Trust in the government is down five percentage points according to the findings of a Eurobarometer study.

The survey’s first results, which were published on Thursday, show that trust in the government fell to 51 per cent from 56 per cent last year.

While the government, as the main political institution in the country, saw its trust ranking drop five percentage points when compared to November 2014, people continue to express their overall distrust in political parties.

Sixty per cent of the respondents, up one per cent over autumn 2014, said they tended not to trust any of the political parties, as opposed to 32 per cent who still have confidence in politicians.

In 2012, only 34% of Maltese trusted government, while 52% did not. The last Eurobarometer shows that 51% of those interviewed trust government.

This, however, shows a five point drop in national government trust over the same survey in 2014.

At the same time, the Maltese appear to be very positive about the island’s economic performance, to the extent that 85 per cent of the 506 Maltese respondents described the situation as good, an increase of 12 percentage points over the same period last year.

The results of the latest EU-wide survey, conducted locally by Misco, show that the two most pressing issues among the Maltese are immigration and the environment.

Asked to mention the two most important and difficult problems Malta is facing at the moment, 74 per cent mentioned immigration first, followed by the environment. Other concerns include the rising cost of living (16 per cent) and crime (15 per cent).

The five per cent (or five point, it is not very clear) drop in trust is not alarming, considering the chasm that prevailed in 2012 and which was to lead to the very predictable result of the election by the next year.

But this drop can lead to a trend and the result opens up disquieting perspectives.

The present government says it knows all about this, seeing it knows how the former government collapsed. In fact, the same government statement that welcomed the latest Eurobarometer findings, also said: "Prior to the last General Elections, when Simon Busuttil said there was no need for a change in direction, only 30% had agreed that Malta was heading on the right track".

Which is why one is mystified to turn to yesterday’s backpage and see the results of the decision by the Local Governance Board which found no wrong doing by the Marsascala Mayor.

It was quite predictable that the board would come to this conclusion, even more when one considers who the board is composed of: Dr Noel Bartolo as chairman, Arthur Ellul as member and above all Ronnie Pellegrini (of the Lorry Sant past) as member.

 It would seem, according to yesterday’s The Times, that the Local Governance Board based its report on a sworn stateme4nt by the council’s executive secretary while the mayor, Mario Calleja, just sent in a signed (not sworn) statement, according to the report itself.

Even before opening the report, many would have guessed what conclusion would it come to. When one perused it, the conclusions were all too predictable.

Whether these conclusions are the right ones or not, becomes rather irrelevant given the vast disbelief with which the report has been received.

We await the next issue of the Eurobarometer trust survey to see if this declining trend has continued tio go down.