It is becoming hard for voters to make informed choices. And loyalty to one's 'group,' as well as pessimism about the likelihood of change, all play their part.
In the run-up to the last general election, and as election day approached, corruption was never a main theme. In the run-up to the 2017 election, the PN, with Simon Busuttil at the helm, had been consistently harping that the incumbent government was corrupt and deserved to lose power.
Yet that message was controversial, and citizens may have lacked the information needed to effectively evaluate such claims. While some of the wild allegations made by the PN and other NGOs might be demonstrably exaggerated or false, citizens in Malta face a heavily restricted media environment, which makes it even more difficult for them to accurately assess and evaluate the information they receive.
This raises an important question: when do citizens punish governments following corruption accusations? While politicians are more likely to be voted out of office in countries where governments are ostensibly corrupt, there may be many reasons why citizens in this tiny country of ours keep voting for an administration accused of corruption.
Among those reasons, one could speculate on voters' disinformation and their self-interest as to why citizens may keep voting for candidates linked to corruption allegations. In so doing, they become complicit in the deterioration of our democracy.
The relationship between the perception of corruption and re-election rates is causal and not just coincidental. In turn, we need to think carefully about how the existence of this relationship shapes the beliefs and actions of politicians and citizens.
Maltese voters operate in a challenging informational environment, and candidates often accuse their rivals of being corrupt to gain political advantage or mask their failings.
This makes it harder for voters to differentiate between politicians and to hold corrupt leaders accountable, especially when the formal media is heavily politicised, and leaders deploy disinformation via social media.
When this happens, blame may not attach to any individual politician so much as the political class more broadly. It is also a large part of the explanation for why evidence of corruption can undermine trust in the broader political system and increase support for populist ideas.
Popular apathy is especially worrying because citizens often have incentives to vote for corrupt leaders. In a winner-takes-all political system like ours, for example, voters may tolerate corruption among politicians of their party because they benefit from government measures or think they will be worse off under the rival party. Under these conditions, voters may consciously choose to vote for corrupt candidates, undermining any incentive for reform.
The complex consequences of corruption allegations reveal just how challenging it can be to ensure political accountability. Neither the tendency for voters to reject sitting legislators in our country nor revelations about corruption scandals in the media necessarily lead to straightforward gains either for the fight against graft or the consolidation of democracy. This raises profound questions about how our democratic political system can cope with corruption and corruption allegations in contexts in which politicians are savvy, media headlines contradict each other, and voters are confused and tired.
The real question remains: Why do people themselves permit the government to engage in corruption? There are many reasons.
First, since corruption is an abuse of power, the government may take pains to hide its corruption from the people. However, more often it is cloaking its corruption rhetorically in some higher purpose, claiming that really a benefit for its corrupt components is actually for the good of the nation. Often, they will involve important constituencies in their corruption.
Most importantly, this Labour administration is taking care to subtly weaken the institutions that would expose and punish it, be they the courts, the legislature, the police or the Standards Commissioner. So even if, theoretically, the people might be sovereign, in practice there is no one to hold the government accountable.
In a country where government institutions are weak and patron-client relationships strong, the Maltese electorate is more likely to support a corrupt leader from whom they expect to receive tangible benefits.
As long as corrupt leaders can satisfy their clientelistic networks by manipulating government resources, they are likely to retain political support. In this case, accountability and good governance issues become irrelevant.
The idea that voters punish corrupt government is fundamental to the idea of democratic accountability and is as important to the health of a political system as it is to the fight against graft.
Dr Mark Said is a lawyer