Back to work. Sort of. There is the usual Inbox to empty (I forgot to leave an Out of Office message). There is the pile of documents and the To Do list to tackle. Most of all there is the freakish Luxembourg weather to cope with. The icon on the iPhone weather program shows a thunderstorm. The temperature forecast is high of 28 and low of 18 (currently 20). Outside there is a freakish sunny sky with scattered clouds. It’s not summer – it’s more like WTF kind of weather, with the clouds thrown in as a question mark.
We notice with extreme pleasure that bloggable news items are not rare. Top of them all must be the RMTT not-so-purposive interpretation of electoral law as backed by Rule of Law-Rence Gonzi. Another intelligent guess is coming true – they WILL sweep it under the carpet with the delicacy of an Association of Latter Day Mugabes. I am not a candidate until I am officially a candidate… all that public prancing before the date of official candidacy does not count. You see… they DO think we are all stupid.
Elsewhere the battle of reckoning which of the two parties most abused the farce that is MEPA rages. Did Joseph Muscat get his permit (in 1998) faster than Victor Scerri (in 2008)? Doesn’t his wrong make Victor Scerri’s very, very right? And more importantly… isn’t it all Astrid Vella’s fault? Again. We must be a nation of dumbasses if we willingly participate in this race to the bottom. Mediocrity rules.
Then there was the Marsa locker room fire where we discovered (!!) that a building with a wooden roof sited 200m from a firework launch ramp (or whatever they call it) was a disaster waiting to happen. You want a disaster waiting to happen? Just wait for the next round of national elections and the rules that will be reformulated for the PLPN happy bunch. Remember… as J’accuse always hates to remind you… the joke’s on you!
Finally a note to Ettore. I did not fence-sit just because I said I am neither for or against Astrid. Astrid leads an NGO of sorts. She is loud and makes a lot of noise. Like many of her detractors for what matters. My issue was with the underlying rules within which the NGOs, the Government, the parties and the unaffiliated citizens operate. They suck. Astrid or no Astrid – that’s not fence-sitting.
That’s it for now. Over and out from sunny-with-threats-of-thunderstorms-Luxembourg.
11 replies on “Rosy Luxembourg”
So when DOES one become a candidate? When he/she declares an interest? When accepted by the party? When he/she “officially” launches a campaign? What does “officially” mean in that context? What if a candidate tries to “fare ‘l furbo” and launches the campaign “officially” only a week before the election?
Surely there has to ber a cut-of date, otherwise one could be called upon to declare every bloody expense made between one election and another.
Where do you propose we draw the line?
It’s just a shot in the dark here Ettore but if for a moment we regulated campaign expenses the way the taxman regulates your taxable income I am sure the cut-off line is not as difficult to calculate.
Political parties announced their candidates long before their official inscription. Even before that you either had to believe that certain candidates were philanthropists of the prime order or you would call a spade a spade and say that even someone like RMTT would not have invested in a website like hers if she was not or did not have the intention to be an official candidate.
The taxman is brilliant at “evaluating” your second hand car or your property that is for sale. How come this brilliance is not put to good use at quantifying even the most tenuous of “donations” given in kind or in services to candidates?
Why don’t we just say that it pays everyone to act stupid and claim that the law is an ass? If on the other hand we had to question the necessity of capping spending limits then so be it… but so long as the law stands we can only say that those who wanted to represent us and those who are representing us can only be classified as a bunch of hypocrites prepared to lie on oath.
That is my line. Simples (as the meerkat would say).
In case the taxman issue is not clear here are a few examples:
Candidate X sets up website and claims it was work done for free. Regulator steps in and says that the professional costs for similar websites being tendered for currently in order to use EU funds run into thousands – hence candidate has used up e.g. €2000 in credit from the limit.
Candidate X prints 100,000 leaflets at a priniting press that charges at a loss (because anyway it is party affiliated and can afford to go bankrupt and run huge debts – which will somehow be covered by a public phone-a-thon later on). Candidate X claims ridiculous cost price. Regulator adjusts cost on true value of printing as though any honest citizen had asked for the price of the 100,000 leaflets.
and so on… and that includes the costs of running cars, adverts on papers (even party sympathetic papers), quantification of candidate share of party propagande (not that difficult that one: party costs divided by 10 in the case of PN) and more…
clear enough?
This latest farce on candidates’ spending goes to show the deep problems facing Malta’s political system. If the political parties have not realised yet, the diehards may be stupid but out there, more and more people are no longer ready to be taken for a ride. The law might be an ass but so are most things in Malta. Do we resort to the rule of the jungle?
I think that giving the Electoral Commission (or whoever is charged wih the task)that much discretionary powers is a recipe for infinite trouble.
Besides, as far as I can see, your suggestion does not address the issue of the period when one is considered to be a candidate – and I think it is a major issue.
To take your own example, now that RMTT has set up that website, I think that most probably she will keep it running. So, come next election, will the cost of running her website for four years count towards her allowance?
I think thet the two major steps that need to be taken are:
a) Revise the limit to real;istic proportions, and
b) Define precisely when and how one becomes a candidate.
The true nature of the political animal shines through when you consider one particular aspect of this story: the well known fact that the keenest, most cut throat competition in these elections is between candidates belonging to the SAME party. If the law was such a blatant ass why didn’t the big spenders sit down to iron this issue out INTERNALLY (at least) before the race started? Now that would have been honest behaviour. Calling the law an ass after The Times (rather uncharacteristically) forces you into a confession by snapping at your heels for a whole month smacks of dishonesty.
Incidentally, if you go through newspaper archives, it’s fairly easy to identify when candidates considered themselves to have become candidates…
The pedant in me screams out that Roberta’s legal analysis is spot-on. In the context of an oath, ‘candidate’ must be understood in legal terms, and the only point at which she legally became a candidate is when her nomination was accepted by the electoral commission.
This of course leaves unresolved the political question of whether she, or any other candidate, knew this to be the case before the election.
Finally, the regulatory question is how to create the least imperfect controls (which in my view should be targeted principally at ensuring transparency rather than arbitrarily limiting spending).
Again, Ezekiel, “Going through newspaper archives” is a very subjective exercise. I shudder to think of the arguments that could ensue.
Ezekiel, from experience I know that, sadly, most reform/updating of laws only happens when some cause celebre shows a glaring need and makes it unavoidable. And not just in Malta.
In such cases, one can only shrug and say “better late then never”.
@JBB
Under British law there is a cap on electoral spending by parties and candidates, for all expenses made during a certain period before polling date. That’s a good approach.
Claire that’s an interesting model so long as the cap is realistic, allows popular support to be expressed (vide Howard Dean 2004 and Obama 2008) and is enforceable. I would caution against trying to design a system that aims primarily to give unpopular parties equal access, particularly when existing means of commumication such as word of mouth and the Internet can go a long way to mitigate the effects of financial imbalance.