Author: Jacques René Zammit

Categories
Politics

Smart savings ?

smart_akkuzaHow big a pinch in government spending is €175,000 per annum? That is the figure that Education Minister Evarist Bartolo claims to be saving the public purse by removing the smart card system and transforming that portion of money into a grant going directly into the students’ purses.

There seem to be murmurs of new controls (checks and balances) on how such money is spent by students – such controls seem to have the nihil obstat of the KSU president who suggested a system of providing receipts for purchases. Sadly no one has yet mentioned how much said systems of checks and balances would cost, consequently we do not even know whether the new cost will be cheaper than the above mentioned administrative expenses that are needed to keep the smart card system in place.

Beyond the petty accounting from a government that increased the annual emoluments to its appointees by €25,000,000 last year (had to put the zeroes to give you a sense of perspective), the move to remove the smart card may have been packaged in the attractive (but deceptive) wrapping of a money saving exercise but it belies a hapless approach to the very reason of the existence of stipends (and maintenance grants, and ring-fenced expenses).

As was argued a good 16 years ago by KSU (and yes, I did form part of that KSU) every time you discuss stipends you have to be aware of why they exist. 16 years ago it was convincingly argued by the KSU before the Galdes Commission that stipends were still a necessary incentive to keep thousands of students out of the work market and in the tertiary level of education. The report we produced in 1998 is too long to summarise here but you can get a read on this link.

Now this government does not seem to be questioning the need for maintaining a system of stipends and grants. The changes were simply cosmetic based on spurious economic justifications. It is rather ironic that the KSU should be in favour of the switch away from smart cards while the GRTU expresses its disappointment. Well, not so ironic given that the main flaw of the outgoing system seems to have been the abuses by retailers who were never intended to be part of such a scheme. The idea behind smart cards was to ensure that the expenses strictly related to educational requirements of the students could be controlled. Money intended for books and stationery would not end up spent on vodka and Easter weekends in Gozo.

Nanny state? Maybe. But this was intrinsically linked with the basic policy of why stipends existed. It is easy to take the Daily Mail approach to stipends and start off your average newspaper column with a whinge about how students have it so easy and that it is about time that stipends are removed. Thatt does not mean that you have the bigger picture in mind. it just means that you are willing to ride the wave of public sentiment that is always so popular in Malta.

The truth is that stipends should form part of a wider set of targets and policies that not only effect the educational levels of our nation but also employment and development policy. Bartolo’s lame excuse of saving the equivalent of one-third of the spending on a Joseph Calleja concert is ridiculous when seen from this wider perspective. As things stand, a specific measure designed to ensure that a substantial part of the monies allocated to subsidising student autonomy in tertiary education is used for the purpose for which it was intended has been shot down with no effective replacement in sight.

Sure, the system was being abused – but rather than create a better check and punish abusers the government has chosen an easy way out that utterly compromises the whole idea of ring-fencing the student subsidy system. By saving €176,000 on an imperfect system of checks and balances, the government has now opted for no checks and balances – at least until we are told whether any new system is in place and what it entails (and how much that one will cost).

As for the KSU, they might be applauding this move enthusiastically but policy wise they should be seeing this as a heavy burden to carry next time a new debate comes up as to the necessity of stipends in this day and age. By discarding any possibility of restricting the spending to educational purposes they have also discarded one of the most convincing elements in favour of Malta’s very specific approach to tertiary education subsistence.

From MaltaToday:

The Education Minister added that students were already spending their grant in non-related educational expenses and, in this way, student would learn how to be responsible with their money.

KSU President Gayle Lynn Callus welcomed the reform but called on government to ensure checks and balances are in place on how the students spend their grant.

Also: The KSU 1999 Stipends Survey documents are available here.

 

Categories
Mediawatch Politics

Institutes of Confusion

confucius_akkuzaChina Today. It’s all about China isn’t it? The latest very superficial Memorandum of Understanding to be signed with what Saviour Balzan in his infinite wisdom terms a “former communist giant” was the subject of discussion in parliament tonight. The opposition raised some valid questions about a number of matters mentioned in the Memorandum – o as the case may be, about a number of matters not mentioned in the memorandum. One matter that both parties seem to be warm about is the benefits of cultural exchange with the global behemoth – in particular the setting up of the Confucius Institutes. Many seem to labour under the impression that this kind of centre of cultural enlightment has the same value as, say, the Alliance Francaise or the Istituto Culturale Italiano. Only it doesn’t does it?

Confucius Institutes have been set up the world over by China in an effort, true, to spread its cultural enlightenment to the world. These institutes though are not totally bereft of controversy and this mainly because of the very nature of their backer. Alas Chinese culture includes a dark void in such subjects as democracy and human rights. Don’t expect the institutes to be a shining example or learning center where these subjects are concerned. Last year a number of Canadian Universities were up in arms and sought to eliminate all ties to their Confucius Institutes precisely because of behaviour that was not fitting for liberal democracies:

Here’s The Times’ educational supplement (no not the Times that accepted the trip to be part of the Potemkin group selected by Muscat – the real Times):

The most recent controversy over the Confucius Institutes has flared up in Canada, where one university is shutting down the programme on its campus because of a human rights complaint and two more have declined to serve as hosts.

McMaster University in Hamilton, near Toronto, will close its Confucius Institute when the current term ends this summer, citing the institute’s requirement that its instructors have no affiliation to organisations that the Chinese government has banned, including the spiritual movement Falun Gong.

In the past few years, too, the University of Manitoba and the University of British Columbia have turned down proposals for Confucius Institutes to open on their campuses.

The Confucius Institutes are under the control of Hanban, a branch of China’s Ministry of Education. They supply money, teachers and Chinese- language instruction to universities.

The network has grown from one campus in Seoul in 2004 to more than 400 today, including 11 in Canada, 70 in the US and 11 in the UK. According to reports in the Chinese media on 11 March, the head of the Confucius Institutes, Xu Lin, has said the institute plans to expand to 500 branches worldwide by 2020. (Link)

There’s more in this article in the New York Times also highlighting all the strings that are attached to setting up a China funded institute within a Western University. In the article the difference between Confucius Institutes and the Alliance Francaise is stressed:

The British Council currently operates in more than 100 countries; the Alliance Française and the Goethe Institute, in Germany, all run on similar lines. And though the United States Information Agency library program has wound down considerably with the end of the Cold War, the State Department still makes an effort to promote American culture overseas.

However, none of these programs are based on university campuses. And according to Mr. Davidson, none adopt the same homogenous approach to their native cultures found in Confucius Institutes. “No one would regard Zadie Smith or Grayson Perry as someone controlled by the British Council,” he said.

“The Chinese are very clear on what they are trying to achieve,” said Mr. Davidson. “They want to change the perception of China — to combat negative propaganda with positive propaganda. And they use the word ‘propaganda’ in Chinese. But I doubt they have to say, ‘We’ll only give you this money if you never criticize China.’ The danger is more of self-censorship — which is a very subtle thing,” Mr. Davidson said.

Wikipedia, the site censored in the People’s Republic, has an article dedicated solely to Criticism of Confucius Institutes – such is the extent of controversy surrounding these units of Chinese propaganda abroad.  Academics find the idea of the institutes abhorrent because they symbolise the stifling of academic freedom – and they insist on being intrinsically linked to university campuses. Their use as a tool of propaganda while censoring controversial parts of the Chinese story (the three T’s are blacked out: Tiananmen, Tibet and Taiwan) makes them stick out like ugly warts within the Western concept of liberal seats of learning that is supposed to underlie the very basis of academic development.

On March 28, 2012, the United States House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held a hearing on “The Price of Public Diplomacy with China,” focusing upon Chinese propaganda efforts in the U.S., including Confucius Institutes on university campuses. Representative Dana Rohrabacher said, “The two pillars of America’s status as an open society are freedom of the press and academic freedom. Communist China, which does not believe in or allow the practice of either type of freedom, is exploiting the opportunities offered by America to penetrate both private media and public education to spread its state propaganda.”Steven W. Mosher testified, “there have been allegations of Confucius Institutes undermining academic freedom at host universities, engaging in industrial and military espionage, monitoring the activities of Chinese students abroad, and attempting to advance the Chinese Party-State’s political agenda on such issues as the Dalai Lama and Tibet, Taiwan independence, the pro-democracy movement abroad, and dissent within China itself.”Responding to Mosher’s testimony, Rohrabacher argued, “It appears as though Beijing is able to expand its campaign against academic freedom from China to America when U.S. universities value Chinese favors and money more than truth and integrity.

That’s it really. It’s not just the US universities. Dealing with China means that sacrifices have to be made and reaching ugly value conclusions. Dealing with China brings in Chinese favors and money but the ultimate result is that what suffers are truth and integrity.

The object of the superior man is the truth. – Confucius

Categories
Mediawatch Politics

Our missionary position

missionary_akkuzaThis is a guest post sent in by a J’accuse reader. 

While everyone this side of the Great Wall is falling over themselves to figure out how much of our taxes are being used to remunerate “our” emissary in the Far East, one simple fact from the horse’s mouth seems to have been missed.

I, for one, could not care less if the salary Hon. Mizzi’s wife is supposedly on is €3,000, €13,000 or €130,000 per month if it means the overall economic boost to our nation’s coffers results in a net gain from this promotional mission. However, what is most striking, is that for all the hard work she is meant to have done in the past year, all she has to show for it is interest from a ‘top digital company’ to come to Malta and set up a ‘free trade zone centre’.

Sai Mizzi’s quote to Times of Malta reporter Ariadne Massa:

“This company is looking to set up a showcase for all Chinese products in Malta so that European countries will not need to travel to China to see their goods but they can just go to Malta, which is on their doorstep”

That sounds like top work to me, but only if your remit was to bring China and Chinese products to the EU. Does Ms Mizzi not know which side of her bread is being buttered? Apart from saving a little airfare for our EU brethren I fail to identify any benefit that this may bring to our economy. Even the trade zone centre is “free”!

A Nonny Moose

Categories
Mediawatch Politics

(All that) Bull in a China shop

allbull_akkuzaThis must be the year of the bull. I know it isn’t (it’s the year of the horse and there’s no bull in the Chinese zodiac) but there’s so much bull in the year that it’s hard to miss it. Only the other day Malta’s ex-Commissioner to the EU now turned “I’ll never bend over to the Europeans” repeatedly referred to a Dr BS in one of his apologias to the world. Must be the summer sun.

Anyways. Today’s Times of Malta reports a government spokesman as saying that Malta’s newly signed medium-term cooperation agreement with China has “sparked interest from other European countries seeking to tap similar deals”.

Malta will be the first EU country to sign a medium-term cooperation agreement with China when the Prime Minister flies to Beijing on Tuesday. According to the government, the five-year memorandum of understanding announced on Thursday has already sparked interest from other European countries seeking to tap similar deals. “We have been approached by four other European countries asking what this deal will entail to see how they can follow suit,” a government spokesman said when contacted. (Times of Malta)

The ambiguity of the phrase regarding interest is such as to raise a couple of questions. First of all, the minor detail, I believe that it is safe to assume that for once the government’s spokesman remembered we are part of Europe and therefore the “other” in that phrase means “other than Malta” (the alternative interpretation would be a sad condemnation on government spokesman’s geographical proficiency).

The second bit of ambiguity concerns the deal that is being asked about. Are other European countries interested in the same kind of agreement with Malta? Or are they genuinely asking Konrad Mizzi and co. for advice on how to deal with China? Both alternatives stink of stercus taurinum. The first alternative (European countries inquiring about a possible cooperation agreement with Malta) tends to ignore the fact that we are currently very strongly partnered with 27 member states of the European Union. Are these extra-EU European states? All four of them? Highly unlikely.

So chances are that the government spokesman was actually referring to the second option, namely that Malta’s government was being asked for advice on how to clinch great deals with the Chinese. Which is interesting and also stinks of bovine excrement. The statement implies that the poor European states (all four of them) are living in a sort of Martian isolation from the rest of the world and had hitherto never made contact with the Chinese empire beyond the cave. In this day and age when the Republic of Ghana has the remnimbi in circulation alongside the national currency it is hard to believe that there are European countries (presumably members of the European Union) that need the Labour government’s assistance in establishing ties with China.

Or maybe (just maybe, as Louis CK would say) they need to find out how Labour pulled off a very particular kind of relationship with the Chinese. The kind of agreement that makes use of the public good in order to pay off an inordinate amount of IOUs and commitments that were made BEFORE it was even a government. THAT kind of understanding where the contents of agreements are rarely public but where you can smell certain beneficiaries from a mile away. Who knows there may be Energy Ministers in European countries who have woken up and smelled the coffee and are planning a posting for their companions in far off Shanghai (remunerated by the public purse).

In the end it’s not the deals with China that are a problem. Sure, the whole world is currently rushing to benefit from China’s huge reserves that are waiting to be spent and invested in every corner of the planet. What remains a problem are the clouds hanging on the not too fine line of distinction between Labour as a party (and its favourites) on the one hand and the public assets that are entrusted in the hands of the executive for a good administration in the best interests of us all.

In that department at least I strongly doubt whether Labour has any good lessons to impart to any other nation, let alone European partners.

Categories
Mediawatch Politics

The ghosts of politics past

ghosts_akkuzaThe French news world was rocked this morning with the news that former President Nicolas Sarkozy was placed under “garde a vue” pending investigations into possible “trading in influence” that he might have engaged in during his presidency. Those more familiar with Italian political jargon would call a garde a vue an avviso di garanzia (indictment). What it means is that the person receiving the order is deprived of his freedom pending investigation by a judiciary authority.

European politicians (at least European politicans) would do well to look closely at the events leading to this state of affairs. Investigations had originally concentrated on Sarkozy’s 2007 electoral campaign – yes, the original Flimkien kollox possibbli or as the French would have it Ensemble tout est possible.  Sarkozy and his electoral team were suspected to have received funding from – of all people – Colonel Muammar Gaddhafi in return for future favours and considerations from and for Libya’s government. While listening in into conversations related to this investigation, the investigators noticed that Sarkozy kept a secret phone registered under a false name.

It later transpired that this second phone was being used to “trade influence” with judicial authorities in order to favour Sarkozy’s situation in another hot affair – known in France as the Bettencourt Affair (another case of trading in influence and corruption). Sarkozy would allegedly use his network to get important information about investigations into the Bettencourt Affair – particularly any information that would draw him into the case. This network involved high-end magistrates and police officers, or as Le Monde puts it: “ les enquêteurs pensent avoir mis au jour un « réseau » d’informateurs, au sein de la police et de la justice, susceptible de renseigner les proches de l’ancien président de la République dans les procédures judiciaires pouvant le menacer.” (the investigators have uncovered a network of informers at the heart of the police and the justice system that might have informed persons close to the former president with regards to judicial procedures that could be threatening to him). 

Quite a network there. From electoral funds and favours linking Sarkozy to a dictatorial regime to meddling in the judicial and police system in order to protect ones own interests. This is a strong warning signal to politicians – given a functioning system of checks and balances there will always come a time when past mistakes and abuses will come back to haunt you. Such events also highlight the importance of the rule of law and of institutions of review that allow for independent monitoring of the political elite.

Simon Busuttil at the helm of the PN’s storm tossed ship is surely aware of the dangers of the errors of the past committed by others coming back to haunt him. It makes his task of changing the direction of the ship and shedding that image all the more difficult. Sadly the people’s habit of thinking in terms of guilt by association – so often milked by past PN administrations and its sympathisers will not help this particular ghost vanish too quickly.

Joseph Muscat on the other hand is currently running the show of government without making too much of an effort to hide not so tenuous links with authoritarian governments. His main political moves during the first year of his legislature were obviously dictated by and dependent upon agreements with such governments or their people; three obvious cases spring to mind: (1) the Chinese influence on the power station; (2) the huge question marks hanging around the process of attribution of Malta’s passport scheme and those who would ultimately benefit from it; (3) the hopelessly short-sighted dealings with transient Libyan governments over the provision of petrol (and subsequent use of Maltese resources to provide “security” to unknown persons).

Add to all that the bumbling interventions in the army, the sorry state of affairs of the police, the current spats with the Ombudsman, the hideous conniving to postpone a judge’s impeachment – and you begin to see a ghost in the making for Muscat’s band of politicians.

En garde à vous!

Categories
Mediawatch

Triton’s Sons

triton_akkuzaYet another tragedy has occurred in the Mediterranean. The Italian Marina Militare have found a fishing boat with around 600 people on board. 30 of these persons were dead in the hold – dead of asphyxia. As the mayor of Pozzallo decried the lack of space where to put the corpses, it is rumoured that (Commission Head Designate) Jean-Claude Juncker is mulling the idea of an ad hoc Commissioner for immigration.

Greek mythology has it that when Jason and the Argonauts were stranded on a Libyan lake (what could now be Xatt el Djerid near Carthage), Triton promised to assist them out of their predicament in exchange of a tripod that was in Jason’s possession. As Herodotus explains, Triton helped Jason and his Argonauts out of the lake and into the Mediterranean sea. History (and mythology that is an ancient way of “explaining” history) has a weird way of repeating itself.

Weird that Triton would come to the fore by assisting a pilgrim out of the Libyan deserts (Libya for the Greeks stretched from the Nile to the Atlantic) and into the Mediterranean. Weird that the deity inhabiting the Libyan cities would project such immigrants northwards, out of the dryness of the desert. Weirder still that this deity would be Triton who would command the seas with his conch and would be able to multiply into many Tritones – demons (daimones, dimonji) of the sea.

“carried him out of his course to the coast of Libya; where, before he discovered the land, he got among the shallows of Lake Tritonis. As he was turning it in his mind how he should find his way out, Triton (they say) appeared to him, and offered to show him the channel, and secure him a safe retreat, if he would give him the tripod. Jason complying, was shown by Triton the passage through the shallows; after which the god took the tripod, and, carrying it to his own temple, seated himself upon it, and, filled with prophetic fury, delivered to Jason and his companions a long prediction. “When a descendant,” he said, “of one of the Argo’s crew should seize and carry off the brazen tripod, then by inevitable fate would a hundred Grecian cities be built around Lake Tritonis.” The Libyans of that region, when they heard the words of this prophecy, took away the tripod and hid it. ” – Herodotus, Histories