Category: Mediawatch

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Mediawatch

The birth of a blog [3 days 6 hours]

[3 days 6 hours]

The 2008 election campaign was the first one to feature blogs heavily. The Maltese blogosphere had only just really kicked off and most times it was a case of blogs being quoted in what was then referred to as the mainstream media. J’accuse (already three years young at the time) was one of the leading blogs and the comments section also served as a forum for discussion between quite a varied group of individuals. Comments were full of heated exchanges of all sorts and I remember that at the time moderation was still a controversial issue with wild accusations of censorship or appeals to the moderator to intervene when things got too heated (or offensive). One major topic on these pages at the time was the “Wasted Vote” issue as J’accuse’s editorial line developed around the need to elect a third party that breaks the hold of the major parties.

It was around this time that Daphne became one of the regular persons to comment on the blog. Daphne being Daphne, whole discussions soon turned into a Daphne versus the rest kind of match. It was thrilling, it was lively and at times it was dangerously violent – as violent as words and accusations that could fly on the net could be. Daphne’s take on the wasted vote issue was that anyone thinking of voting for a third party was immature and unable to fathom the consequences of “risking” getting the dreaded Labour party elected. We argued. Oh how we argued. I scrolled through the endless arguments in the posts of February and March of that year. Daphne is all over the place. One minute she is arguing with persons who in the future would become trademark Labour trolls, another with Raphael Vassallo, another still with Claire Bonello, Justin Borg Barthet, Fausto Majistral, David Friggieri, Kevin Ellul Bonici and so many many other regulars.

There were times when life got in the way like when I had to absent myself from the keyboard for a few days because I had booked a skiing trip and when I finally found a cybercafe’ in the middle of the Alpes de Huez I noticed that J’accuse had been inundated with comments awaiting moderation. It is so ironic for me to see the comments by Daphne jokingly telling me off to have left the blog for such a long time – when would I be back? when can the discussion resume? Little would I have known that years later I would be the one wondering why Daphne was taking an inordinately long time between one blog post and another. That damn refresh button.

The closer the election got the less patience Daphne had with being moderated by others. It was not in her nature of course to accept to be told what was out of order and what was not. We were all on a learning curve back then remember. I did my best to keep the ensure that discussions on the blog remain civil but those early days already showed the worst of some people when interacting online – and Daphne, being Daphne, managed to get the worst out of some people (and I am not in any way excusing those people). I remember being told off by Daphne for having moderated a whole discussion thread – “we are not schoolchildren here”. In the end I like to think that it was not the random insults that were bandied around that made her move on. It was the need to be in control. Daphne had seen the potential of the blog and wanted part of it.


And that was it. The adventure began.  Running Commentary was here to stay. The first post on her blog was entitled (surprise, surprise) Zero tolerance for corruption. The first comment to appear on The Running Commentary? Why of course…

Why am I writing all this? It’s probably my way of coping with the grief and with the anger. 2008 seems like another world, another era. Lawrence Gonzi’s PN would win the election and the battle for constitutional reform would be postponed again. The Running Commentary would go from strength to strength shifting between punditry, cutting analysis and what seemed to me to be petty gossip-column like observations. When the “one man wiki-leaks” dimension came about first with the John Dalli scandal and then with the more recent undoings of the Labour government  (first among which is Panama but the list is endless) Daphne’s blog became much larger than an online opinion column. For what it’s worth my main criticism in recent times had been that Malta could not afford to have a “one man wiki-leaks”. First of all because I felt that it is not right that one person should be the gatekeeper of such information and secondly because of the dangers that were being borne by one person.

And those dangers were brought home with the horrendous assassination. We had a one-man wiki-leaks because of the collective institutional failure. We had a one-man wiki-leaks because nobody in his right mind trusts the police. We had a one-man wiki-leaks because it was evident that the whole apparatus of government would turn onto anyone who dared go against the tide of sanitised positivism as proposed by official propaganda. We had a one man wiki-leaks because the abuse of the libel system in the courts of law afforded little comfort to everyone other than the bravest. We had a one-man wiki-leaks because  because the fourth estate was an embarrassing shambles – sold out to the highest bidder or, in the case of partisan media, busy being their master’s voice. We had a one-man wiki-leaks because the system of the rule of law had broken down.

Often in her last posts since the last election, Daphne exhorted whoever could to leave the island. There was no future in Malta. The country was going to the dogs. She did say that she urged her successful sons to do so because the island had no more hope. I often wondered what stopped Daphne from leaving herself. What kept her going? Was it a sense of patriotism and some misplaced hope that one day this nation of egoists realises that it needs to think about its collective future? Really. I could never find an answer to that question until her son Matthew spoke to the Guardian. He said something very important: Daphne never gave in to cynicism. She believed she could bring about change. Her work in exposing the wrongs of the nation was all in the hope of getting people to understand why change is needed.

After last election I had given in to the cynicism. I would still be glued to the internet to follow the latest developments from home. Yes, I too would refresh my Running Commentary tab to see if there was anything new that the mainstream press was still unable to report. A few posts here and there on this blog were more the force of habit than anything else as the last shreds of hope waned. Cynicism and lack of faith in fellow citizens had almost dealt a final blow to my will to engage and work for change. Then came October 16th.

I am sad. I am angry. I am full of feelings of revulsion. I am responsible. I am helpless. I I I I. I is the word I feel most guilty of using. I needed to write something to break the blankness of the last few days. I decided to share this chronology of the beginnings of a blog that would change Malta’s history.

We are back. We want change and we will start to fight for it to happen as from today.

[3 days 8 hours] – the time for grieving is over. The time to fight has begun. For the change we all believed in – to make Malta the country we all want to live in again.

 

Categories
Mediawatch Politics

They cannot kill us all

 

Eleonora has had to be particularly patient with me in the past two days. It must not be easy having a brooding, melancholic zombie walking around the house. I still find myself unable to string coherent words together about what has just happened. Unable on a personal plane, unable on a political plane. Until this period of shock and grief is over I am thankful to have someone like Eleonora beside me. Someone who understands and clearly expresses what we are going through. We, as in her newly adopted second home that is fast turning from a fairy tale paradise into a pirate island of darkness and misery. Here is Eleonora’s post on facebook today.

I would like this opportunity to thank all my colleagues at work from all nations who have sent me private messages of solidarity. I wish to be able to convey this kind of understanding to many of my fellow citizens – the same citizens in whom I had lost faith already a few months ago and who I will hopefully strive to win over to the new battle for change starting from the coming days. 

 

This week I’ve received A LOT of messages of friends expressing their sorrow and shock for what has happened to Mrs Caruana Galizia last Monday.

As an Italian citizen whose partner is a Maltese citizen (sorry, Gozitan), obviously I felt the emotional blow that followed the announcement of her tragic murder. On the one hand, being Italian my mind immediately recalled the death machine that took the life of Judge Giovanni Falcone in Capaci back in 1992. A car exploding, a major quantity of explosive probably detonated by someone/something operating a remote control, a road that will be left for long with a crater and a country mourning one of its most important and controversial public figures. We Italians have unfortunately developed a special awareness when it comes to this kind of events. On the other hand, I am also getting acquainted with “my country-in-law” and therefore I knew who Daphne was, what her work consisted of and how it was perceived among the Maltese population.

But it struck me when I realized that I wasn’t the only non-Maltese-citizen genuinely feeling for the “desperate situation” in which Malta finds itself right now. Colleagues and friends, they all sent a text over the past days to express their sorrow for what happened to Daphne. Why is that?

At first I considered it very strange, because usually everybody tends to undermine the role played by the smallest EU country or its potential. People actually make fun of the fact that such a small country manages to sit at a table together with Frau Merkel and Mr Juncker. Then I thought that perhaps all this empathy was due to the fact that the brutal way in which the murder has been carried out had caught the attention of the usual crime-news-audience.

But I was mistaken.

Friends who are writing me simply need to share their emotions, to express their shock, and want me to convey their sympathy to my partner. I realized that they are doing this because they too have been affected by this tremendous assassination. Because I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.
We, people living in the long-awaited Area of Freedom, Security and Justice simply cannot conceive that an investigative journalist is murdered, let alone in this brutal manner, because of her ideas. Also our rights as human beings, our fundamental freedoms have been violated by this savage act. Because we’re no longer Maltese citizens, Italian citizens, German citizens. We’re Europeans, we’re citizens of this world, and we all feel for each other, especially when these events occur.

Now it’s the time to ask ourselves: what of this stream of emotions? Will we just burst out our sorrow, feel for the family of Mrs Caruana Galizia and watch from far what will be done to bring to justice those who are responsible for this?

I think that it’s important that Maltese citizens feel that we all will not immediately forget what’s happened and, in a broader perspective, what’s happening in and to this country. It may sound too obvious, but keeping in the public eye the events that will follow what happened to Daphne will allow all those who are now protesting in the streets and calling for a more democratic society to feel that they are not alone, that they still have our support and that they are claiming something that we all deem essential. A Maltese citizent told me today that you can assess what’s the status of the rule of law in Malta by seeing what will be the follow up of this tragic murder. Let’s make sure we all follow closely what will happen now.

Because as Judge Rocco Chinnici (also murdered by a car bomb parked in front of his domicile) said when he first envisaged the establishment of the antimafia pool, “they can kill one, two of us, but they cannot kill us all”.

Categories
Mediawatch Politics

Blood on their hands

 

On any other day this facebook post would have been taken up and pasted onto the Running Commentary. The blog is no more but the spirit not only lives on but will grow. I am reproducing this post here with the kind permission of its author Justin Borg Barthet. 

We don’t know who ordered the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. Perhaps we never will.

But there’s blood on your hands, Prime Minister. You systematically destroyed the institutions which would have protected journalists from the violence of those who feared the truth. You emasculated a police force, and you reprogrammed the constitutional order to eliminate the rule of law. There’s blood on your hands, Prime Minister.

There’s blood on your hands too, Leader of the Opposition. Your political career is built on the dehumanisation of a journalist, on the weakening of the truths for which she stood, on the removal of the support of people who stood between her and yesterday’s events. There’s blood on your hands, Leader of the Opposition.

There’s blood on your hands, Attorney General. I have never addressed your omissions before for fear that my voice would be amplified undeservedly. Not now. I don’t know if it is cowardice, promise of preferment, or plain lucre which has made you remiss in your constitutional duties. But chances are, had you done your job properly, a journalist, a mother, a wife, a sister, would still be with us. Her murderers would be in prison. There’s blood on your hands, Attorney General.

There’s blood on your hands too Police Commissioner. But about you, least said soonest mended.

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Mediawatch

Black Monday

“Chi ha paura muore ogni giorno, chi non ha paura muore una volta sola.” – Paolo Borsellino

 

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Mediawatch

Leader of the Opposition

Adrian Delia is frantically fighting a race against time. It has become increasingly evident that his gamble for leadership of the nationalist party did not include the foresight or plan that would account for the fact that he needs to find a way to get into parliament. This lack of foresight does not bode well for the nationalist party – that it is lead by someone unable to make the most simple of calculations is not exactly a bright light for the future. If my sources are right, plan B for Delia and his entourage seems to be the harassing of a number of MPs that are judged as most likely to want (or to be forced) to give up their seat and make way for the half-heartedly anointed one. It is a clumsy and roundabout way of doing things that jars conspicuously with the declared marketing of TeamDelia of wanting to unite the party behind Adrian as quickly as possible.

Unwitting supporters have even been asked to turn their guns onto the PD as though the damned coalition meant that the Democratic Party owed the Nationalist Party anything other than collaboration in parliament against the forces of corruption. Kudos to Marlene Farrugia who has strongly retorted that she will not be turned in this respect and that the PD will jump at any chance to take the place of any MP who chooses to call it quits and force a by-election. Of course Delia and his team will choose to take this opportunity to ride roughshod over the concept of coalition and collaboration – hatred of anything the coalition was about is after all one of the hallmarks of Delia’s New Way. So much for a deeper understanding of the changes that are necessary in the way politics is made.

But what about the Holy Grail position of the Leader of the Opposition? Well, constitutionally we are in a bit of a conundrum. First of all, none of the conditions that create a vacancy of the position of Leader of Opposition (Article 90(3) of the Constitution) has been fulfilled so technically since Simon Busuttil is still a member of the House of Representatives and consequently has not vacated the position. Let us assume that by informing the President of his intention to no longer lead the nationalist party, Simon Busuttil has de facto given up his place as Leader of the Opposition that he occupied under the terms of 90(2)(a) of the Constitution. In that case, until Delia manages to find a way into Parliament we can try to see who can legitimately fill that constitutional role come the 1st of October. Whichever scenario you take, whether it is under article 90(2)(a) (the MP who leads the opposition party with the largest number of members) or under article 90(4) (If, in the judgment of the President, a member of the House of Representatives other than the Leader of the Opposition, has become the Leader in the House of the opposition party having the greatest numerical strength in the House) – in both cases the Leader of the Opposition is (a) a member of the house and (b) commands/leads the largest number of opposition members. In the absence of the party leader (Adrian Delia) the obvious constitutional choice until the dilemma is solved is to nominate the Deputy Leader for Parliamentary matters (Mario DeMarco) as the Leader of the Opposition.

Sure, it can be a strange situation where the Leader of the Party is not the same person as the Leader of the Opposition but this does not mean that it cannot and will not work. As I said, Delia should have foreseen this situation before he decided to throw in his name as a leadership candidate. It’s not like he was not asked the question as from the start of his campaign. Even a minimum of constitutional knowledge would have told him that no MP on any side of the house owes any party anything. The seats are not theirs to give – they have been elected by their constituents and owe them the duty of representation. Giving up that seat for a man who only three months ago was unwilling to represent any part of the nation would be a betrayal of their constituents of the highest order.

I am quite sure that in the end one MP will be found who will give in to the heavy handed tactics of TeamDelia. It does not bode well at all though. It is one thing to elbow your way into the leadership of a party, it is another altogether to bulldoze your way into a constitutional position without the least bit of deference to the constitutional principles that underlie a constitutional democracy.

 

 

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Mediawatch

No Way to the New Way

Adrian Delia’s adopted slogan for his leadership bid is “Mod Ġdid” (New Way). In his latest outing before the press the candidate for leadership now claims to be persecuted by the PN establishment. It is clear now that his intention is to drive a wedge between himself, his support (supposedly the most of anti-establishment of anti-establishment) and the rest of the party with all its mechanisms, institutions and “baggage”. From last night the 4-way race has become, to some extent a battle between Delia and the rest – the PN in the public eye is reaching its turning point and it is one that has written “do or die” all over.

There is an irony though in the way this whole business has unfolded. A party that was beaten down to a pulp – shocked by the last election results – was being asked for the second time in five years to regroup, reform and react. The system in Malta requires “a leader” – the leader – around which to rebuild. It is as though a leader is required before anything can properly function in our political parties. It could be that we are driven by biblical inspiration and that a party’s chosen are helpless without a guiding light to follow – a messiah even. The many corollaries of this thinking include the blind faith, the unquestioning loyalty, the imagery of the flock and the sacrifices and hurts that are part and parcel of every devotee on whichever side of the great divide.

There begins the irony. Many have been hoping for a New Way for a very long time. Many, including myself, had hoped that the supposed rage that had been built against the inexcusable degradation of the rule of law in the last years would transform itself into sufficient inspiration to bring about the much desired change. Many saw this opportunity to begin such a change when the coalition against corruption took shape. Many believed. This would be a new way of politics – transparency, representation, meritocracy and the rule of law brought back to their rightful places in a republic that deserves much much more than the direction it has taken in the last few years. Many, including myself, were prepared to set aside their profound distrust of the old parties and to engage in the hope of kicking off this change – and we joined the coalition and its aim to rid Malta of corruption. Turiamoci il naso e votiamo la coalizione… in the hope of better things to come.

What we had not reckoned with was the New Way. It’s not really that New: it has been with us for a while in the guise of what this website called Inħobbkom Joseph in his first few years of office. Remember? The day Joseph Muscat was elected leader of the Labour Party (then still MLP) his first word to the Labour delegates was “Inħobbkom” (I love you). The New Way had begun. Love was in the air and the promise of change began with promises of listening to the hurts, of sweeping away the old and bringing in the new. We can see where this brought us. Fast forward to 2017 and looking back we know for a fact that Muscat’s New Way was simply the opportunity for a group within a party to make use of the social and political mechanisms until it reaches its aim of installing itself at the helm of the country. In true Tommasi di Lampedusa style – everything changed but everything remained the same. Circles within circles, friends within friends and the real change disappeared as quickly as a plot of virgin land in an ODZ.

The ugly part of the New Way is that it is difficult to reckon with. It has no scruples, no vision other than Mammon and the abuse of the faults and glitches of a constitutional system that cries for a proper reform. It is tough to reckon with a faceless, valueless body politic and even harder to break it down when the institutional guarantees are all undermined gradually. The New Way works best because it makes use of the partisan party systems that have been fine tuned as ladders to power without much thinking about their original reason for existence. The PN and PL stopped being thinking parties in a political sense decades ago. The PN’s last clear political position was EU entry. The PL’s was probably opposition to the EU – anything since is just a result of pragmatic opportunism and populism on the labour side and the PN flailing about helplessly with a multiple personality disorder.

Without a set of basic values there is no litmus test. There is no independent testing ground, no grundnorm against which to gauge new entries. Add onto this the fact that the last two elections that brought Labour to power and kept it there were also the period of the rise of social media and public scrutiny and reaction. Facebook’s rapid expansion into the political domain has meant that the 2008 election was the last election where information and its manipulation was in the hand of a closed elite. Already in that year the alarm bells began ringing in party HQs when websites such as this one showed the potential of online presence and discourse. In 2013 and 2017 the social media ruled supreme – and it was not only about propaganda. The combination of decades of partisan grooming, faulty party structuring and social media exposure brought us a new majority that crossed party lines. The faithful, the acolytes would process information in a mind-boggling way – and the smarter of the party machineries would make great political mileage out of this.

There is no logic in the New Way. There is no rule of law either. The New Way depends on courts of the general public – a general public that is poisoned with egolitics or the one measure with which everybody seems capable of seeing everything: their egoistic self. The New Way feeds on ignorance, misinformation and the materialistic yearning for more for oneself. The New Way is here and now and Delia and his supporters know that the New Way does not fight its battles institutionally. An admonition and invitation to stand aside by an ethics committee will count for nought in Delia’s mind. Already the spin is out – it’s the establishment fabricating evidence against me.

Such sweet sweet words to Joseph Muscat’s ears. In his own words it is like watching a film of something that he has lived through. Yes, Muscat, the real pioneer of the New Way used his power of incumbency to strike another blow in the face of the advocates for real change. He has already survived the public courts and public judgement by sowing doubt in the right place and by persevering in a propaganda campaign of deceit. He still has a personal secretary and Minister in his cabinet who should be anywhere but in politics. His New Way keeps them there smiling and speaking of love and positive vibes while the sheep and faithful bleat happily ignoring the long-term consequences of this folly.

The New Way is a strong and formidable adversary. Its bed was prepared long ago and it is the result of the race to the bottom begun almost two decades ago. The PN’s tesserati and delegates have a formidable choice before them. It is made even more daunting because they carry the psychological scars of the last electoral campaign where the New Way delivered that sound beating against all logical odds. It might be tough for them to believe that reneging the New Way is a good idea what with all the promises of short term gain that the New Way gives and given the precedent of the formidable prophet of the New Way in government.

There is no time to waste though. At this moment in time rejecting the New Way and opting for the real movement of change is not only a precondition to victory (on a party level) but the last hope that the reform this republic needs begins in earnest. In many ways the voters for this leadership race have one more chance to prove that the New Way has not won. It’s time to finish what had already been started.

It’s simple. Say no way to the new way.