Category: Campaign 2013

Categories
Campaign 2013 Politics

The Stereotypical Joke

A homosexual, a woman, a Gozitan, a farmer, a patient, a hunter, a student and an election candidate walked into a room. Is it the start of the latest viral joke? No, it’s just work as usual at Labour’s Congress about the future that unites us. Progressive Labour seems to be fuelled by cliches and stereotypes to no end. This Congress that regurgitates tautological guidelines by the dozen is proving to be a huge confirmation of this facet of Joseph Muscat’s “politics”.

The art lies in the conversion of “bandwagon” politics into a demonstration of apparent democracy. Always intent on seeming to be the man whose heart beats at a popular rate, Joseph’s style is dramatically simple and as accommodating as possible. How else could you describe the evolution of a political position that can be summed up as simply as “you tell me what you want and I promise to consider it”? (Non c’è problema… tu mi dici quello che devo fare e io lo faccio).

Here’s Anthony David Gatt (One News Journalist) expressing his pride (on facebook) about the goings on at the Congress:

Cyrus Engerer gabni fiha… Persuna gay u Musulmana flimkien jitkellmu dwar l asperazzjonijiet taghhom fuq l istess sufan. Nassigurakom…ma saritx bi hsieb jew biex nezageraw. Minna nfiha din hi r realta ta dak li qed jirnexxielu johloq l PL din l gimgha. Spazju shih ghal kullhadd ghal skambju serju u li jghodd.

What better than a ONE News reporter to gauge the feeling and feedback that exists within the walls of Labour’s tent gatherings? In Labour’s weird way of thinking, the gatherings are not made up of individuals, of persons, but of labels. You are “a gay”, “a muslim” – a token representative of the latest minority that is going to be fed the spiel of how Labour “cares” about them because it is a progressive movement.  Gatt’s sentence is very telling because he assures us “it is not done with forethought or to exaggerate” but this is the REALITY that Labour managed to CREATE this week – a gay person and a muslim speaking together on a sofa discussing their aspirations.

I’ve spoken about my misgivings regarding the modus operandi of this Congress in a previous post (The Wrong shade of Green) and this stressing of stereotypes only goes to reinforce my suspicion that this is one hell of a Potyemkin Village that the Labour planners have got going. We’ve all seen how much the PLPN are capable of using the “dialogue with the people” spin to their advantage. Remember the “tinda tad-Djalogu” of Fenech Adami fame? That was around the same time as Eddie Fiducja.

Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with putting out feelers and listening to what people have to say and what they wish. All the good will in the world though requires more than a bit of mascara marketing and a splash of token stereotypes (from all walks of life as perceived by the seriously obsessed with pigeonholing labourites). Joseph Muscat’s party remains non-committal on most issues and is now hiding behind the tautological guidelines that are neither here nor there.

Meanwhile we are still denied concrete positions on anything factual – just hedging and camera posing. Ramona Depares expressed what is flawed with this reasoning very clearly in one of her blog posts (PL stating the obvious) while MaltaToday’s Wednesday editorial (Manifestly asburd) hit the nail on the head when it came to pointing out why Labour’s foot shuffling about producing a proper manifesto is completely non-sensical.

The charade and parade of the various “sectors of society” goes on. The Congress of Stereotypes tends to look more and more like a series of meetings scheduled by Professor Xavier. And Labour insists on deliberately missing the point – so long as the sofa is there and the “gay and muslim” can chat openly about aspirations then surely  a future that unites us lies ahead.

I’d hate to look into a crystal ball right now.

 

P.S. Have you taken a peek at www.josephmuscat.com yet? Much has been made of the “not so cool” photos decorating the banner on the site but how many people have noticed that if you zoom out on the front page (“CTRL & -” on chrome) you get to see many more faces… and hidden away you will also see the sweet token lady with the hijab. Labour eh… couldn’t miss out on any stereotype…

 

Categories
Campaign 2013 Politics

The wrong shade of green

I must admit to being surprised. My duties elsewhere keep preventing me from blogging with a more teutonic regularity but I still take a peek at what is being said ‘ere and there just to keep abreast of the latest developments. Seems like a November election can all but be ruled out as in the latest development in the amateur chess game between the PN strategists and the Honourable Blogger from Ghaxaq there seems to have been a tiny impasse reached. Franco has (finally) sussed out that the PN strategy involved pushing him to the brink of voting down the government and has retaliated with the usual aplomb:

“Gonzi, dik ix-xi haga se naghmilha meta rrid u meta jidhirli jien! Grow up!”

There you go. Grow up Gonz. Meanwhile Varist, Leo and the merry band of Joseph’s movement creators have taken a break from blaming everything on GoNZiPN because they are very into the latest discovery that is “The Congress”. It deserves a capital C because it is apparently a revolutionary idea for the Labour party – the first of its kind. Basically what is happening is that the Labour posse uproots itself and goes to the “specialists” in every field and asks them what they think about a particular topic. Now I’m not sure whether it is apocryphal or whether it is a fact but it seems that the modus operandi involves a general show of hands indicating the IRL (in real life) equivalent of a contemporaneous multitude of LIKES for a particular idea.

Such ideas as pass muster during these very public plebiscites are then incorporated into a set of GUIDELINES that will be presumably taken into consideration when the Labour party finally decides that the time is ripe to actually lead people and come up with a real plan. In the meantime this marketing gag has us all in awe at Joseph’s unlimited capacity to come up with obvious tautologies on a regular basis – healthcare to centre around patients, business not to be obstructed, Gozo needs work etc etc. We’d seen it all before, only now there is the confirmation among folk who “understand” the subject. Can you imagine asking a taxpayer what he thinks we should do with taxes?

Great marketing move by Labour though. This way we get to forget that we STILL have no concrete plan beyond the usual medley of buzzwords. We forget that Karmenu Vella and Assistant Aaron Farrugia have still not produced the goods and in case we were wondering here is Leo spelling out the main reason why we should not expect a manifesto any time soon (on Facebook – where else?):

Meta ser nkunu nafu x’fih il-manifest elettorali tal-PL?
Twegiba f’waqtha ta’ Joseph Muscat illum. Fil-MALTA TODAY.
“Ahna ser naghmlu preciz kif ghamel Gonzi fl-ahhar elezzjoni generali. Nippublikawh BISS wara li tkun thabbret id-data u rrankat il-kampanja nnifisha….”
Din il-gimgha nhejju ir-Road Map u l-Linji Gwida ghall gejjieni

So there you go. Screw  you voter. If  Gonzi is bad enough not to give you his plan before an election is called then we will do the same. You’re screwed anyway because it’s not like you’re spoilt for choice. Meanwhile we get this Congress – a cross between Potemkin Villages and the People’s Jamahiriya of Libya Collectives. People being conned into thinking they count because they are giving “linji gwida” to a party that is mostly prone to never taking positions. I wonder whether there will be Linji Gwida about gay marriage or immigrant policy? Which public show of hands will count?

That was my surprise incidentally. That no one hooked on to the uncanny similarity between Joseph’s congress meetings and the concept of collectives, committees and conferences that underpinned that load of trash that was Muammar Gaddafi’s Green Book. Then again… Karmenu Vella MIGHT have been working on something all these months after all….

“The democratic system is a cohesive structure whose foundation stones are firmly laid one above the other, the Basic People’s Conferences, the People’s Conferences, and the People’s Committees, which finally come together when the General People’s Conference convenes. There is absolutely no conception of democratic society other than this.” – The Green Book (Muammar Gaddafi)

The Green Book announces to the
people the happy discovery of the way
to direct democracy, in a practical
form. Since no two intelligent people
can dispute the fact that direct demo-
cracy is the ideal -- but its method has
been impossible to apply -- and since
this Third Universal Theory provides
us with a realistic experiment in direct
democracy, the problem of democracy
in the world is finally solved. All that
the masses need do now is to struggle
to put an end to all forms of dictatorial
rule in the world today, to all forms of

                  [28]

what is falsely called democracy --
from parliaments to the sect, the tribe,
the class and to the one-party, the
two-party and the multi-party sys-
tems.
  Democracy has but one method and
one theory. The disparity and dissimi-
larity of the systems claiming to be
democratic is evidence that they are
not democratic in fact. The people's
authority has only one face and it can
be realised only by one method, name-
ly, popular congresses and people's
committees. No democracy without
popular congresses and committees
everywhere.

 

Categories
Campaign 2013 Mediawatch Politics

The PM & the Black Knight

Appreciators of that fine vein of British humour that is the Monty Python collection will surely be familiar with the persona of the Black Knight that makes a fleeting (and diminishing) appearance in the movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail“.  For the unfortunate few who are sadly unaware of the existence of such sublime sketches let me just say that the ridiculous Black Knight appears in a short sketch (see video below) in which he duels with other knights in order to fulfil his destiny ensuring that “None shall pass”.  While battling the hero of this epic (Arthur) he ends up losing limb after limb but insists on continuing to fight (“’tis but a scratch). Hopping on one leg, armless he still manages to yell “I’m invincible” – a state of absolute comic denial as to the reality of his hopeless situation.

I was reminded of this sketch this weekend when I heard the PM insist that there was no problem of governability in one of his meetings with the people. Crisis? What crisis? The government has survived all assaults on its position (read: votes of confidence in parliament) and therefore after 4 and a half years it will not accept any talk of crisis. The government, you see, is invincible. Now a   great philosopher had once mentioned something about not being able to fool all of the people all of the time and this quote has been doing the rounds in some Labour quarters for quite some time.

PM Gonzi need not bother with the weekly maquillage any longer. If anything, last nights summary termination of all things Franco within the PN should have (as if it was necessary) given the game away to any doubters. The government lost its position of being able to horsetrade away any possibility of surviving votes of confidence towards the end of the last parliamentary session. At that point, Dr Gonzi and his staff knew full well that the business of government was to be punched in on borrowed time. Come October (if we are to wait till then) there will not be much stretching and pulling left – and no amount of distractions such as half-baked civil union bills, sudden illuminations on the censorship issue that never was or even IVF roundabouts will be able to pull off any reprieve of governance.

The difference between the situation today and the situation, say, in May, is that while it is true that for a long time the main trouble with the system of government was that “provoked” by backbenchers, the government had found a way of compromising with the troublemakers : right up to the entente pas trop cordiale reached in the Cohabitation Pact with JPO. Such compromises allowed Gonzi’s government to try to promote a business as usual attitude against all odds. That possibility has now all but waned away.

The inclement weather of the past few days allowed for more of the gemgem and placing of blame at the government’s doorstep. We even had the Msida mayor calling for more funds from government to maintain two resrvoirs at the end of valley road and to clear the tappieri. We wonder why the country gets flooded every year around the same time with uncanny regularity that Arriva can only dream of when the real culprit is the national mentality of “I’m alright so f-you Jack” that leads to clogged arteries and escape routes for the water that will still come down from the sky no matter who is in government.

Here is your check list before the election becomes the here and now: 8th September festivities with accompanying press releases and exchanges of witticisms. 21st September celebrations with similar exchanges followed by 22nd September mass meeting by Labour on Il-Fosos. A short session of “my mass meeting was bigger than yours” chivalric beatings followed by the results of (a) Labour’s Congress about the Future and (b) PN’s budget projections/electoral document.

Then Bob’s your uncle. We’ve gone on record stating that “In this country we don’t solve problems, we nurture them”.

Either that… or we deny they exist.

ADDENDUM :

I had only just posted this on J’accuse when I checked the latest news on the papers. Here is the Times reporting that “PN sources” seem to believe that Gonzi is still eyeing an early 2013 election (do note that it is not an official position – just “sources” – another way of putting out feelers?). Meanwhile MaltaToday tells us that Debono is toying with the idea of a motion of no confidence against health minister Joe Cassar. As we could put it so succinctly in the vernacular: aħdimha! (Work it out!).

 

Categories
Campaign 2013 Mediawatch

Academic?

It’s unbelievable. Joseph Muscat has gone on record stating that AST’s article was “an academic exercise”. What exactly is that supposed to mean? Is it to be ignored because “academia” is just an exercise in mental masturbation? Is Anton Refalo’s article in today’s Independent academic too? Should academia be dismissed in favour of the more “erudite” rantings of Joseph and his clan?

Let’s face it Joseph. At the end of the day the political chessboard has spoken. The PN is fully aware of the fact that it cannot rely on the votes of some of its MPs for much longer. That is why it “survived” the pre-estival votes and parliament is now in recess. This recess has delivered the obvious reality that the country is in full election mode: just look at the recent Billboard War. This recess will end with a few attempts at legislating that will inevitably culminate in a vote of confidence sooner rather than later.

What does that mean in real terms? It means that the PN is very aware that the present legislature and government has its days counted. What the PN does not do is erode at the legitimacy of the rule of law and the foundations of democratic government by constantly farting spurious arguments about “undemocratic government” that betray a clear will to ignore the rules of the game. Labour on the other hand is lost repeating the mantra of the obvious – clearly more comfortable in the “non-academic” field of conjecture so long as that means staying away from presenting its plan for government should it get elected.

Now Joseph has no qualms in belittling the importance of “academic” arguments  so long as he can gain more brownie points in the land of spin, conjecture and away from the tangible battles that should be the real battleground in the run-up to an election.

Incidentally Joseph, if Sciberras Trigona’s exercise was an academic exercise in, say, constitutional law, he’d be sitting in his little study sweating out over his notes prepping up for the September resit. Yes, Joseph, even his academic piece was an abject failure.

From the Times:

Labour leader Joseph Muscat has sidestepped the implications of an article penned by his international secretary, Alex Sceberras Trigona, saying the piece claiming the government had lost its “constitutional legality” was an academic exercise.

Asked if Dr Sceberras Trigona’s analysis reflected his position, Dr Muscat said he would rather focus on the political implications of the current “unsustainable” scenario and added that it was up to the Prime Minister to make the necessary decisions.

Dr Sceberras Trigona’s was “a good academic exercise”, Dr Muscat said.

Categories
Campaign 2013

The queue as a political symbol

The queue has taken centre stage in what has been dubbed the “Battle of the Billboards”. This summertime kerfuffle is a mere taster of pleasures yet to come since the electoral campaign promises to be a concentration of superficial messages orchestrated in physical tweets plastered across the illegal billboards across the land. Writing in his Sunday column Mark Anthony Falzon repeated one of the mantras of this blog: that the two party system suffers when one (or worse, both) of the parties lowers its standards. We tend to call it the race to mediocrity and there is now ample proof that the political parties abdicate the reasoned approach to convincing voters in favour of the marketing-driven propagandist approach.

So while the Nationalist party is lost in its fixation with Dr Who-like time-travelling reminding us that New Labour is old hat, the Labour party revels in the comfort zone of tit-for-tat. It is a comfort zone that is devoid of propositions and mainly constructed around the eternal grudges of real or perceived faults. Which is where the queue comes in handy. The PN marketing team was surely on a tea break when they came up with the cut and past job of a poster 30 years young. There was the obvious omission of the “conservative” part but that was a minor issue when compared to the humungous gaffe of bringing “the queue” to the fore of the current political discourse.

One reason why the Saatchi & Saatchi poster worked back in 1979 was surely the fact that it focused on the anger that people had for the incumbent Labour government. The queue is a potent symbol of dissatisfaction. People queueing for unemployment benefits were a strong reminder of things that were not working. It was tangible. The queues were there for all to see. By contrast the nationalist billboard falls into a double trap. First of all the proof of Labour not working can only come with a Labour party in government. Is the nationalist party’s word still strong enough for the voter to believe it? Which brings me to the second part of the trap. It was child’s play for Labour to appropriate itself of the queue symbol and use it to strengthen its Mantra for the Disgruntled.

We got the queues for operations, for jobs, for education. You name it, Labour cloned it. Did it matter that most of the counter-billboards were factually incorrect? Not much. Labour was given a free ride to do what it does best – repeat the lie enough times to make it sound true. Or trueish. The counter-counter-spin cried Not Fair! But the damage had been done. The PN had introduced a demon that would be hard to get rid of. It was now forced into a corner of comparing PN 2012’s achievements to those of Labour circa 1984. Let’s face it… it is a comparison that does not hold water.

The PN would have done better trying to force the hand of Joseph Muscat to come down from his castle in the sky non-committal mode and try to focus its billboards on exposing the emptiness of New Labour – whoever is in the present line up. The fixation on the Karmenu Vellas and Alex Sciberras Trigonas of this world is beginning to turn stale. There seems to be no end of it though and the PN stables seem to be lost in the taste-driven marketing ploys that only just tipped the scales in 2008 (and let’s not forget the JPO factor in that particular round of elections).

Speaking of JPO, do not underestimate the effect of the uninvited return of Jason Micallef as an election candidate. Muscat risks having his own JPO within his stables – another cohabitation in the making – and Labour do have a habit of making such internecine squabbles turn ugly. We can expect various phases of this new relationship. First the very public reconciliation and the “all’s well that ends well” approach. Then the early post election phase we can call the “there’s daggers in men’s eyes” phase. Finally there will be the inevitable eruption when a possible PM  Muscat realises – as Gonzi did much to his chagrin – that you cannot keep everybody happy all the time.

What then? Then we can party like it’s 1979.

 

ADDENDUM:

Remember this from the late 80’s? The queue – a potent political symbol indeed. Music by Brown Rice for the legendary satirical programme “Aħn’aħna jew m’aħniex”…

Categories
Campaign 2013 Politics

From Sarkozy to Saatchi & Saatchi

It’s out. The Nationalist party has “launched” a new billboard – complete with press release and comments by the party President. The PN is really trying its darned best to water down the importance of a press release and a press conference. First we had PBO calling not one but two press conferences and now Marthese Portelli, Tonio Fenech and Chris Said were wheeled out in order to explain… a billboard. You know that your billboard campaign has started on the wrong foot when you need to explain or, worse still, justify the content.

While the 2008 campaign was wrought with messages of “taste” and “guilt by association”, the PN in 2012 is resolute in reminding us how much of Labour’s current lineup has its roots way back when the Commodore 64 was launched (note the nerdy reference here). One thing has not changed – the absence of original thought in the creative department. In 2008 we had the plagiarised Sarkozy slogan “ensemble tout est possible” and for 2012 the PN has kicked off with a plagiarised poster from the UK Conservative party campaign back in 1979.

Do note how Marthese Portelli takes care not to mention the Conservative party in her “explanation”. The emphasis in some quarters is on “Saatchi & Saatchi” – you know, the Versace of political campaigns. Like that should make the whole plagiarising business disappear instantly. I wonder whether Saatchi & Saatchi could claim any royalties for this “cut and paste” job – which might go some way into explaining PBO’s estimates for billboard costs.

The original poster did say “Labour isn’t working” (changed to “Labour won’t work” for obvious reasoning) but it also had a little addendum: “Britain’s better off with the conservatives”. Now that’s vanished of course – and I am quite sure the PR department is smart enough not to deviate the attention of the voter with the assertion “Malta’s better off with the nationalists”. Because that is essentially the part of the formula the PN cannot afford to gamble on. The campaign HAS to focus on Labour’s perceived inadequacy to govern (and Labour goes quite a long way in reinforcing that perception) but it also HAS to shift the focus away from the current state of the nationalist party.

So. Are we better off with the conservatives? What is the PN doing to allay fears that their conservative elements will not dominate a future legislature? Well. Right now we have the rush to change laws on expression, the IVF bill with all its controversies and a number of other minor laws crying for attention (still slapping nudists with criminal fines are we?).

In the end this is not a game changer but it is a clear indication that the nationalist party will definitely find it tough going if it were to act as though all were fine and dandy. And it will take much more than an article by a human rights lawyer to convince the intelligent voter that the PN vote is the vote for change.