Each time some international agency gives Malta the thumbs down in some sector or another, the government's reaction is to ignore in the hope that it will go away quickly.

Their reaction is to... not react at all. Maybe the government thinks that people watch One TV only, where only the good things the government does are reported and whatever can be damaging never makes it in any news bulletin.

It happened once again last week when a report issued by Transparency International gave Malta the lowest score ever. It was not a surprise that the country fared so badly.

The country obtained just 46 of the 100 available points, the first time ever that it dropped below the 50-point threshold. Nationalist Party MP Claudette Buttigieg, in an interview with The Malta Independent on Sunday, said that the government and, in particular Prime Minister Robert Abela, had failed the country. "We got an F," she said.

And she is right.

Malta was way below the European average of 64, and only Hungary and Bulgaria registered worse scores among countries that are members of the EU. We are closer to the bottom country in this list - Sudan, with just 8 points, are 38 points below Malta - than the top country, Denmark, 90, which scored  44 points more than Malta.

In a nutshell, Transparency International gave Malta a poor rating, and it is likely that things will only get worse now that the government is pushing ahead with the idea of moving the goalposts regarding the way magisterial inquiries can be initiated, making it harder for the average citizen to request such an investigation.

It was on the same day that the Transparency International report was made public that the government, in Parliament, was advocating for the change in magisterial inquiries which, according to legal experts, constituted bodies and others will protect wrongdoers, rather than facilitate the process by which they can be brought to justice.

Back to the Transparency International report which, it must be said, was humiliating for Malta mostly because in the last months we have seen a former Prime Minister and three former ministers charged in court in connection with a magisterial inquiry which exposed the goings-on related to the transfer of three public hospitals to the private sector.

The government and the Labour Party are always quick to come up with statements when some international body says something positive about Malta. But, in this case, nothing was said, as if nothing had happened. The government was completely silent about it

There was not even an attempt to mitigate the result, maybe by bringing up some excuse that the government is doing this and that to rectify the situation. Or even to contest the result, and trying to make it appear that it was biased against Malta.

No, nothing of the sort. But sweeping problems under the carpet will not make them go away. If anything, matters will become worse.