Many students of the University of Malta and Junior College do not feel they are being represented by their University Students Council and the outstanding majority is completely alienated to politics let alone to the Students University Council. Some are not even aware it even exists. This is why I was pissed off at the headline which the TOM put on an article about the press conference, organised by Moviment Graffitti and Independent Movement which said ” Students’ body wants students’ council to be free of politics”. I can’t understand how a journalist or an editor can make such a bad mistake when they cover a press conference by a left-leaning political group which has contested the Council’s elections last year!
So, back to basics! The Council is first of all a political institution because it manages people, the students and a space, Students House. So the groups which contest its elections are by default political groups which carry ideological baggage. If we do not want politics to be part of the Council then we would be demanding its dismantlement which isn’t a bad idea farer all, considering that it has become a trojan horse to University, students and education. However our aim is to have a council which is lead by students who would work for a progressive and secular education, to help students and defend their rights. In other words we want a left-wing Council.
The Council has been reduced into an entity which has mainly two aims: to conserve the party-line of the PN with the limits of its powers, which mainly consists of an old style, Catholic type of right-wing politics, and to accumulate capital. It has became a powerful and reactionary force which resembles more a Centre of American Republicanism rather than a University Students Council.
The Council is run by the Christian Democrat Students and yes we did indeed protest against their way of doing politics, we did indeed protest against the Christian Democrats who are more interested in towing the party line, and even pushing it further to the right rather than defending student rights but we do not want students to be free from politics and if anything should be full of it.
Our press conference was a protest against how Freshers’ Week is being organised which is a fine example where the political ideology of the Student Democrats manifests in its extreme forms. During Freshers’ Week The Campus, and its surrounding areas, is filled with companies one of which is the company (Gasan Group of Companies) of the family of Stephanie Soler, a Culture and Entertainment Coordinator of the Council. Every year, the space allocated to financial companies increases at the expense of the space which students organisations can occupy. (J’accuse: This allegation has been countered by the current KSU president in this article on theTimes – “Call for more transparency in KSU finances“) So financial companies are not only being privileged because they afford paying, but the Council is dealing with the relatives of its members. But if this seems to be a conflict of interest it doesn’t compare to the favouritism and nepotism which take place through the Student Fund Scheme as I have indicated in this article: Bummers of University Unite! You have nothing to lose but your reputation.
We also reiterated the demand for full transparency of the Council’s finances. It is extremely silly how the Council can boast of its transparency just because they have an annual financial report signed by an auditor. The fact that the auditor introduced the report by claiming that the books which were presented to him had several inconsistencies, is not something of considerable importance to them. Their answer to the problematic question of transparency is, that he had signed his own audit report. How pathetic! An auditor will audit any kind of books, even if they are not detailed or lack information because he is being paid to compile a report. The report is a result of the accounts which are presented. So if you present bad accounts, you will end up with a bad financial report and it wouldn’t be the auditor’s fault. Silly isn’t it, that I have to explain basic accounting procedures to a university students council? Yes, unfortunately University politics does not only include disputes about politics but also about how to get your stuff right. If you have any doubts don’t bury these facts with the typical PN accusations of ”mud-slinging” but go and ask for a copy of the financial report from their office. Look for revenue and expenditure break-downs, especially break-downs of revenue for advertisement and rent. They aren’t there and the Council does not seem to be the least interested in publishing them. Hurray for full transparency!
However being a leftist I am not only involved in student politics to bring radical change but also for the sake of political survival. During the last year the Council evacuated Moviment Graffitti out of their office and members of the Council reported issue 8 of Ir-Realta’ to the University Authorities, the reason being that they were offended by a fictional story. They twisted the regulations of the Council’s Statute so as to avoid PULSE’s proposal of Proportional Representation from gaining ground in the Council’s Annual General Meeting of 2010. They started a strong campaign against the lecturers, acting more like strike-breakers than students who were critical of a bad situation when the lecturers had a dispute with the government and as a result started a work to rule strike. Carl Grech, the Council’s president had the cheek to say that the dispute was resolved by the Council during a debate held prior to the 2010 elections, on Campus. They even had the nerve to make a pro-Catholic campaign against a condom machine at University as if such a proposal was something worth opposing. So when such a Council is clearly bent to pursue a hardcore right-wing ideology, small and unconnected left-wing groups will get choked. Being on a continuous political offensive while uniting with different groups to form a movement will have our political opponents removed from the Council.
I will end my article with a plea. I greatly respect other organisations such as MOVE, PULSE and IDEAT but I still believe that they aren’t doing their best to unite in a bigger movement. The main problem is that PULSE has been demoralised by consecutive election defeats and their determination is slowing down. As usual the ego is sometimes also a problem as in a movement compromises have to be made. But this neither means that the left should compromise its ideals to defeat the Christian-Democrats. The left can be consistent and united only if those who feel to be part of it are ready to overcome difficult challenges.
J’accuse endquote: Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber. (SDM Participation Campaign Slogan 1996/7 – from Plato).
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Zolabytes is a rubrique on J’accuse – the name is a nod to the original J’accuser (Emile Zola) and a building block of the digital age (byte). Zolabytes is intended to be a collection of guest contributions in the spirit of discussion that has been promoted by J’accuse on the online Maltese political scene for 5 years.
Opinions expressed in zolabyte contributions are those of the author in question. Opinions appearing on zolabytes do not necessarily reflect the editorial line of J’accuse the blog.
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18 replies on “On Lack of Politics at the UOM”
“Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber – from Plato”
I remember this one. I think SDM recycled it a few times during my undergraduate years at the UOM. Forgive my fastidiousness, but I think it is worth pointing out that the above is a mangled and inelegant rephrasing of Plato’s Republic Book 1 347 C. Mangled in that the meaning of the argument Plato put forward is transformed beyond recognition. Translations differ, but here is part of the relevant section taken from ‘Plato: Complete Works’ (1997), edited by J.M. Cooper:
“… good people won’t be willing to rule for the sake of either money or honor. They don’t want to be paid wages openly for ruling and get called hired hands, nor to take them in secret from their rule and called thieves. And they won’t rule for the sake of honor, because they aren’t ambitious honor-lovers. So, if they’re to be willing to rule, some compulsion or punishment must be brought to bear on them – perhaps that’s why it is thought shameful to seek to rule before one is compelled to. Now, the greatest punishment, if one isn’t willing to rule, is to be ruled by someone worse than oneself. And I think that it’s fear of this that makes decent people rule when they do. They approach ruling not as something good or something to be enjoyed, but as something necessary, since it can’t be entrusted to anyone better than – or even as good as – themselves.”
Nothing about ‘smarter’ and ‘dumber’ there. May I also suggest that democrats should avoid quoting Plato in support of democratic participation. Plato was no democrat, and his arguments against democracy were echoed down the ages by tyrants, despots and oligarchs across Europe.
Too true Anton. Then again the quote you gave has the following drawbacks:
1) It does not fit on a poster/t-shirt
2) The “recycling” of plato’s thought has long been available in mainstream literature/press/propaganda before SDM used it to make a concise point about political participation.
3) Sure quoting Plato is a bit contradictory but the emphasis is on the message of the sentence as abridged no?
4) Without wanting to sound offensive, it is just this kind of long winded tuttutting that will send the light minded student running away from you more than a mile. The “recycled” phrase was used in 1996 as part of a wider campaign trying to make participation in student politics more attractive…. go figure.
Oh dear!
1) Hows this for a poster/t-shirt: Decisions are made by those who show up.
2) It is not a concise point at all. The sentence is 19 words long, is syntactically awkward, and is more of a threat than an encouragement.
3) If the focus is on the message why the false attribution to Plato?
4) If I were trying to convince others to exercise their vote I would not quote Plato or any other philosopher for that matter. I would outline the reasons their vote matters as clearly and concretely as possible, without resorting to threats or intellectual posturing. The purpose of my previous comment was to, in some small way, prevent the perpetuation of a falsehood. I don’t mind if people haven’t read Plato. I mind if people don’t read Plato and then claim to quote him.
Leaving Plato aside for a minute, my main concern is the following. How does a leftist student organisation hope to gain ground in an increasingly centrist political scenario dominated by the market and what I call Rainbow politics?
Why not? I think the left is victimized too much. I truly believe that if all left-wing forces, even the milder ones, unite in one block, than yes they can win the KSU elections.
Don’t forget that Fukayama’s End of History is now a theory which has been dumped by the recent global crisis in capitalism. This has not only brought more legitimacy to the left but many social-democrats moved further to the left as a result, such as in France proving that an alternative to capitalism is being sought by what Marx would call ”ghosts”. What you might call the far-left in Europe is also increasing, and the far-right is also increasing at the expense of the left mainly. So the idea, invoked in the 1990s that politics must be absolutely and always be centrist, thus compromising with an extreme form of liberal capitalism is now being reduced. The same situation can be applied to Malta but in a different manner. Currently the shocks of the crisis haven’t been felt in Malta but will eventually be felt in the future due to the current economic decline it is facing, not only in general material terms, but in social and economic terms. If students don’t afford to buy expensive cars, but they become a main attraction in Freshers Week than this contradiction is a prelude to the end of the End of History because one must keep in mind, that the ”middle-class” is decreasing by time.
I suggest a big helping of Zizek for Mark. Slavoj Zizek.
Smajtu live din is-sena, waqt il-Marxism Fest ta’ Londra (:
Was about to buy a new car, but I’ll wait until the crisis of global capitalism serves up some advanced Leftist options:
I’m not sure that waiting for the end of an extreme form of liberal capitalism will do the trick here. For starters, Malta doesn’t really operate a terribly extreme form of capitalism. Second, we’re very far away from a significant collapse in the global capitalist system. I would rather advocate a resistance based, quite simply, on ‘new blood and new ideas’. It’s high time our generation did something truly political and it would be a pity to configure it in largely Marxist terms. It’s time we got talking and not just on facebook.
PS: incidentally Mark, I had the impression that they were selling Ira Loscos (not cars) on campus this week…
Your logical reasoning here is corrupt with the fallacy that the liberalism and capitalism are uniform political and economical methods. Yes Malta does not have an extreme form of capitalism such as an American one but if you would have understood my joke about the Council resembling a Centrte of American Republicanism you would have understood that the University Student Council is Malta’s vanguard institution of the status quo: a terrible Catholic state which tries to produce a decadent from of ethical capitalism.
This post shall be on topic – for a change.
In answer to the question posed by David Friggieri, I find the discussion of Left v Right, Liberalism v Marxism, etc, etc, yawn… impedes your cause as stated.
I would say that voters respond to issues, not ideologies. If you want to win elections, set out where you stand on the issues that matter most to people (not necessarily to your party or group), and win the argument. If your party thinks an important issue is not being discussed, then highlight the concern and convince others of its importance.
To be sure, the arguments you present will stem from the political ideas, ideals, and values you subscribe to. However, pontificating on the advantages of anarcho-syndicalist models of social and institutional organisation, and the coming dissolution of the capitalist world-economy, will not convince others of the need for an adequate transportation system to and from the UOM, for example.
To put it another way, to get voters on your side, you have to be on theirs. The extent of your success will then depend on how strong your arguments are (so make them good strong ones), and how effective you are in getting them across (which is in some ways beyond your control). If you lose an election but shift the debate, that counts as a success. If you win an election and transform the debate, then its a victory.
That would be my answer, but whoever made me an expert on political activism I will never know.
I would not like to justify any political convictions that I might have but the issues which relate to University students can not be isolated from the political reality of their lives.
As I stated in my article we are for education first and not for business and nepotism. The main concern for students is naturally their education on an institutional level and also on a broader sense. Our first proposal when we started our new campaign is to have a Council which creates policies to strengthen and facilitate this education by having a Council which creates policies. This is the first step we must take to have a Council which students can relate to: to change the current ingratiating discourse into a political political discourse . We will never have a Students Council whose main aims are to serve friends of friends and simply to accumulate profit, which has the support of the majorty of University students. This is big challenge of course! I am not posing as a Napoleon who will take over, make a Revolution then build an Empire and so on and so on forth. For example are there any policies which aim to help organisations financially? Are there policies which aim to help students and to direct them to a career which is related to their studies? Are there policies which aim to foster research which is independent from financial interests? Are there policies related to the environment? No. Sometimes they criticise the Budget for having the University ignored or not given much importance, sometimes they install some new device, here and there, they publish a press release about how everybody is so happy with everything and that’s it! There are no concrete policies from which concrete results are being achieved!
First of all, by no doubt we would like a Council which helps organisations financially but we will be proposing more concrete demands when the formulation of the policies we would like to have implemented will come at an advanced stage.
@Anton and Mark
I detect a certain militancy based on ideas/ideals in Mark which may well be what this country needs in political terms. In a scenario where ‘induru mal-lewza’ has become a national hobby, some clarity of thought and criticism is hugely welcome. But my challenge concerned how one goes about being militant in an increasingly centrist landscape. It would be interesting to know whether students, for starters, are showing a thirst for a more radical approach.
Incidentally, I don’t quite follow on what basis you challenged my logic, above.
@ David
I have no idea what you mean by militancy but I don’t like the sound of that word, and I do not accept the premise of your question. In my view, the contest is over the definition of the centre ground. If, for example, you convince the great majority of people on the need for a state funded education system, then that becomes a centrist policy objective and arguments against a state funded education system become radical.
But do tell us, David, what your answer would be, or perhaps give us an example of what kind of answer you are looking for.
@Anton
Don’t be too put off by my use of the word militancy. I’ll explain what I have in mind in a succinct way. Here goes.
Our next stab at democratic politics will present us with the following choice: a party which will have been in government for a quarter of a century vs. a party which, when it emerges from behind its progressive façade, will be a throw-back to the 80s.
I’m not happy with that choice and wonder whether our generation can come up with something new to challenge the status quo. It will take new ideas, new blood and a fighting spirit to pull this off.
The militancy I have in mind is the type that offers a clear break, something that our generation can really identify with rather than ‘voting with a gun to its head’ as someone put it before the last election. A militancy that will transform the perennial grumbling and complaining into something positive. This must start from a coalescing of ideas and I believe that Mark and Jacques happen to be two people who – despite their quibbles – would like to see something similar happening.
That’s the militancy I have in mind and that’s why I’m writing on this forum.
I can’t help thinking that I should not be posting this, but here it goes.
@David
That is indeed succinct of you, and unless I have misunderstood your argument, what you are calling for is the creation of a completely new political movement, if not quite a new political party. This seems to me a perfectly justifiable and reasonable position to take, given the current situation in Maltese politics. Allow me to articulate a slightly different position.
If the situation remains as it is now, voters at the next general election will be faced with a choice between two main political parties that are experiencing a similar internal divide. On the one hand we have a party in government whose leading figures espouse a socially conservative outlook, and who are being challenged by junior members of the same party eager to adopt a more socially liberal agenda. On the other hand we have a second party in opposition whose leadership is trying to instill a more socially liberal outlook into a party whose core activists still subscribe to an outdated political rhetoric based on socially conservative values.
I am using broad strokes here, but the point is that neither party has so far articulated a reasoned and sophisticated vision of its owns politics, its philosophy of government if you will. GonziPN restricts itself to the task of competent economic management of the state, and appears to have no political vision other than a vague appeal to Catholic values (specifically Catholic and not broadening into, say, Christian Democracy). The PL is trying to present itself as a ‘progressive’ party, without actually articulating what that means, and this under the direction of a leader who appears to have acquired his political education on the back of Belgian beer mat. (That is a damning assessment of our dearohdear opposition leader, but I have yet to hear him make a reasoned and sophisticated political argument, so I’m afraid it stands).
There is that third party, whose liberal social agenda and environmental stance is clearly articulated and well thought out, but it suffers, as is well known, from the diminutive size of its operation, and has missed every opportunity so far presented to press what little advantages it has gained.
That is if the situation does not change.
And it will not change unless Malta’s political class recognizes that government is not simply a matter of public order, or public needs. Government is also about the public’s aspirations. Now I would argue, (on very superficial and anecdotal evidence it is true, but argue it I shall), that there is a large and growing section of the Maltese population, of voters, who aspire to lead their lives as they determine, without unrequested and unnecessary interference, in pursuit of whatever happiness they can achieve in their lifetimes, but who are increasingly frustrated and obstructed in this virtuous endeavour by the political institutions that were specifically constructed to provide for their liberty to do just that.
This is the grumbling and complaining constituency, that votes out of fear or does not vote at all, whose aspirations are denied by their government, whose values are derided and abused by the socially conservative establishment, and who have no champions for their cause other than the cynical and the self-serving.
Now this constituency is not known for its political activism, or its ability to organize and march in step, but there are some (and perhaps they include the present company) who voice their concerns and articulate their ideals. Who are not deterred by the conservative dominance of Malta’s public sphere. My appeal is to us and them. To be more vocal without being disagreeable; to win the argument not just beat the opposition; and to make it their cause to represent others who, out of reluctance or even maybe fear, are less inclined to make themselves heard. And I submit that those voices must be heard; that the arguments that can be presented are reasoned and good; and that the cause is a just one.
And I submit further that as a just cause it cannot be made the preserve of one political party, but of the country as a whole, because it would benefit the country as a whole, and all would share in it. To do otherwise would create division and faction, and surely, after the last century’s experiences, we have no need of that.
Now I only ask that others consider this line of reasoning, and kindly set aside what little they think they might know about the person presenting it. After all, and for all you know, I may not really agree with everything I have written.
Bytes aren’t “building blocks of the digital age”….more like a set of eight theoretical switches.
Transistors are the “new age” buildings blocks….except they’ve been in use these last 10-20 years or so…
So be it. But you’ve gotta admit that Zolatransistors would sound kinda weak. Or Ubergeeky.