Author: Jacques René Zammit

Categories
Satyre

The Gonzo Leaks : Fear and Loathing Revisited

gonzo leaks _akkuza

 

In an exclusive for J’accuse, an unidentified source has provided us with a massive leak of the “Gonzo Papers”. Here we reveal extracts from a document that first appeared in the New York Times on January 1, 1974 under the title “Fear and Loathing in the Bunker”. Given that the main protagonist in the document subsequently benefited from a presidential pardon the document has been redacted and real names replaced with fictitious references. Any similarity or resemblance to other real persons is purely coincidental.
[…]
It was almost too good to be true. Josephus Inhobbkom Muskat, the main villain of my political consciousness for as long as I can remember, was finally biting that bullet he’s been talking about all those years. The man that not even Cameron or Obama could tolerate had finally gone too far – and now he was walking the plank, on national T.V., six hours a day – with the whole world watching, as it were.

The phrase is permanently etched in some gray rim on the back of my brain. Nobody who was at the counting hall in Naxxar on that night in 2013 will ever forget it. Josephus Muskat is living in Castella today because of what happened that night in Naxxar. Louis Gonzo  lost that election by a landslide of votes – mine among them – and if I had to do it again I would still vote for Arnie Kassel.

If nothing else, I take a certain pride in knowing that I helped spare the nation five more years of Gonzo – an administration that would have probably been equally corrupt and wrongheaded as Josephus Muskat’s, far more devious, and probably just competent enough to keep the ship from sinking until 2018. Then with the boiler about to explode from eight years of blather and neglect, Gonzo’s conservatives could have fled down the ratlines and left the disaster to whoever inherited it.

Muskat, at least was blessed with a mixture of arrogance and stupidity that caused him to blow the boilers almost immediately after taking command. By bringing in hundreds of thugs, fixers, and fascists to run the government he was able to cranks almost every problem he touched into a mind-bending crisis. About the only disaster he hasn’t brought upon us yet is an environmental meltdown or selling the nation’s sovereignty and assets on the cheap … but he still has time and the odds on his actually doing it are not all that long.

For now, we should make every effort to look at the bright side of the Muskat administration. It has been a failure of such monumental proportions that political apathy is no longer considered fashionable, or even safe, among thousands of people who only three years ago thought that anybody who disagreed openly with “the government” was either paranoid or subversive. Political candidates in 2018, at least, are going to have to deal with an angry, disillusioned electorate that is not likely to settle for flag-waving and pompous bullshit. The Panamagate spectacle was a shock, but the fact of a well-to-do Prime Minister’s aide and Minister paying less income tax than most construction workers while gasoline costs spiralled from Mellieha to Marsaxlokk and the spin of mass employment tends to personalise Muskat’s failures in a very visceral way. Even MPs have been shaken out of their slothful ruts, and the possibility of impeachment is beginning to look very real.

[…]

When he cold eye of history looks back on Josephus Muskat’s years of unrestrained power in Castella […] looking back at the nineties and noughties, the facts of Muskat and everything that happened to him – and to us – seem so queerly fated and inevitable that it is hard to reflect on those years and see them unfolding in another way.

[…]

One of the strangest things about these three downhill years of the Muskat premiership is that despite all the savage excesses committed by the people chosen to run the country, no real opposition or realistic alternative to Muskat’s cheap and mean-hearted view of the Maltese Dream has ever developed. It is almost as if that sour 2008 election rang down the curtain on career politicians.

This is the horror of Maltese politics today – not that Muskat and his fixers have been crippled, convicted, indicted, disgraced and even jailed – but that the only available alternatives are not much better; the same dim collection of burned-out hacks who have been fouling our air with their gibberish for the last twenty years,

How long, O Lord, how long? How much longer will we have to wait before some high powered-shark with a fistful of answers will finally bring us face to face with the ugly question that is already close to the surface in this country, that sooner or later even politicians will have to cope with it.

Is the democracy worth all the risks and problems that necessarily go with it? Or would we all be happier admitting that the whole thing was a lark from the start and now that it hasn’t worked to hell with it.

[…]

A few months ago I was getting a daily rush out of watching the nightmare unfold. There was a warm sense of poetic justice in seeing “fate” drive these money-changers out of the temple they had worked so hard to steal from its rightful owners. The word “paranoia” was no longer mentioned, except as a joke or by yahoos, in serious conversations about national politics. The truth was turning out to be much worse than my most “paranoid ravings” during that painful 2013 election.

But that high is beginning to fade, tailing down to a vague sense of angst. Whatever happens to Josephus Muskat when the wolves finally trip down his door seems almost beyond the point now. He has been down in his bunker for so long that even his friends will feel nervous if he tries to reemerge. All we can really ask of him is a semblance of self-restraint until some way can be found to get rid of him gracefully.

This is not a cheerful prospect, for Mr. Muskat or anyone else – but it would be a hell of a lot easier to cope with if we could pick up a glimmer of light at the end of this foul tunnel of a year that only mad dogs and milkmen can claim to have survived without serious brain damage.
Or maybe it’s just me. […]

 

[Hunter S. Thompson, 1 January, 1974]

The full unredacted text of the document can be found here.

Categories
Watermarks

Watermarks: Projects and Burgers

Watermarks

The papers report that the deadline for the gas power station will be shifted for a third time. The government that loves to speak in terms of “deliverables and receivables” and other marketing bluff once again fails change words into action. There is worrying news about the actual tanker that is being converted too since there seems to be the need to remove large amounts of asbestos from it before it becomes viable. Why, in the first place, is there asbestos on a tanker that is to be used for a new project? Much talk, too little real delivery – and this missed deadline is just the tip of the iceberg.

Another report tells us that Malta’s geological maps need updating since they are missing 50 metres of rock. So it turns out that our already not too great planning decisions are based on outdated and grossly inaccurate geological maps. Such bad planning includes decisions about tunnels and quarries. It really begs the question… can we get one thing straight nowadays?

Finally much fuss was made about the reporting in the gossip columns of Muscat’s lightning visit to Rome in the company of Glenn Bedingfield to watch Milan get robbed by Juventus of the Coppa Italia. Many seemed to agree that this visit formed part of Muscat’s private life and need not have had such exposure – whether Muscat chooses to eat at Burger King or in a Michelin joint on such trips is his business after all.

They may have a point. Then again the trip did have a few elements of public interest. First of all it was a very public endorsement of the government appointed poison-pen (as some columnists would describe him). Rather than keep it private, Bedingfield tweeted pictures of him and his rival buddy (Glenn is a Juve fan) at the stadium on his very public twitter stream. X’hemm hazin? Nothing. It is just a huge coincidence that Muscat chose this very public way of affectionate buddy-buddy tripping during the Panamagate crisis when Bedingfield is playing a crucial role to keep the diehards satisfied with government rhetoric. That Bedingfield has taken to using the same underhand tactics as the ones that are being criticised here is by the by.

And then there is the queue at Burger King. Again, possibly a private matter for a private citizen looking for some grub post-football match delirium (and in Muscat’s case post-football disappointment). Images of Muscat queuing with the much praised “middle-class” should have the effect that the Uruguayan former President had on his people. But Jose’ Muscat is no Mujica. His private trip to Rome comes shortly after a private trip to Dubai in five star hotel splendor.

The admittedly irritating invasion of privacy becomes a necessary insight into the spending habits of a PM. One minute he is hobnobbing in Dubai on a highly unaffordable family trip in five star hotels, the other he is queuing humbly in a Burger King joint waiting patiently for his whopper.

Will the real Joseph Muscat please stand up?

Categories
Environment Politics

Fawlty Towers

fawlty towers_akkuza
Today there are new reports on the latest crazy plan to build another tower in Malta. This time it seems that the Villa Rosa developers are intent on transforming Saint George’s Bay (bayside) into some sort of futuristic megapolis. The artist’s impressions show that most of the foreshore would be taken up by this megalith designed by recently deceased architect Zaha Hadid. Check out the link to see for yourself.

As if that is not enough, just up the hill towards Pembroke another tower is in the planning thanks to the controversial plans to redevelop the ITS land. Controversial because it turns out that lots of investors are furious that the tender specifications were not clear enough. I don’t have any sympathy for the investors really because it’s only just a matter of who puts his name to yet another monstrosity blotting the skyline of poor Saint George’s Bay.

That is just Saint George’s Bay. Sliema Residents are up in arms and purportedly would love for their council to “sue the government” (sic) because of all the scarring building that is going on – towers mostly. Manoel Island is in danger of losing its status as last green patch in the harbour area and a historic house in Victoria is in danger of being pulled down to make way for a car park entrance. Architects may be putting their weight behind an appeal to conserve Maltese architecture but for very one of these there are five more who are ready to pander to the cheque-books of developers hungry for more construction.

There was an admirable action for awareness by those guys pitching tents outside Castille. It’s a sad fact though that the policy makers of this land don’t give a damn about our living environment. I don’t mean trees and plants and recycling and all that. I mean quality of living that is being put in grave danger every single day by idiotic decisions spurred on by money and greed. Is it a childish argument? Yes it is. It’s happening though and the wanton destruction of our prime living space goes on mainly because those at the top have figured that not too many people give a real toss about it.

In the end so long as the policy makers can claim that we are living an era of economic boom, high unemployment, money in the pockets of households, then they know they can get away with murder. From olive trees being brutally clipped at University to prime land being sold off at peanuts to Chinese Investors (guaranteed by Maltese investors’ money in banks) or fake university peddlers there seems to be no hope ahead.

The assault on the quality of life of the inhabitants of the islands of Gozo and Malta has long begun. I could bother you with the usual cliches such as the native American saying that goes “It is only when the last tree has been cut, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then we will realise that one cannot eat money.”

I could do that but it would be useless, wouldn’t it? So long as the money keeps us happy and there’s free childcare and randomly adopted social rights… then it’s a.o.k … we could probably walk on water.

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Click here to link to the page of Flimkien ghal Ambjent Ahjar a not for profit, NGO, committed to preserving Malta and Gozo’s architectural and rural heritage.

I will add a link to the organisors of the KEA as soon as I get my hands on it.

Categories
Watermarks

Watermarks: The Definition of Forgery

forgery_akkuza

We have moved from “misrepresentation” to “outright lie”. Minister Konrad Mizzi has become a specialist in libel law. It is a standard in the Maltese game of politics and carries with it the public assumption that “since X has resorted to the courts then X must be right”. It is not how it should be, it is not what the institutes of libel and slander were set up to protect but hey, no Maltese politician in recent history has shied away from abusing of the law in this manner so why should Mr. Konrad?

“Mr. Konrad”, now there is a curious way of referring to a Minister – or anyone for that matter unless you are a slave on a cotton plantation in pre-emancipation US. Yet that is how Karl Cini of Nexia BT refers to the Unportfoglioed Minister in his correspondence to Mossack Fonseca. Cini is speaking to Mossack Fonseca about Mizzi’s PEP status and is also endeavouring to explain the “How many?” and the “Wherefrom? of the funds that will be eventually subject to movements to companies that are set up by Mossack Fonseca.

It is here that Mr. Konrad’s speech of “outright lies” finds a huge banana skin on which to slip and fall. Without playing the special investigator one can see why Konrad Mizzi finds himself in an immense schizophrenic conundrum. Why? Well over the same period of time there had to be two Konrad Mizzi’s:

The first Konrad Mizzi is the one who delegates Cini to contact Mossack Fonseca and set up a structure that requires a considerable amount of funds in order to justify its continued existence. That Konrad Mizzi has an interest to explain that he has quite a considerable amount of personal funds and also has an interest to downplay his role as a PEP. That is why Karl Cini stresses that “our legislation openly allows PEPs to hold shareholdings in other businesses”. So whether he is lying or saying the truth to Mossack Fonseca, Mizzi (through his agents at Nexia) would like the truth to seem that he is loaded with money coming from ventures that are legal notwithstanding his status as a PEP.

The second Konrad Mizzi is the one who was made Minister by Joseph Muscat. That Konrad Mizzi was at first supposed to be a wunderkind who earned loads-a-money while abroad (fuelled by the myth that “studja barra u hadem barra ergo qed jimpala l-liri“) and owned property/properties abroad and has an international family. That was the early story to explain why he needed an international structure involving a tax haven even though his overall worth amounted to a pittance (by multimillionaire tax haven standards). The second Mizzi wanted us to believe that the whole set up cost a couple of tens of euros (was it 90?) and that it was all about family planning.

You can begin to see the dilemma facing Konrad Mizzi. The documentation that is trickling out of the ICIJ Panamaleaks is slowly but surely pointing towards the Konrad Mizzi that one would expect to exist – one who either has or claims to have the kind of funds that justify such operations. The second Mizzi – Minister Mizzi – can give us as facts his Ministerial declarations of worth that obviously clash with declarations done in his own name by the first Konrad Mizzi.

So you see. Speaking about “outright lies” is dangerous in these circumstances. In the not so halcyon days of studying criminal law I still remember now Chief Justice Camilleri lecturing us about fraud and forgery. A forged document is one that “tells a lie about itself”, he would tell us. I wonder what kind of fraud or forgery would be one that yells that it’s an “outright lie”.

Watermarks

Categories
Watermarks

Watermarks: Walking on Water

Watermarks

Watergate

I re-watched “All the President’s Men” yesterday. It’s a 1976 movie featuring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffmann and it chronicles the work of Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein that led to the uncovering of the Watergate Scandal and the eventual resignation of President Nixon. The facts surrounding Watergate happened in the early seventies – a time without the mass means of communication and information that we know of today. Journalistic investigation was painstakingly slow and when the main whistleblower “Deep Throat” speaks in riddles there is much digging for information to be done.

Watergate was all about a money trail. Nixon and his party were using huge slush funds from the GOP campaign to finance covert operations intended to sabotage the Democrat campaign. There was no sudden discovery of all the information. It all started with what seemed to be a simple burglary at the Watergate complex and it was only thanks to the dogged work of the two journalists against all odds that the whole extent of the scandal was uncovered.

When the Post decided to run with the first big title linking big heads in government to the corruption trail, the official response was big and could be summed up in one word: denial. Nixon’s spokesperson attacked the journalists and the entity they worked for and came up with the phrase “shoddy journalism” and “shabby journalism”. Nixon’s people implied that there was a misreading of facts and that the Post had an ulterior political motive for “fabricating” such information.

All Nixon’s men did was gain some more time. They used that time to abuse their positions in power to try to harass anybody who was on their trail and close to obtaining damning information. Astonishingly Nixon won an election when the scandal had only just broke – but not so astonishingly at that point the pieces of the puzzle were far from Nixon and it was hard for the man in the street to make the connection. As more evidence was compiled – mostly by “following the money trail” – Nixon’s position became untenable.

All through the scandal that dragged on for two years, Nixon’s behaviour smacked of abuse of power and disrespect of institutional authority. At one point Nixon ordered the Attorney General (Richardson) and his deputy (Ruckelshaus) to sack special prosecutor Cox. Neither of the two accepted such a blatant abuse and both resigned in protest. Nixon only managed to get what he wanted when he found an appeasing Attorney General in Bork. Responding to members of the press for this Nixon stated emphatically “I am not a crook”.

Walking on Water

Events closer to home are uncannily similar to what happened in the Nixon days. We have a musical chairs of police commissioners who hesitate to prosecute when it is blindingly obvious that there is matter sufficient for prosecution. We have a government machinery that functions on blanket, unfounded denial and that resorts to bullying tactics when it comes to investigative journalists doing their job. Yesterday we had a Minister without portfolio mimicking Nixon’s spokesperson accusing journalists of not knowing how to read and of being “malicious”.

Every day is bringing to light more damning information linking more and more dots in a scandal that knows no equal in Maltese history. The Prime Minister and the two persons directly involved in the story choose to bury their heads in the sand and cling onto power hoping for a miracle of the walk on water kind. Apparently these scandals are not enough because some still claim that Malta is “economically strong”. I seriously believe it is only a matter of time that this fabrication of statistics falls apart – especially in the light of the fact that the greatest supposed economic injections under this government are tainted and linked with the scandalous events of Panamagate.

Muscat prefers to drag Malta through scandal after scandal rather than bear the responsibility and act in the interests of the nation. Like Nixon he believes that he will not “resign a position that he was elected to fill”. Like Nixon he prefers to use his incumbency in his favour so long as it is possible – thus protracting the agony of an electorate in need of clarity and honest politics.

One day, in the not too distant future, Muscat might face a journalist like Frost who when asked by Nixon “what would you have done” replied:

One is: there was probably more than mistakes; there was wrongdoing, whether it was a crime or not; yes it may have been a crime too. Second: I did – and I’m saying this without questioning the motives – I did abuse the power I had as president, or not fulfil the totality of the oath of office. And third: I put the American people through two years of needless agony and I apologise for that.

Watermarks is a new series on J’accuse. The idea consists in having a morning “short” taking a quick look  and reflection on current events in the news – what is trending and why.

Categories
Zolabytes

Panamagate: Labour’s Fell Swoop

fell swoop _ akkuza

Occam’s Laser is a long-time J’Accuse reader who works in the financial services sector. In this article Occam argues that Labour is willfully muddying the waters over Panamagate, exploiting the concerns of conscientious liberals to further its own agenda.

The Labour Party is desperate. For three months it has tried to brazen out Panamagate, but despite its survival of various protests, no confidence motions and other crises, the issue simply won’t go away. Now it is hoping that by tarring the whole Maltese professional class with the same brush, it will cause enough of a distraction for people to start talking about something, anything, but Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri’s egregious misdemeanors.

This is clear from the recent PL attacks on Tonio Fenech and the private sector companies he works for, the attacks on the law firm EMD and its consultant Richard Cachia Caruana, and its general bewildering aggression towards any PN leaning individual somehow involved in financial services. What PL is trying to do is obvious; they want to conflate public concern about the disparate issues of global tax avoidance and its own internal governance disasters in order to dissipate public outrage. This is yet another of the PL’s dirty tricks, and the public shouldn’t allow the PL to wave this red herring in its face with impunity.

To start off with, Malta’s strategic decision to become a financial services centre is one which enjoyed (and below the surface, still enjoys) broad cross-party consensus. So PL is being maliciously disingenuous when it feigns getting its knickers in a twist over this week’s various pseudo-revelations. Secondly, while there is no denying the inherent link between a world order that allows international corporate secrecy, and the exploitation of that secrecy by persons such as Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri, the two problems require radically different solutions.

Regarding the problem of international tax avoidance, this is one which requires, at the international level, a global co-operation and a deep philosophical rethinking of the way the world works; and at the local level, a careful repositioning of Malta as a jurisdiction which adds value beyond its low tax base (this is already the case to some extent, but a truly well intentioned government could do much more to improve things). This is going to be a big, slow job.

The Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri situation, on the other hand, is a pressing governance catastrophe that requires urgent and immediate action. Every day they hold on to their position, they cause irreparable harm to our reputation, and indeed deprive us of the valuable time that we need to reposition and further diversify our economy.

Perhaps the most galling thing about this PL manouvre is the way it exploits the feelings and concerns of the country’s most conscientious individuals, those who genuinely worry about things like global inequality and corporate ethics, turning these noble concerns into tools to further its own ends. Worryingly, we’ve already seen PL try to exploit the concerns of the conscientious before, as with that other red herring about Joseph Muscat supporting gay marriage a few weeks ago. This is shockingly unscrupulous behaviour; the Maltese public deserves better, and PL shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.

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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 10 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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