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Perceptions that won’t go away Last December, a spokesman for the Office of the Prime Minister told this newspaper: “[Lawrence Gonzi] is committed to do all that is necessary to investigate every single allegation of corruption and to strengthen the democratic institutions that have been entrusted with the responsibility to investigate, prosecute or judge cases of alleged corruption.”The comment was made in the context of a report published the previous month by Transparency International, which had downgraded Malta three places to number 46 (i.e., below Botswana) in the world corruption perceptions index. Also in December, a Eurobarometer report revealed that 95% of Maltese respondents perceived corruption as “a major problem” locally, while 73% considered abuse to be “widespread” in the granting of building permits. Faced with these damning indictments, the Prime Minister’s reaction was very similar to his qualified reading of the Auditor General’s report into the Delimara power station. Such findings, he argued, only indicated ‘perceptions’ of corruption, and cannot therefore be taken as proof that actual corruption had taken place. Dr Gonzi also linked the increase in such perceptions to a constant campaign of ‘mud-slinging’ by the Opposition. To be fair, there may well be some truth to this latter argument, as few would deny that the Labour Party consistently fans the flames of such perceptions in order to cement the impression of a government that tolerates institutionalised cronyism. But even if the Opposition may occasionally blow such allegations out of proportion, the Prime Minister would nonetheless be very unwise to rest on his laurels when it comes to his own record to date in combating corruption. Recent revelations in fact suggest that the present administration may not always take corruption allegations with the seriousness one would justifiably expect. Consider the example raised in Parliament this very week, concerning a possible bribery attempt in the privatisation process of the Malta shipyards’ superyacht facilities. Replying to a vaguely put statement by the Opposition leader, Dr Gonzi on Wednesday admitted that OPM – the same office which issued the above statement last December – had been informed as long ago as September 2009 about corruption allegations in the tendering process. Unaccountably, however, the matter was not referred to the police at the time. Instead, an OPM official merely forwarded the information to the Finance Ministry, which in turned asked the government’s investment arm, Mimcol, to look into the matter and submit a report: which duly found no evidence to substantiate the corruption claim. However, one need hardly add that the Finance Ministry is not the ideal institution to investigate such issues. Ironically, Dr Gonzi himself confirmed as much this week, by taking the long overdue initiative to ask the Commissioner of Police to investigate – something that should really have been done eight months ago. Apart from the delay in taking concrete action, there is much that remains highly unsatisfactory about the government’s handling of this particular case – not least the fact the Prime Minister himself claims to have been unaware of the allegation at the time it was made. This is at best a curious revelation, when one considers that the report was made directly to his own office. At face value, there is only one possible conclusion to be drawn: i.e., that whoever originally received the report did not give it the consideration it merited at the time, with consequences that would later (at a time when the privatisation process was already done and dusted) cast a shadow of doubt over the entire deal. In all honesty, it is hard to reconcile this behaviour with the same OPM’s claim last December that the present government is “committed to do all that is necessary to investigate every single allegation of corruption”. Nor were matters helped by the government’s rather lame attempt to turn the tables onto the Opposition, by arguing that Joseph Muscat should have reported the matter to the police himself. This is at best nonsensical. How can the government accuse anyone else of ‘withholding information’, when by its own admission it sat on the same information for eight whole months? But the most worrying aspect of this incident – which, admittedly, may not in itself amount to very much – is that it appears to be entirely consistent with a clear pattern of behaviour by the present administration when faced with similar allegations of corruption and/or mismanagement. For instance: when it emerged that a company convicted of VAT fraud had been allowed to bid for (and win) a government tender for the supply of paints, the government swiftly moved legislation to blacklist all convicted fraudsters and preclude them from public procurement. Again, the initiative came late, and only after the embarrassing revelation had already been made. Far from being pro-active in the struggle against corruption, the present government often appears to be slow on the uptake and clumsy in its reactions – quite the opposite of the dynamic, no-nonsense impression it constantly seeks to impart when it, say, pushes through privatisation deals. From this perspective, Gonzi’s oft-repeated excuse of ‘perceptions’ as opposed to ‘proof’ can only start to sound a little hollow. Truth be told, these perceptions are often created directly by his own government’s evident reluctance to take corruption allegations seriously. Any comments? |
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Managing editor Saviour Balzan | Tel. ++356 21382741 | Fax: ++356 21385075 | Email
Managing editor Saviour Balzan | Tel. ++356 21382741 | Fax: ++356 21385075 | Email