The outbreak of simultaneous incidents, exposing corrupt practices in the public sector, have highlighted the malaise which plagues Malta’s administrative and social fabric. When the Nationalist administration took office, it undertook to eradicate corruption root and branch. Twenty years on, it has not even lanced the boil. Corruption is a festering sore.
As the next general election approaches, the succession of corruption cases involving personnel in the Transport Authority, the Malta Transport Authority, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry for Gozo, has focused attention on the government’s plight.
Hard evidence
Much as the government wants to claim merit for a creditable performance in office, the hard evidence exposes the rot and the government’s feet of clay.
Public opinion is fast coming round to the view that the administration is in crisis – and that it will remain that way until it is supported by an inverse pyramid of talent – too few up-and-coming Young Turks at the bottom, and too much dead weight at the top.
Although it has to put on a brave face, as the election date looms larger, the government has to devote much of its time to deep introspection in order to wriggle out of difficult situations.
Cabinet is tired and exhausted. It labours under a thick layer of poor managerial know-how.
For every foot soldier drawing up reports and invigorating the administration, there is a bevy of worse-than-useless busybodies with only one aim – to be in the good books of their masters and survive.
They operate in a world of make-believe, consisting of meetings about other meetings. They communicate by verbose memos, digging holes in order to fill them in.
In any commercial outfit, market forces would drive out these good-for-nothings. When results are poor, or mistakes are made, heads roll. Not so in Malta.
Poison in the system
The administration has not been sanitised in due time, and the poison has stayed in the system.
This is how a crisis has developed, the situation having been made worse by a capacity for shooting oneself in the foot.
This way, the unfit do not merely survive. They make themselves indispensable.
Meanwhile, as MEPA sinks deeper into the mire of hostile criticism, who has been held to account for bringing the Environment Authority in open conflict with a broad segment of public opinion?
A handful of public officials have been suspended, investigated and, in rare cases, also prosecuted.
When this happened, action was belated and, invariably, the “wrath” of authority fell heavily on the small fry. Never, ever, have the big guns been prosecuted for lack of due diligence, even though their underlings may have been wallowing in corrupt practices for months and, possibly, years.
With the next general election so close, the deep wound caused by corruption cannot be healed overnight.
Social emergency
Malta thus finds itself in a state of social emergency. And the electorate has come round to realise that corruption and inefficiency cannot be eradicated from a system in which they are inherent. It is our laissez faire, let-sleeping-dogs-lie system that has to be rooted out.
The Nationalist Party will be asking itself whether there is any formula that could be taken, like ginseng, to revamp its jaded reputation.
Its uppermost and urgent interest is to dispossess the main body of the electorate of the perception that the PN is moving away from the future, not towards it.
It’s a tall order.
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