One of J’accuse’s best known rubriques returns to haunt the readers. What is worse than a dose of heavy pills after a days’ work? I.M. Jack. PLUS look out for www.akkuza.com coming soon on your nearest web browser.
1. When Harry met Dalli
Those moaning greens never know when to shut up do they? It doesn’t matter that they have been pulverised into an insignificant bit of nothing by the bipartisan machine – we will kick them while they are down. We’ve become experts at doing that haven’t we? It all began way back after a General Election where the superpundit from conservative hell uttered the infamous words: “Why do they even bother wasting our time?” The waste concept was too good to let go for the party whose self-referential gurus specialised in Taste. The Taste Engine coupled with the Wasted Vote rocket and bob’s your uncle – why bother with the Greens?
To be fair the gGns had it coming all along ever since they got this fixation with coalitions. Hell even J’accuse had warned them that they were heading into a minefield with a one way ticket to dismembered disillusionment. The idea was full of weaknesses ready to be exploited by the PLPN propaganda machine (to be fair more PN than PL). PN and the Daphne crowd pissed on the coalition idea like there was no tomorrow and Labour’s seeming mollycuddling with the green greens from Sliema did the trick. By the time we got to the EP elections it was just a matter of choosing which calibre bullet to shoot into the half-dead corpse. The moment some smart alec (like J’accuse) tried to argue about the usefulness of the Green’s pulling power in some corners of the European lobbying machine out came the Taste & Waste crowd again to bury our hopes of having practical representation where it counts. The Greens? Useful in Europe? Bah. Humbug.
Until yesterday that is. Here is how the Times chose to spin Harry Vassallo’s move to Dalli’s cabinet in Brussels.:
Sources said Dr Vassallo, who led Alternattiva for 10 years between 1998 and 2008 on a pro-EU ticket, was among the first invited by Mr Dalli to join his team, following his nomination. Until a few days ago, Dr Vassallo was editor of Media Today’s Sunday Maltese language newspaper Illum. Dr Vassallo, considered to be a moderate, is known to have strong contacts with the Green Group in the European Parliament, which Mr Dalli will be using in his favour particularly due to environment-sensitive issues in his portfolio such as animal welfare and GMOs.
For the porta-pundits what counts is that Dr Vassallo is making a run for the carrot. Incredible isn’t it? The ‘usa e getta‘ voices in PN are still as uglily vociferous as a hamalla at the monti. The glaring point they would love you to miss out is that their lie about the usefulness of the Green voices (and influence) in Europe has been brought to light. Yes. They lied to you – lest you “wasted” your vote on an inconsequential, irritating, Alternattiva Green who would have troubled the balanced waters of PLPN emptiness. Full marks to Dalli for not thinking that way and not having qualms to pick up the useful tracks.
We told you so.
2. The Progressive Moderate Liberals
The PL conference came to an end (apparently there is a news item about the appointment of the President’s daughter-in-law as secretary of PL – we just cannot stop making connections). The party of progressive, moderate, liberals and ceteras is beginning to look as watered down as a Coolee mix prepared by an eighties’ mother rationing the weekly grocery. Unfortunately for J’accuse, while rumbling in the archives for an altogether different story we found a comment of our own in a string discussing the possibilities for New Labour after the electoral defeat (on the post “Vince il Voto Utile” – April 2008) (my underlining):
Maybe it is a question of refilling the vacuum left by the Left with something new that inherits the policies that remain valid while adapting to the new realities. To give but one example – the dynamics of representing the “worker class” (I would go for the “employed” and even extend to the SMEs) have changed. The organisation required to represent their realities must span a big arch from local to national to European.
Then there is the liberal element. It is not big enough to encompass a new party but should find a home in a broader New progressive Party. Frankly I think the term left itself will do a disservice to the new reality. An umbrella movement of “progressives” (and I purposely use this term freely since this is a brainstorming comment) could be defined in terms of a representative Open Party structure that can adapt to real-time representation in the age of IT, ecological awareness and a silent civic revolution. In these aspects there are the terms to take an advantage over the programmes of the conservative centre that currently runs the country.
A MODEM for Malta? Who knows.
CAVEAT LECTOR: This post is purely brainstorming – think and write. I reserve the right to disagree with anything I have just written. That too is the luxury of a blogging discussion.
What can we say? Thank God for the Caveat? In any case we never meant this all-inclusive nonsense being perpetrated by Joseph following his “programmatic motion”. What the hell is a programmatic motion anyway? It sounds like something out of the book of Lenin or Stalin – or like the subtitle in an English translation of a Chinese operating manual for a washing machine (To Start Programmatic Motion Depress Button Prorgamme One With Vigour). What we had in mind was a cohesive, no nonsense umbrella of reformists with a clear programme (not programmatic). It would be one that would say yes to a clear act to introduce divorce (not the dilly-dallying free vote) and one that does not treat an LGBT voter as it would a member of the Cacti and Succulent Appreciation Society.
Having watched Gavin Gulia struggle tremendously with the concept of “progressive” and “moderate” while at the same time having Beppe Fenech Adami smirk his way just as opportunistically into the opposite corner we could only bury our head in our hands in despair.
3. Electoral Reform
Mike Briguglio’s AD is passing through a productive stage and has probably mastered the art of emails and fax machines to a T. Press release after press release has been forthcoming from the house where Harry Once Stood and one of these could not have come earlier. Here is what the Times reported:
Alternattiva Demokratika expressed concern today that after 18 months, the only thing agreed by the parliamentary select committee on electoral reform was to raise the spending thresholds of candidates. Party chairman Michael Briguglio asked whether this had been done to ensure that PN and PL candidates ‘who broke the law’ by exceeding expenditure limits, could come off scot free. “We augur that (Speaker) Louis Galea will not be remembered for chairing a select committee that only managed to cover up for such candidates. We strongly urge Louis Galea to ensure that before he leaves for the Court of Auditors, the electoral law is changed so that the number of votes is reflected proportionately in the number of parliamentary seats for all political parties, and not only for PL and PN, as the situation scandalously is at the moment”.
That was another fuss that ended up in smoke. Remember the Ed Demicoli “I will not swear on oath because I broke the spending limit saga”? The PLPN solution? Increase the spending threshold. Transparency? What’s that? AD has proposed a double-quota system including a 16.6% threshold for the districts and a national quota with a threshold of two quotas for a party to be represented in parliament. No prizes for guessing where we will be in 2013…
.. wasted vote anyone?
4. Change
There will be more I.M. Jack later today or tomorrow (if the workload persists J’accuse will have to go on working nights). In the meantime an advance warning for your bookmarks. The J’accuse anniversary (5th) approaches. On the 10th March 2010 this blog will turn 5. We always prepare something special for our readers and this year we hope that our switch will generate new intelligent readers of the kind who are not easily swayed by tales of faux bravado but prefer the cynical satyre of these pages. We have already relooked (that’s French for restyled) the blog so all that is left is to make it easier to find – for both RSS feeds and for people who are looking for it for the first time. We’ve gone and splashed some of our own credit card money on a new domain name. www.jacquesrenezammit.com/jaccuse/ was always going to be too much of a mouthful (not to mention the difficulties of many people getting past the “cq”. So ladies and gentlemen add the following bookmark to your browser and remember this url. We will soon be moving (again) to the following address (trial switches start this Wednesday 10th February):
