AD’s PRO André Vella has submitted this post as a Zolabyte. In this piece and accompanying infographic Vella compares how the three parties square up before all the manifestos were published.
A political manifesto is the official seal of approval of a party’s agenda when (and if) in power; but the truth is that certain policies and positions are already lauded in public before approved by any party executive or general meeting.
For any political party, there are two types of issues. The issues you want to avoid, and the issue you can’t stop to talk about. Then there are the not so clear issues which are somewhere in between. Let’s take gay civil rights for example. PL want to flaunt their stance of civil union (which is more liberal than PN) but they do not want to focus on their contradictory inequality of what they are proposing (by not granting gay couples full rights). PN want to talk about gay rights as well, to regain that conservative base by scaring them with the image of a little child having two daddies, doing so knowingly that they might risk alienating the few pink votes they have. For the Green Party, at least, this issue is not in the middle as they took the clearest path towards gay marriage, being the only party fully endorsing MGRM’s proposes.
Somehow, the bigger parties always have the greatest challenge to appease as many people as possible, a task which fails most of the time as you cannot bind a long-serving successful party to populism instead of an ideology.
So while we all wait for the three manifestos to be officially approved, here is a little Infographic, shedding light on some party positions depending on public remarks passed by party officials or press releases. If it looks biased, it is because it is. Until the manifestos are publicly available, this is the pre-manifesto showdown of Malta Elections 2013!
The author is the PRO of Alternattiva Demokratika – The Green Party.
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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 7 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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You would not believe me but this election has many many echoes of 2008. This government is bending over backwards in order to show the voters how much change it has already brought into place and there is no doubt that some sort of progress has been achieved. On the other hand this blog was pointing out the deficiencies of an outdated electoral system, of an outdated election rules system, of ridiculous plans for voters abroad, of the race to emptiness and of the victory of relativist thinking back in 2008. In 2008 we pointed out the dangers of anything goes appeasing promises and also in 2008 declaring a vote for AD meant that you would be labelled a vote waster (at least that).
Well it’s 2013 and short of being told “we’d have loved to change things” (and should we believe them?) nothing much has changed. Forget AD and its nine candidates for thirteen districts (where there really no other possible candidates in Gozo?) for a minute. Just concentrate on the roadshow with which we have been regaled until now. We are stuck in the”energy” point of the agenda right now and yesterday’s Xarabank is as good a measure as any for the sort of discourse we are facing. I watched the first two debates and I must admit that the wrangling match of harridan yells vs confused tired metaphors between Marlene Farrugia and Beppe Fenech Adami destroyed any will I had to soldier on. Earlier we had to watch a reprise of Mizzi vs Fenech. It was anything but a debate.
It is evident by now that Mizzi (and Labour) have exhausted all that they have to say about their plan (I won’t call it magic). We will not get any more details notwithstanding the fact that the few level-headed individuals who dare brave the partisan mire to find anything more about the idea will only be regaled with a power point presentation that skims the surface and very blatantly omits details. Don’t ask Marlene about them because like Anglu (the other Farrugia) she is not technical and she will just yap away like a baritone chihuahua about “il-Maltin jahdmu”, “il-kancer” and other soundbites that are nothing more than rabble rousing. Mizzi – the techinical chosen one – is nothing better. He is like a roughly prepared student who for a moment thought he found a short cut through the exam. Once you try to delve further he comes up with a million and one shenanigans from the “Shame on you Mr Minister” to the “Don’t Panic” (what’s with the panic fixation on both sides anyway?). His face twitches like a cross between Gollum and Wally and his last resort is again populist rabble rousing.
Not that the nationalists inspire much confidence either. They are experts at rubbishing plans and character assassinations (hence Joseph’s “Let’s be nice to each other ” ploy which when coupled with his constant historical revisionism makes one want to retch violently all over a billboard) but have obviously got too many skeletons in their cupboard when it comes to energy. Thank God for a holistic European Energy programme that perchance requires a pipeline connection to Malta (to increase access) otherwise if it were for them we’d be moving with the painful slow conservative pace to which they have accustomed us in other fields (Cirkewwa terminal? Mater Dei? Social Rights? Electoral Reform?). no amount of arrogant scaremongering should be able to deviate the attention from the fact that the only party that has consistently and constantly had clear policies and objectives on energy and Malta’s plans for the future is the one that is given eight minutes per programme on PBS.
I say SHOULD though. Because from what I am noticing viewers are wired otherwise. The Energy plan by Labour has been greeted by the disgruntled with enthusiasm that just falls short of the flag waving jews who greeted the donkey riding Messiah on his way into Jerusalem. Even those who eventually smelt that this could be a rat waved the suspicion away with a worrying nonchalance. Their reasoning? Even if Labour’s plan is flawed it is better than the status quo. Donkey riding Messiahs wept.
I don’t give two hoots about the Nationalist criticism of Mizzi’s plan. I was ready to listen. I did my research and reading online trying to understand what he was on. Glossaries of terms became my bedside reading for a night or two. Then he looms onto a Xarabank podium and when questioned he comes up with “google it” or “fittex fil-pagna ta’ Puillicino” or worse still he quotes a comment by a retired professor on a blog on an online newspaper. So much for “intom sibtuh fil-Yellow pages”, this one does most of his research in social media. In the end the impression I got over a couple of programmes was that Mizzi had a script that was short and unprepared and that when he noticed there would be other questions he panicked. His failure to delve deeper reminded me of a forgotten politician.
But there are many who are convinced by his show. So I have a question… mainly for these people… would they vote for Spiridione Sant? Who? Spiridione. The great Spiridione Sant. Independent candidate of past elections who passed away recently. Spiridione, the one who loved to speak about Malta Taghna Lkoll (ta’ Malta u ta’ Ghawdex) is probably busy singing the Innu Malti in heaven. Have a look at this clip (particularly from 3 minuites onward and more particularly from 4 minutes onward) and see the poor man shooting number and concepts in an evident attempt at impressing (he probably found “average” quite a managerial word). After watching think… would you have voted for Spiridione Sant? Then think. Why don’t I ask the same question about Konrad Mizzi and his plan? Am I entitled to ask for more proof?
Don’t worry though. If you really want the nationalists out of the way (or the status quo to be bettered with a faulty plan) then go ahead… Vote Spiru!
It’s a good thing that the parties have gone ballistic with colours in their campaign – the obsession is second only to their quasi-fanatic devotion to the newfound toys in the social media sphere. You’d have a hard time catching up with the goings on all over the place between twitter, facebook, party websites, press releases, press reports, tv discussion programs, and more (more?) even if you were not a one man blog. The first few days of the campaign have given us a very interesting point to observe and that is the ongoing crisis between medium and message. I’ll elaborate after a little video break…
The Political Campaigns Hit Home (or just a Sony Bravia ad)
Like the Sony Bravia ad above, the two campaigns (only PLPN have the clout for massive haemorrhage of funds) are conceived as a colourful blitzkrieg on the senses. The main effect is intended to be obtained by a shock and awe interplay that would make Stormin’ Norman proud (may the Good Lord bless his soul and forgive him his failed incursion into Irak). Noise, colour, drama and catchwords form the core of the campaign and themes take a very secondary place in the whole affair. From Labour’s midnight launch to PN’s unsubtle appropriation of the MSNBC colours-of-the-rainbow variety label the main thrust is one that is meant to sweep you off your feet and leave your logical, questioning apparatus numbed for the first few days.
Once you do begin to dig beneath the catchphrases and the cloning of other campaigns you will discover a profound sort of emptiness that is capable of making very loud noises. The anaesthetised message projected by Muscat across the bastions is intentionally issue-neutral: Malta Taghna Lkoll (Malta is everybody’s – not Where’s Everybody). It is a tautology that is as big and as high as the magnificent restored bastions – an affirmation that you would always have hoped to be a given in ANY political party’s repertoire – bar Norman Lowell’s who had quite a clear idea about who owned Malta and who should not be here.
What does all this “Malta Taghna Lkoll” business really say? I for one cannot understand why the party that has spent the last four years treating every occurrence under the sun as a problem and blaming it on “GonziPN” (have you noticed how that too vanished from the vocab?) suddenly woke up and noticed that this is “divisive”. They’re deliberately confusing matters too – being divisive is not the same as disagreeing very much like having an opinion is not equivalent to being right. Labour has packaged relativism and is using it as a blunt force weapon to beat your brain into numb acquiescence. As things stand you cannot criticise anything Labour because you are immediately “divisive” and suddenly “part of a clique”. Trust me I have had my fair share of laughable accusations…
Par Condicio
Then you have the nationalist leaning readers of this blog who seem to find that I “make an effort” to include the PN in my criticism as a some sort of obligatory nod to “par condicio” (equal conditions). This twisted sort of reasoning is the same reasoning that underlines Labour’s Malta Taghna Lkoll reasoning. If you still cannot get what I mean just friend Musumeci on facebook and see how value-free relativism has been perfected as an art of the slimy buonisti – last I checked he was advocating for specialised technocrats to be in government, I suspect he has architects who are specialised in MEPA and “reading” a law degree in mind – but it’s only a suspicion.
Back to the PN. Simon Busuttil’s grocer taunt will return to haunt him throughout the campaign as he soldiers on with that cross between a smile that says “I’m nice” and that heavy frown that says “But I still mean business”. The sea of propaganda from the PN side is nauseatingly overdone with its hipstamatic/instagram effects that make Gonzi & Co look like some 70’s afterthought. Like the PL, the PN has thought of giving us a list of people who are intending to vote for their party – and why. As I pointed out in an earlier post this list is replete with what in other times would have been called “hbieb tal-hbieb” or “hbieb tal-klikka”. Both PL and PN have included what you could best describe as “minorities” in their visuals and lists – part of the ongoing all-inclusive effort. I am sure that if “gayness” was something visible we’d have the token gay or two in the list too… Unfortunately, since the revamp of the josephmuscat site, the woman with the hijab who was only visible if you (really) zoomed out is no longer visible.
Ahmad Aziz – the Nationalist party’s token “minority” icon.
Manifestly Rushed
Sometimes satire says it best and Satiristan couldn’t have put it better when earlier today they posted this facebook update:
Illum f’xi ħin li jidhrilna, ser inħabbru l-karta tal-valuri ta’ Satiristan. Warajha imbagħad ser inħabbru l-manifest ta’ Satiristan; u terġa’ u tgħid f’xi ħin ieħor ser nippubblikaw il-programm elettorali ta’ Satiristan; u jekk jifdal ħin anke a la Carte menu ta’ Satiristan. Biex nagħmluha ċara, l-erba’ dokumenti ser ikunu l-istess ħaġa b’heading differenti u konferenza stampa għal kull waħda. Imma għallinqas forsi jiġu tal-gazzetti għall-fingerfood. (Satiristan)
Often in the run up to the campaign we were forced to do a double take. The parties engaged in meeting upon meeting supposedly getting “closer to the people” and “listening” in order to formulate their positions. We got pre-guidelines (remember that famous list by Labour of 51 proposals?), proposals and groundwork ideas. Embedded in catchwords that would only impress a struggling FEMA (Faculty of Economics, Management and Accountancy for the infidels) undergrad were reams of emptiness or tautologies. Proposal 45: Importanza misthoqqa lill-biedja u s-sajd. As the other satirical page goes… Mulej Hudni.
The Nationalist party has published a manifesto that is about as detailed as Ryanair’s ticketing system. Like Ryanair’s ticketing system you have to read it very very carefully because in this campaign of colours and impressions you have to struggle with parties who say one thing but mean another. I started off by looking at how the parts regarding same-sex relationships are worded. You can easily evince that the PN has not budged on the issue and that “marriage” remains a no-no. They do leave space for doubt though by tiptoeing around the issue and dropping half promises about regulating relationships differently. You cannot blame them though.
What I do find weird is how given the record over the last two years the PN’s Manifesto fails to even refer to the field of Law & Justice. The word “justice” appears only twice in the manifesto and it refers to “social justice” and not to the courts and the law. No mention of the evident need of reform in the judiciary, no mention of the evident need to reform the police and their application of the law, no mention of the promised reforms in certain fields such as the “censorship” issues. The manifesto is poor in that respect and maybe the ghost of Franco still looms heavily on the PN team.
Labour’s courageous step into the dark when it came to concrete proposals was perforce related to the utility bills. Again, either I am slow, stupid or out of touch or the issue continues to morph out of our grasp. Maybe Anglu was not so wrong after all when he tried to differentiate between a cut in electricity tariffs and water tariffs. After seeing the proposals it is evident that Anglu had not studied the brief well and had almost let the cat out of the bag. Now we know that Labour’s promise for a up to a 100,000 families is to reduce the electricity bill and as a consequence the price of water will also go down.
Aside from the choice of healthier fuel though the question of whose plan works best is still up for grabs. There are a lot of equivocal statements by Labour that can only be acceptable if you’ve already decided in their favour come what may. The questions dig straight into the question of “deliverability” especially since the actual time frame of Labour’s plan spans into the legislature after the next – unless of course they plan to ditch all the rules on tendering, planning etc. That Mizzi fellow tries to come across as an amiable fellow who can solve Malta’s energy problems and has sold the “clean energy” pitch to his party who are tweeting about it to their hearts’ content but somehow there seems to be a missing link in the economic puzzle that involves factoring, hedging and promising.
That chapter has not closed yet but I fear that the “distraction” on the energy issue will dominate much of the campaign to the detriment of a multiplicity of other issues that deserve attention and a commitment from either of the parties. The irony is that the social media weapon is not really being used to listen but rather to clobber and bang propaganda straight to the nearest mobile phone.
While, like chameleons, the parties will continue to change colour depending on what they think is “in” on a particular day, the voter needs to become more proactive and probe with questions that are relevant and difficult. The voter (and media like this one) should not allow the parties to dictate the agenda and the pace of how they reveal what they plan to do with the nation. They already dictate that to the Broadcasting Authority. The free media should remain so… and voters can only do that if they manage to throw away the shackles of dependency and the instinct to defend the gaffes of the parties who have pulled their strings for so long.
J’accuse is determined to become one of these open, questioning platforms. We are committed to uncover what lies beneath every shade of political propaganda… are you?
They kicked off. The campaigns that is. By some unwritten conspiracy I was meant to leave the island the day it all went into top gear – only just. I was still in Malta when Joseph Muscat’s team went for the mother of all gimmicks and gave us the midnight launch. Did we need to wait for midnight in order to get a three word “slogan” that is simply a tautological confirmation of blandness? Of course we did not.
But Joseph’s party are carried away on the wings of enthusiasm. The theatrical and the dramatic are peaking in this election. It is not only the election of “social media” but also the election that reaps the very harmful work of the PN spin team back in ’08. Remember the campaign based on “taste”? Remember the campaign based on images and persons? Well this is a natural corollary. Labour, ever the unwitting follower, is now banking on just that : image.
Let’s look at the basics. The thrust of the campaign until now (Labour’s, we’ll get to the nationalist one later don’t worry) has been a skimpy idea of unity against divisiveness. After five years of complaining about everything under the sun we now have an appeal of unity and working together for a better Malta (because Malta is everybody’s). The Italians have a word for this attitude : “buonismo”. Suddenly Labour and rent-a-pundits like Musumeci are all into Gandhi style philosophies. Panto has been extended and the buzzword is “Be nice to each other”.
It’s an escape routine. By focussing on the idea that this is politics of conciliation of sorts Labour gets to once again evade the battleground of real policy (we’ll also see in a later post how this business of energy tariffs is anything but concrete).” They’re getting to love it. The fad Obama style campaign suits Muscat’s propensity towards showmanship. Louis Grech, the latest addition to the bandwagon of emptiness, shoots buzzwords faster than a partisan armed with a sten gun.
The nationalist party has replied with a sustained campaign of its own. The ribbon style of mychoice.pn could not come across any more fake than it already had until the official launch. Now we have the page full of testimonials explaining why they would vote PN. It’s choc-a-bloc with wives, fathers and relatives of PN activists, politicians or of people who have an economic interest in keeping the status quo. Why I’d vote PN? Because my husband gets loads of good work off the back of certain projects that’s why. You won’t see THAT written on the mychoice pages.
The PN machine also kicked off by mocking Labour for copying their slogan from British politicians and their logo from Obama. It was bad enough that this was coming from a party that had unabashedly plagiarised Mr Sarkozy’s campaign last time round, we also discovered that this time it was MSNBC and MSN that would be providing the inspiration for the new party campaign logo. Again we got loads and loads of image including Simon and Lawrence looking like a blue version of old pictures of Mao Tse Tung’s communist posters (or Obama – take your pick).
The multiplicity of colours used by both camps is an attempt to appeal to everyone and appear inclusive. Remember the “anything goes” bandwagon of 2008? Well the circus is back in town. We will also be seeing in a future post how the first impressions from the PN manifesto lead us to believe that while someone in the PN is eager to call a spade a spade, the final text of the manifesto still went through some Orwellian revisions (that’s a new fad too) on order to make some commitments appear much more liberal than they really are.
It’s gearing up to be interesting and J’accuse promises many more posts once we have settled back down in the Lux routine. For now we have the Politics Zero. In the meantime do not let the parties faze you with their special effects. Keep asking questions, and remember: everybody lies.
And yes… AD’s logo does look suspiciously like a drunken BP logo…but with AD you know where you stand. Which cannot really be said about our friends at the PLPN shop.
A couple of months ago Simon Busuttil visited the Luxembourg expat community in his capacity as EU MEP. Exceptionally I decided to attend the meeting and had a cordial chat with Simon. I say “expat community” but I mean “Maltese EU institution workers” because there is no kidding oneself here – that is what most of the Maltese community in Luxembourg is about.
One of the issues raised was the question of voting abroad and Simon Busuttil did mention that he was “working on it” (remember – he was still mainly an MEP at the time) but that they had encountered problems in defining the right. Which is when the “Australia” bomb dropped with perfect timing. It always comes up. “What do we do with the expat community in Australia?” Well, I have a few ideas myself but frankly I do find this foot shuffling excuse to be the pits of partisan hypocrisy.
The issue needs to be tackled in steps. I’d begin with the obvious. There are by now hundreds of Maltese employed by international institutions. Their legal status is not hazy – it is rather clear. They do not become residents of Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany or wherever they are posted but rather get into a vacuum that is being a recognised resident for work purposes but not for voting purposes at national level. Which makes sense really. Even the way salaries are calculated for EU civil servants acknowledges the animus revertendi of the workers (the intention to return to their mother country). Part of an EU wage includes an expatriation allowance – paid in order for the employee to be able to return regularly to the country he calls home.
So how difficult can it be for Maltese electoral law to begin by recognising this fact and allowing for such institution workers to (at least) vote in their respective embassies. Not as difficult (or as expensive) as the regular rustle of electoral lists, flight charters and illegal probing into private details by parties surely. Not as expensive as the eco-footprint of the flights that carry the eager voters to their ballots in their home district.
There are no two ways about it. The PL and the PN are firmly entrenched against the idea of allowing voters abroad to exercise their right practically without having to take days off work. Instead they regale us with such beauties as “it is an academic exercise because the law was not changed in time” – who did not change it I ask?
Then you get the genius labour way of thinking: Why should we bother fighting for their rights if they do not vote for us? Based of course on the assumption that all expats are blue-eyed boys (remember Alfred Sant tabling the list in parliament of private citizens who had availed themselves of the charter flight?). Twisted reasoning like this can only be the ugly offspring of partisan politics. Alternattiva demokratika is firmly committed to change this sorry state of affairs and does not do sorry excuses of the Australian kind.
Ah yes. Did I mention the “Australia scare”? It’s a bit like the “wasted vote” on the eve of elections. The parties will tell you that there are over 1 million Maltese living abroad – and do you want them to vote for you? 1 million Maltese eh….We all know the answer to that one – and somehow I think that the bemused Melbourne, Toronto or New York second-generation Maltese would have an answer to that one too. Change the incentive from “free flight home” to a trip to the nearest embassy and we’ll see how quickly voters choose to exercise their right.
Next time you speak of free flights and free holidays think again. You should be speaking of expensive bills chosen by the PL and the PN… because the only ones benefiting from the current system are the same old dinosaurs that you chose to vote for.
It would not be much time before Louis Grech would have to move out of the “pretty face” comfort zone and be obliged to give us a demonstration of his political nous. “From Brussels with love” was his honeymoon period – yet another EU veteran riding on the crest of “the EU wave of doing politics”. We sat through the Christmas period (or rather chomped) and watched the cute fund raising efforts and the truce that never was frittered into thin air.
In the end Louis Grech’s explanation for having been against EU membership sums up to two things : (1) it was not good for Air Malta and (2) there were aspects that could undermine the Maltese financial services industry. Following that, in what is an evidently an effort to feebly justify this sad excuse for a position on EU membership Grech comes up with a prize explanation:
“At my age it is ridiculous to state that something is totally wrong or good, and I believe one may say that it was only on certain aspects of EU membership that there were adverse effects for Malta. But on other aspects, for example the legislation of particular directives or even environmental monitoring, these were positive effects of membership. You cannot see these things as simply black or white.”
“Bravu Cirillu. Ghalhekk jghidulu hekk. Kakka f’qalzietu u mesah fil-glekk!”
Lest I am accused of doing a Normal Vella allow me to point out that the second part of the quote is mine. It’s the tune that resonated in my ears after reading that paragraph of circum tauri. Louis Grech conveniently forgot that this was a referendum. There were two options: either you voted yes – in which case it was Hello Ludwig Van’s 9th and all that – or you voted no – in which case it was back to Tema ’79. Simples. It was not a case of “you cannot see these things as simply black or white”… it was a case of “you have to decide “Yes or No”.
Louis Grech worked out his sums in 2003. He chose no. As a leader or deputy at the time he would have done the same. how do I know? Because he formed part of the movement that worked so bloody desperately to keep Malta out of Europe. Yes, with Joseph Muscat. Being nice to each other does not mean forgetting that these choices were made. Fuck political correctness (excuse my patois) but this is getting bloody ridiculous. Someone has to get Labour in order and get them to shoulder the responsibility of their decisions. What Louis Grech SHOULD have said but didn’t say is much, much simpler. It’s those three words that we find so hard to say in Malta: “I was wrong”.
This is not triumphalism of some Yes to EU camp. In my books everybody won on the 8th March 2003. Even Louis Grech and Joseph Muscat. This is the gauging of a future leader of a party (or deputy) and how he takes responsibility for past decisions. Recognising when you are wrong is just as important as recognising when you were right.
The Malta Labour Party cannot keep shaking and stirring history in this infantile illusion of “everything is all right now – we are all friends now that we are in Europe”. Their position remains ambiguous so long as they do not openly state simply and squarely that their anti-EU stance in the past was WRONG. Excuses about Air Malta or malta’s financial services industry are neither here no there. Nobody ever said that EU membership was not about shouldering responsibility and yes, about making sacrifices.
What is worrying is that Labour still believes that politics can be built on illusions and half-truths. Shaking and stirring is for Bond and his Vodka Martinis. What Malta needs is clear and honest politics. Louis Grech has failed on this first count – and with him the Labour party. Sorry for party pooping but the honeymoon is over.
