Much has been said about Malta’s institutions, and many adjectives have been used to describe them.

Powerless, spineless, incapable of protecting the people, unwilling to act against power and those who abuse of it are but some of those descriptions.

The criticisms are not without basis. 

Take the Planning Authority for instance: an authority which has done nothing to protect Malta and Gozo’s environment and which is filled with people who have sometimes acted as the defenders of developers whose intent is just making a fast buck by building one characterless apartment block after another.

Take the Attorney General’s office as another example: an institution which has come under fire for a number of basic but high-profile mistakes which have allowed people to walk free without facing trials for serious crimes they were charged with.

Take the Malta Tourism Authority: an authority which has over the course of the summer favoured profits to a couple of operators who so happen to be close friends of the ruling party on an island so valuable as Comino, and which has consistently failed to provide accounts of where taxpayers’ money has been spent.

Take Transport Malta: an authority which has been ridden by one claim of favouritism after another, where one official was charged with sexual harassment of a co-worker, and where three more were charged in connection with a whole corruption racket surrounding driving tests.

Take the Building and Construction Authority: an authority which has been consistently toothless against the construction industry it is meant to regulate, and which is chaired by somebody who also happens to be one of the architects of Gozitan developer Joseph Portelli – probably the most controversial man in the construction industry today.

The list goes on, and on. However, it isn’t the institutions that we should be looking at.

Look at it this way: the country’s institutions are, by and large, an extension of the central government.  They operate based on the rules and the tools that are given to them. 

For instance, there’s no point blaming the Planning Authority for approving monstrous developments if those same developments are in line with the planning policies which are currently in place.

In the other examples mentioned, why blame the institutions individually for the conduct of individuals who are there only because they have been put there by the central government?

Blaming institutions for their failings is like blaming a dog for not picking up its mess on the pavement, rather than blaming the person holding the lead.

The only way we are going to get good institutions is if we hold the political class responsible for them to account. 

It is useless complaining about the institutions, and then simply re-electing the same people who set their loophole-ridden legislations or who filled them with political appointees into Parliament.

There’s a Maltese phrase which goes “il-ħuta minn rasha tinten”, which translates idiomatically into something along the lines that the problem starts from the top.

It’s most of the people in politics, irrespective of their party, who have given us failing institutions and have led to many – especially youths – losing any faith they had in the future of our country.

If they aren’t going to hold themselves accountable, then it’s the people who have to hold them to account.