The government is always at the ready when some international agency has something positive to say about its work. We have seen it time and again when rating agencies speak highly about the government’s performance, especially in the economic sector and more so considering the difficulties that are being faced as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The latest example was on Wednesday when Moody’s issued a report on Malta’s situation.
But the government remains silent each time Malta gets a negative result.
It happened last week when The Economist Intelligence Unit again placed Malta in its list of countries with a “flawed democracy”. It was the second year running that the 2020 Democracy Index saw Malta in this particular category and, what’s worse, Malta lost further ground, moving from the 7.95 points gained in 2019 to 7.68 in 2020.
In this circumstance, there was no government statement or Facebook post from Prime Minister Robert Abela.
Until 2018, Malta was considered to be a “full democracy”, but we are no longer part of that elite group of countries. We are now part of the “flawed democracy” group, which includes another 52 countries such as the USA, France, Italy and Greece.
The Democracy Index is based on five categories: electoral process and pluralism, the functioning of government, political participation, political culture, and civil liberties. Based on its scores on a range of indicators within these categories, each country is then itself classified as one of four types of regime: ‘full democracy’, ‘flawed democracy’, ‘hybrid regime’ or ‘authoritarian regime’.
While Malta is near the top when it comes to the electoral process and pluralism category – where Malta scored 9.17 (out of 10), we lag behind in terms of government functioning (6.79) and political participation (6.11). We fared better in political culture category (8.13) and civil liberties (8.24), but it was not enough to lift Malta into the full democracy group.
This report in a way confirmed a negative trend for Malta, which was placed among the countries to watch – and not in a good way – by the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index. With a score of 53, Malta is considered to be a ‘significant decliner’ in this index, dropping seven points since 2015 and hitting ‘a new all-time low,’ Transparency International said.
It its section about Malta, Transparency International said that “according to an EU report about the rule of law in Malta, ‘deep corruption patterns have been unveiled and have raised a strong public demand for a significantly strengthened capacity to tackle corruption and wider rule of law reforms’.”
It goes on to mention the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia and the subsequent resignation of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, following the arrest of his right hand man Keith Schembri.
These were two damning reports in the space of a few weeks to which the government did not react, at least publicly. The government regularly blames members of the Opposition who “work against Malta’s best interests” each time some international report draws a negative picture of what is going on here. But we all know that such international agencies are not easily swayed by our petty politics.
Just as much as it speaks up when the reports are positive, the government should be more forthcoming when they are negative, perhaps explaining what it is doing to improve the situation.
If it’s doing anything at all, that is.