Thanks to Transparency International we know that Malta is more corrupt than last year and than two years ago. Malta has slipped to 45th place in Transparency International’s 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) and countries like Botswana, Macau, Chile, Uruguay, Estonia, Qatar and United Arab Emirates ranked better than us. The experience in the last couple weeks has told us to shut up or be damned. The man in the street feels all the more helpless and weak.
What is the point of having all the documents to nail down Enemalta and its minister in the power station tender, when those who ought to be prosecuted become persecutors? What is the point of printing the statements of those who did the works at the Minister of Finance house for his alleged involvement in the sale of Jerma when the Minister and his government manage to turn the tide in their favour and leave the whistleblowers helpless and feeling cuckoo?
In Malta there is no such thing as an anti-corruption culture. On paper we have a Permanent Commission Against Corruption but we do not have a definition of the word corruption. Transparency International describes corruption as “the misuse of entrusted power for private gain”. Our legislation is ineffective because the complaint mechanisms do not work; the commission lacks resources; the commission is not competent; the procedures are slow and cumbersome and the complementary legislation is missing.
The 2009 Barometer interviewed 73,132 people in 69 countries and territories between October 2008 and February 2009. The main findings are those that we feel around us every day mainly (a) corruption in and by the private sector is of growing concern to the general public; (b) political parties and the civil service are perceived on average to be
the most corrupt sectors around the world; (c) ordinary people do not feel empowered to speak out about corruption; (d) experience of petty bribery is reported to be growing in some parts of the world with the police the most likely recipients of bribes; (e) governments are considered to be ineffective in the fight against corruption.
In countries like Denmark, which scored the second highest in the Transparency International Index for this survey, the citizens are encouraged to report cases of corruption and the government provides a hotline and guarantees confidentiality.
In Malta, whistleblowers are still not protected at law and those who dare voice any kind of abuse are silenced by the government. The Ombudsman, the case of the Mepa auditor and others all sent the message across that if these people who are high up are belittled by the system who knows what will happen to John Citizen if he dares to report any case of corruption!
There is no will power to fight corruption in Malta. The Prime Minister saw nothing wrong in the Minister of Finance’s doing, he saw nothing wrong in the Enemalta tender, saw nothing wrong in Mepa’s Bahrija permit. But oddly enough, we saw him scolding those who highlight wrongdoing, while praising those who do wrong. The case of the Mepa auditor is a case in point: he ended up in the line of fire, because for the Prime Minister, highlighting the deficiencies in the Mepa is lack of respect to Mepa as a government institution.
What message is he sending? Shut up or be damned. If the Opposition, the unions, and all constituted bodies are helpless against corruption, how can we expect the man in the street to report corruption? The man in the street knows one thing for sure: if these people are unable to fight corruption, they are either themselves corrupt or they are not willing to fight this cancer – little knowing that by his popular acceptance of corruption the man in the street becomes a powerful ally of corruption.
People like Dr Frank Portelli keep harping on the need to introduce a Whistleblower Act but dear Frank: you know that the government cannot introduce the Whistleblower Act during this legislature, because at this moment time the government cannot afford to irritate any of his remaining loyal followers.
Oddly enough, last Thursday the EU signed a €677 million pact with Nigeria aimed at combating corruption and promoting peace in the Niger Delta region. So far the EU has provided no resources to member states such as Malta to help them in the fight against corruption.
The features of the “typical corrupt country” are the following: the state is not effective and overburdened; lack of trust in the state; the employee’s relationship to his employer is weak and work conditions are arbitrary; family loyalty; culture of bribery; top-down governance and hierarchic religion; and poverty. In the real world corrupt countries do
not necessarily have all these characteristics; they exist to a varying degree. The combination of the factors creates a vicious circle of corruption. I trust in your intelligence to deduce whether we fit in any of these characteristics or not.
If the government and the opposition are to be serious in regulating corruption they must first and foremost come clean and pronounce zero tolerance. They must practice what they preach even from the opposition bench; they must strengthen procedures and complaints mechanisms; strike a balance between efficiency and accountability; establish the so-called bright-line (narrow) rules such as the prohibiting gifts, disclosure of all assets direct or indirect; disclosure of any relationship with people hired and with firms or entities to whom they award a contract or concession.
Anti-corruption agencies target acts of corruption and proceeds of corruption. In Malta we are have not reached stage one yet, the target of acts of corruption when other countries are now focusing increasingly on the proceeds. The proceeds of corruption are money laundering, recovery of proceeds and tax evasion. Monitoring public budgets, monitoring the work of tax administrations, monitoring public procurement, monitoring oil revenues are all ways of targeting the proceeds. In some instances it could be considered to reverse the burden of proof. This would mean that the holder of huge assets by a low-paid official or politician, has to prove the legitimacy of the origin of those assets.
I shall not delve into the assets of our politicians: I will leave it to the sister paper Illum to publish on Sunday the assets of those politicians who opted to abide by the code of ethics and present their annual inventory of assets and liabilities, the way they are all bound to do so.
And mind you, we also have a commission against money laundering which sees nothing wrong in banks giving overdraft and house loans to unemployed persons and nothing wrong in any transactions like expensive cars to unemployed persons.
Nothing changes, everything remains the same.
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The experience in the last couple weeks has told us to shut up or be damned. The man in the street feels all the more helpless and weak.
