To blame the recent downgrade in Malta’s ranking in Transparency International on the imprisonment of a PN Sliema Mayor on bribery charges is rich indeed, even more so when such ‘sentiments’ found a perfect echo on both state broadcasting and in programmes presented by some of their eminent anchor persons.

But then, one should not register any such surprise in future since this is just a symptom of the “pleasures yet to come”.

Malta must be unique in its interpretation of the Transparency International report’s findings in the sense that the government tends to either ignore or gloss over such reports when they are negative; blame the Opposition for scare-mongering when it is compelled to act, or attack the mere notion of such reports as being based purely on perception rather than being grounded in reality.

If – remotely – we may, on the other hand, so happen to register a marginal improvement, then the government will have no qualms about singing the praises of such reports.

These are the same double standards that government members tend to apply in our regard as members of the political class – if we may so happen to belong to the PL – the Opposition Party.

With a fellow panellist from the government side bringing up the same well worn clichés against former Cabinet members, almost implying that their hands were tainted with blood and abuse, I was left with no option last Thursday on TVM when participating in the discussion programme TV HEMM to expose the fact (without mentioning names in order to be politically correct) that there have been cases where a particular Cabinet member first tried to ‘rubbish’ me in the House on a personal basis by implying that my hands were almost tainted with blood, only to take it all back by way of a personal email a few hours later – in which the said Minister apologised for mentioning me in the way he did by blaming it all on having done so “in the heat of the debate”. I accept his word that he might not have meant to offend, but the intended damage has still been done – since parliamentary outbursts are made in public and, under normal circumstances, emails are an exchange between two people!

It was equally pathetic for a fellow Nationalist MP to blame our downgrade on the recent life sentence accorded to a well-known international footballer for apparently getting caught match fixing.

It is time that the political class got real about its own shortcomings – and by shortcomings I mean mainly institutional rather than purely personal.

Perceptions about a lack of political transparency surface elsewhere when certain symptoms long evident in Malta see the light of day.

Please allow me to cite such instances:

·        When the government of the day drags its feet on introducing a full blown Whistleblower Act with the consequence that, as things stand, it continues to shoot the messenger with the heat being turned against the whistleblower rather than vice versa. The super yachts saga is a typical case in point.

·        When we have in place a Freedom of Information Act about which hardly anyone knows, since they almost seem to be doing their best to try and keep it under wraps.

·        When bureaucracy is allowed to fester and it is common knowledge elsewhere and in Malta too that it is the stiffest tax on the general public and the best recipe for more graft and corruption opportunities.

·        When every excuse under the sun is used to delay introducing the political financing of political parties in spite of our work on the Galdes Commission going back to the 1990s – for the simple reason that it is being deliberately sold as a new form of taxation to get people to rebel against it rather than take it on board.

·        When many of the institutions set up to fight corruption, like the Commission Against Corruption and the Injustices Commission, have so far proved to be highly ineffective and inefficient, merely serving as an ostensible cover up for the government of the day – without hardly ever having seriously nailed anyone!

The bad perception of us internationally has not been helped much by having leading credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s claiming since January 2011 that one of Enemalta’s major shortcomings is its lack of good governance and transparency – to the extent that, after all these years, they happen to be still in the process of trying to have their own internal auditor, something that any self-respecting SME would have addressed long ago.

When the same corporation tends to demonstrate a certain deep resentment against alternative energy, one cannot but suspect that there might be vested interests at play who may have every interest in retaining the status quo – since oil purchases can offer kickback opportunities, while a shift to clean energy is most unlikely to do so.

One cannot ignore or forget that easily what former PN president Frank Portelli repeatedly claimed publicly – that one cannot dismiss corruption claims in Malta easily when one tries to match people’s salaries and pay packets with their life style and the manner in which they may happen to live beyond their means.

He once stated categorically that it is obvious there is a lot of corruption in Malta, and massive tax evasion, which he rightly or wrongly set at around €100million.

The same perception comes to mind when we learn of reports that Malta has become one of the most difficult places in which to do business in. Some might have an interest in simply making things difficult to ensure that more red tape can translate itself into larger kickbacks!

It must be realised that Transparency International’s conclusions are not an isolated case. Some years back, a Eurobarometer survey found that corruption was a major problem in Malta, with some 95 per cent of Maltese sharing this view and some 73 per cent arguing – rightly or wrongly – that this extended heavily into the building permit area.

Things could not become any worse than the time when the former Mepa auditor was compelled to claim that accusations of corruption regarding Mepa were difficult to refute, with the Prime Minister and the present Mepa chairman having often come down on him like a ton of bricks when he tried to take a firm stand against the institutional weaknesses of his organisation. No wonder he was left understaffed and with minimal resources while being attacked by eminent pro-government bloggers for having spoken his mind publicly without any hesitation.

While I have already commented at large on the recent shocking findings of the National Audit Office (NAO) regarding many key government ministries, departments and entities, I await with interest a report that I have asked the NAO to draw up on oil purchasing by Enemalta – hedging included – since this might shed even more light on the degree of transparency at Enemalta – or lack of it.

Unless we establish anti corruption schemes in all public decision-making institutions, we can only expect more of the same.

It is worrying indeed to see a good causes fund run by the Finance Ministry being one of the most suspect operations on the local scene – in the eyes of the National Audit Office itself.

When many entities do not keep proper records of their expenditure, when internal controls are weak, when hardly any monitoring is carried out, when certain ministries even fail to cooperate with the NAO and when – in the case of such an organisation as WasteServ – the Auditor-General was compelled to complain about the inadequacy of overall internal controls, which he labelled as being of major concern, we will be left with hardly any doubt.

It has become almost a typical characteristic of this government to find instances such as the running of Gozo General Hospital where, it transpires, that important and substantial payments are not always backed up with proper records to substantiate the expenditure.

These all seem to be symptoms of the same disease.

What makes me see red is that while our authorities tend to treat such reports lightly in the apparent hope of instantly erasing them from people’s memories, when TI reports are published elsewhere, they cause far more than normal ripples.

At the same time that our downgrade hit the local headlines, I managed to gauge the reaction in two other countries: one which performed better than we did and another which performed worse. I am referring to Israel and South Africa.

In Israel, its failure to improve its own corruption ranking was a matter of deep concern. The Israelis were concerned that they had made little progress in reducing this problem and had ended up performing badly against the world’s most developed economies. They actually described such a lack of progress as “disturbing”. As a TI representative went on record commenting, “Corruption is not only the world’s most talked about problem but the world’s leading economies should lead by example.

In the case of Israel, the use of public money and the way in which budgets were allocated and or administered was found to be not sufficiently transparent.

There should be little consolation from the fact that corruption tends to remain an entrenched part of the global economy.

In the case of South Africa, much play was made of the fact that not only is it disappointing that they continue to slip back, but one of their senior investment strategists remarked publicly that the cancer is government and that what they need most is simplicity – in order to streamline the way business is done. He stated that corruption is one of the things where you may be trying to do business but end up in a tangle of hidden interests. He made it clear Byzantine red-tape structures only tended to make a bad situation worse.

Unless our government decides to take the bull by the horns and show enough political will to address this issue, further downgrades may be expected – and the government will only have itself to blame!

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