The Endemic Nature Of Corruption

Well, here's a surprise. A Partido Popular politician has admitted that corruption is "an endemic problem", this politician being Palma's mayor Mateo Isern. He wasn't, however, referring to his party, but to the local police. Isern's statement and his actions in having immediately suspended without pay certain officers facing corruption allegations contrast greatly with the equivocation in Calvia when there were arrests of officers there, though to be fair the allegations that relate to Playa de Palma do appear to be greater and involve more police than was the case in Magalluf. But for Isern to say that there is endemic corruption is quite an admission, one which, while it may be thought welcome, does makes one wonder how officers who are not corrupt might feel about such blanket an assertion.

As Isern will not be standing again as mayor, he may feel he can make such sweeping statements; he has nothing to lose by doing so, other perhaps than his reputation. But he has moved to salvage any potential damage to this by apologising for not having been able to detect these cases and by setting up an internal unit that will investigate "irregularities" and bequeath to his successor an "unpolluted police". One hopes that this is what emerges, but his observation that he (and so therefore others in the town hall) has been unable to do any detection leads one to ask why. Accusations of local police corruption in Playa de Palma, and in Magalluf, have been made over the years; not necessarily formally but certainly anecdotally. No smoke without fire and all that, some accusations will undoubtedly have been wild ones, but as there has at least been a sense that not everything was right, then some town-hall detective work had surely been called for. Endemic corruption, if this is indeed so, does not suddenly emerge. For it to be endemic, it has to have existed over a substantial period of time and to have become ingrained. It has taken the investigations of the National Police and the Guardia Civil to have finally exposed this endemism, but the very nature of such a culture should have been apparent to the town hall long before. Why was it not able?