from the work they do.

And yet, over the past few days, most do not seem to have learnt the most obvious lesson from what happened in the country they exalted to high heavens as recently as last Sunday night.

For the Italians have now not only won the World Cup on footballing merits (well, there would be some who would not agree with this, as they well may do, seeing the outcome was decided by penalties) but also the way they tackled the scandal that erupted in their midst.

One hardly needs here to recap what was uncovered: the phone calls made over a long period of time, the implications behind what was said, and the network of corruption, which was revealed in all its starkness.

In other countries, perhaps even here, such extensive phone tapping would have had the whole population up in arms against the invasion of privacy. But not in Italy.

In other countries, perhaps even here, even though such extensive proof is offered, we would have had innumerable lawyers rising to defend the accused and whatever investigations would have been ordered sink into the sand of time until they are all forgotten.

Is it not more normal to assume that anything resembling the scandal uncovered in Italy exists here as well, and in other sectors apart from sport? Does anyone here ever remember any taint of corruption being eradicated and the evildoers removed from circulation?

We look around us and we all know, if we look into each other’s eyes, there is corruption small and great around us, from the household who fiddles with its electricity meter to the handyman who does not believe in VAT receipts, from the way certain decisions are taken to the obscene huddle of custodians and custodeds one comes across every so often, regulators and regulated, adjudicators and judged.

We may not have the same facility at eavesdropping as the Italians have with their too easy phone tapping practices, but, if anything untoward emerges, are we so sure we have the right people in the right places who, just as the Italians, brook no interference and take the steps that are to be taken?

Over the past weeks, as the scandal grew and grew, we have assisted, though perhaps from afar, or perhaps through football passion, at the many attempts that have been made to disrupt the investigations, to turn the whole thing into a political vendetta, to claim that everyone is just a little bit corrupt, and to argue, in the most specious of arguments, that once Italy won the World Cup, the scandal could conveniently be swept under the carpet.

True to form, however, the Italian authorities did nothing of the sort. They argued, and they were indeed right, that the fact that Italy won the World Cup made it even more imperative to be world class in tackling corruption, not anything less. The Italians have thus won the World Cup twice over!

If only those Maltese who ran around last Sunday waving the flags of Italy and honking till the early hours of the morning, and those who drank whole bars dry, understand the import of the Italian approach to justice!