A Tight-knit Community Ensures Local Corruption Stays Limited

The little community library in the Maltese town of Mosta was, well, little. But in a small room with perhaps five shelves, a service counter, and a table, every corner was filled with books, many of them quite worn out. The main focus, as is the case for libraries elsewhere, is books that children can read. Picture books, novels, and non-fiction imparting writing skills and knowledge on young adults make up, at a quick glance, more than half of the collection. As adults turn to the internet for their readings, it is clearly the kids without their own digital devices that still carry around paperbacks and hardcovers.

However, the community library is not just a library for kids. It also emphasized the word "community" in a very literary sense. In prominent locations on bookshelves are books, many of which are written in Maltese, about the history, traditions, and folktales of Malta and even Mosta in particular. Even in English, the dominant language of the collection, books about Malta occupy prime real estate on the shelves alongside academic treatises and trendy fiction. The librarian being a part-time poet documenting the lives of the local Maltese only adds to the library's role in, quite literally, preserving the local culture.

All is not well for the library, unfortunately. It sits in a small corner of a shabby, nondescript three-story concrete building that also contains the local governing council, police station, and community clinic, all under one roof. Walking up the stairs to the library entails getting through a dark maze of corridors constantly punctuated by nurses calling for the next patient to step into the clinic. Lovers of books, especially among wealthy foreign tourists seeking something other than luxury hotels and gorgeous sea views, would be hard-pressed to head to the community library, much less enjoy the little trip.

My next-door neighbor, if I were to tell him about the library, would playfully tease me for my lack of knowledge about Malta's entrenched corruption. Just the other day, he told me about the judges, prosecutors, policemen, and other public servants of the state getting away with building high-rise condominiums all across our neighborhood with money earned from bribes. Pointing fingers at global real-estate developers and shady construction firms from Turkey, he criticizes the politicians for turning a blind eye to uncontrolled development and shoddy infrastructure, just so they can line their own pockets.

I am unfazed by his stories. With experience living in much more corrupt places like rural Tanzania, I understand that corruption can be much more debilitating. The price of finishing a project would mean handing bribes to government officials that would more than triple the value of the project in some circumstances, negating the very purpose of working on the project. Corruption may be prevalent among the Maltese political and business circles, but it has not stopped hotels, roads, apartments, and everything in between from being built.

And, more importantly, at least in Malta, selfish corruption has not entirely marginalized institutional altruism. My neighbor may have remarked that the state budget is only devoted to a few major tourist sites while everywhere else has been left entirely at the mercy of the private sector, the existence of the little community library serves as a partial counterargument. Yes, the library could use some extra money for space, newer books, computers, and more staff members, but it still functions through the public budget, no thanks to the real estate developers who are no doubt eyeing the prime piece of land it sits upon.

Indeed, the Maltese history and culture collection within the library reminds the public, even if fewer and fewer of them see it firsthand, that Malta of even the recent past was not a land of big hotels and foreign tourists. In those days, the little villages sustained by agriculture and fishing had little in terms of what was worth bribing about. Corruption may have existed as a concept and practice among politicians even centuries ago, but the presence of community institutions, represented by the likes of the library, ensured that selfish lining of pockets did not go so far as to destroy the entire community-based social order.

My neighbor might be right about the prevalence of corruption, but he is also a bit too pessimistic about how negatively impactful it could be on Maltese society. Community on the islands, shaped by centuries of close-knit ties, still act as a counterbalance to the emergence of an elite so detached from the public that they feel no remorse in stripping society bare of any last thing valuable enough to monetize for personal benefit. It is that power of community that restrain excessive greed that perhaps ensure Malta's corruption does not become as debilitating as anything seen in Tanzania.