According to Times of Malta’s latest poll, just 17% of Malta’s population feel corruption is the country’s biggest problem. Traffic, cost of living, asylum seekers, and over-construction were all considered bigger concerns by the survey’s respondents.
On an individual level, the percentage is even smaller. While concern about corruption ranks fifth on a national level, just 4.5% thought corruption was the issue that affected them most on a personal level.
The findings aren’t so surprising. People panic about corruption when its impact is evident and immediately understood. It is much more difficult to grasp it when describing it amounts to painstakingly explaining confusing trails of dirty money across the globe.
That logic extends to the other issues which featured more prominently in the above-cited survey. All four of them have a physical, tangible impact. Traffic is inescapable. Shrinking wallets are hard to miss. Unfamiliar faces from far away countries abound. Construction sites are everywhere.
Corruption? Well, there’s plenty of smokescreens for that, even if the corruption is rampant.
Something the government figured out a long time ago is the art of riding out a scandal until it’s superseded by another. Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon describes the tactic as “flooding the zone with shit.”
As far as zones ripe for a flooding go, Malta has proven to be an ideal candidate. The government is well-poised to bully the independent press and asserts significant dominance over the sector through a captured state broadcaster and its own propaganda station.
In spite of the fact that Malta hit its lowest ever score on the Corruption Perceptions Index this year, the Times’ polling suggests a decrease in the general public’s level of concern about it.
“Corruption, an issue that a poll held during last year’s European Parliament election had mentioned as the topic most likely to drive people to vote, also remains a concern, but it has dipped significantly over the past few years. While almost 35% had listed it as Malta’s biggest problem back in early 2023, only 17% feel the same way today.”
It is not all doom and gloom though.
One could argue that, given the government’s ongoing effort to cover up corruption, it is actually remarkable that almost a fifth of the population still considers this to be a priority issue.
People are interested in results. Fighting corruption in a country that is so infested by it feels like a losing battle.
And yet, it’s still on people’s minds. There are certain moments in our unfolding history which, when given due prominence, set off a spark. It’s like a chain reaction that sends people straight to the nearest protest.
This is deeply interesting because, although people will always think of bread-and-butter issues as their biggest concerns, you don’t see anyone in this country out in the streets protesting over the price of bread or traffic or even asylum seekers, an issue which has shaped national elections across Europe.
At best, we’ve seen mass protests related to over-construction, but it was always heavily tied in with the omnipresent theme that this website covers: corruption.
It’s the injustice at the very heart of corruption that really grinds people’s gears.
Traffic is bad planning. Soaring cost of living is largely due to corporate greed. One can either shut down borders or open them. Over-construction is just more bad planning taken to an extreme.
All are major issues. All of them are also relatively straightforward policy fixes – problems which are subject to various lobbying influences and are therefore at the mercy of whichever side the government chooses to take.
But corruption? Corruption is betrayal. It’s bald-faced lying. It’s cover-ups, assassinations, and wanton destruction of people’s lives and livelihoods.
Nobody likes being cheated. Taxpayers are paying for a service to themselves, not to the government’s favourite cronies. Living in Malta feels like paying in advance for a meal at a restaurant only to find out someone else ate the whole pantry before you arrived.
This is the dominant angle that needs to be emphasised whenever anyone talks about corruption with the aim of persuading others to pay more attention: you are getting cheated, the scum of the earth will run off with your money, and there will be nothing you can do about it unless you act now.
I do acknowledge that getting this across has proven challenging in the past and that people simply get tired of it, to the point of switching off entirely.
But the fact is that, no matter what anybody says, there is no other major issue on people’s minds that cuts to the core as much as corruption does. Generic platitudes about a lack of interest serve no purpose.
Beneath a veneer of triviality and deliberate escapism, buried below all the other everyday life issues, lies the monster which a lot of us know must be slain.
It’s simply a matter of piercing its ugly hide right through the muck that surrounds it.