Category: Citizenship

Categories
Citizenship Mediawatch Politics

I will, in short, dream for a while

vaclav_akkuzaBack in 1992, Vaclav Havel was the President of a reborn Czechoslovakia. The fall of the Wall and the crumbling of the Iron Curtain was still fresh in recent memory and Havel’s new republic was making its way towards the ideal of “Western Democracy”. Fukuyama might be standing round the corner proclaiming the end of history but for the Czechoslovak playwright and poet President the future was full of hope. In the summer of 1992, Havel wrote a series of essays published in a book called “Summer Meditations”. In “Beyond the Shock of Freedom” he tries to imagine what Czechoslovakia would be like in the future (ten, fifteen, or twenty years). Though he admits that “life is unfathomable” he does try to dream for a while.

It’s not Martin Luther King’s dream. In many ways it is much more down to earth. What we read is a President who hopes to shepherd his newborn Western nation to working the basic tenets of what was understood to be the workings of a western liberal democracy. This was, remember, around the same time as the second mandate of Fenech Adami’s reworking of the Maltese republic – from Work, Justice and Liberty we had segued onto “Solidarity… always… everywhere”. Solidarity was a page lifted straight from the rebirth of another former Iron curtain nation – Walesa’s Poland. It was the call for change that was answered and that began to break away at the shackles of totalitarian hypocrisy.

But back to Havel’s dream. It remains relevant today – and not just for Czechoslovakia (the split into the Czech and Slovak republics occurred a little while after Havel published his thoughts). I find Havel’s hopes for the citizenry particularly telling. What he describes as ‘the shock of freedom’ has impacted the way citizens think and he hopes for an evolution in their attitude. The civic responsibility that he evokes involves confidence and pride – leading citizens to feel comfortable with their own country. Here is an extract from the opening lines of his essay with my emphasis added.

In the first place, I hope the atmosphere of our lives will change. The shock of freedom, expressed through frustration, paralysis and spite, will have gradually dissipated from society. Citizens will be more confident and proud, and will share a feeling of co-responsibility for public affairs.They will believe that it makes sense to live in this country.

Political life will have become more harmonious. We will have two large parties with their own traditions, their own intellectual potential, clear programs, and their own grass-roots support. They will be led by a new generation of young, well-educated politicians whose outlook has not been distorted by the era of totalitarianism. And of course there will be several smaller parties as well.

Our constitutional and political system will have been created and tested. It will have a set of established gentlemanly, unbendable rules. The legislative bodies will work calmly, with deliberation and objectivity. The executive branch of government and the civil service will be inconspicuous and efficient. The judiciary will be independent and will enjoy popular trust, and there will be an ample supply of new judges. […] A well-functioning, courteous police force wioll enjoy the respect of the population, and thanks to it – not only to it – there will no longer be anything like the high crime rate there is now.

At the head of the state will be a grey-haired professor with the charm of a Richard von Weizsacker.

We will, in short, be a stable Central Europen democracy that has found its identity and learned to live with itself.

Categories
Citizenship Politics

In the end there was the Word

promises_akkuzaMinister Mallia will in all probability not resign. He went on record during the “secret” negotiations regarding the IIP scheme that should a residency requirement be included then he would resign from his ministerial position. We are not supposed to know about it  because the negotiations were secret but that secrecy, like virginity, cannot be regained so “Tant pis, monsieur ministre”.

Jason Azzopardi and Karol Aquilina both attest to Mallia’s promise. It would be their word against his, only Karol Aquilina is apparently in the habit of taking meticulous minutes (not like Mintoff’s Cabinet) and neither Owen Bonnici nor the directly interested person have denied Mallia’s promise to resign. Labour of course are trying to make a mountain out of the broken promise of secrecy – during their weekend conference they said that only a child “goes to tell mummy what daddy told him”. Which does beg the question about the kind of families Labour has in mind… but I digress.

The point is that the promise was made during negotiations. Negotiations are built on trust. You trust that the person before you means what he says and would back it up with the necessary action. There would be no point in negotiating if this element of trust went missing. If you do not deliver on what was agreed in negotiations – no matter how secretive they may have been – then you lose your trust rating. You become incredible. The wrong sort of incredible.

Much is being made of the fact that “lawyers are literal minded” and that they believe in “the rule of the law”. The focus though should not be on lawyers but on the diplomacy of politics – whatever the politician’s profession may be (and lets not forget that we now have former disc jockeys in diplomatic circles). Diplomacy is all about negotiation. You can be skillful through conviction or you can be successful through bartering and trade. In all cases you are expected to deliver on your word. Your word counts.

When the EU Commission was sold the idea of the IIP it was immediately clear that it had been given a particular idea of what the revised IIP would consist of. The wording of the first Commission position following the historic agreement included strong words such as “effective residency”. We still do not know whether the revised scheme itself, once made public, will be such as to conform to what the Commission was made to expect in those particular negotiations. Will Joseph Muscat and his Henley & Co. sidekicks (or is it vice-versa?) be true to the words they delivered in Brussels?

Back to Mallia. His position is rather untenable. He may cry foul about the fact that his promise behind the curtains of secrecy was suddenly made public. It does not change the tenor of what is actually happening with regard to the value of his word. Mallia’s position at any table of negotiation is now worthless. His reputation (and in Malta reputation is a big word that covers bloated marketing exercise of the “thick with experienced lawyers” kind) as a convincing criminal lawyer will no longer serve to cover the fact that his word is not worth anything. The opposition will rightly not be able to sit at any negotiating table that includes someone who fails to be true to his word.

When in opposition the Labour party would rant and rave about how the Nationalist Ministers would not resign whenever Labour deemed that it was time for them to go. In this case we have a Labour Minister who himself gave his word that should something happen he would resign. That something has happened. Or at least Joseph Muscat promised the Commission that it will happen. How valuable is the word of a politician? We’ll soon know.

In the beginning there was the word, now all we are left with are politicians.

In un paese pieno di coglioni ci mancano le palle. (reprise)

 

 

 

Categories
Citizenship Constitutional Development Mediawatch

BBC World Update on IIP

BBC’s World Update will be discussing Malta’s planned (?) IIP scheme. A post on Facebook announcing the programme has already attracted quite a long string on comments (see post here – Facebook account required). Aside from the ridiculous Labour party accusations that the whole international press attention is some kind of Opposition un-nationalistic concerted attack, this kind of debate just goes to show how global the topic of “selling citizenship” is. Unfortunately this debate will take place in a context where the final result of the IIP negotiations between government and opposition is not known. Notwithstanding the PN assurances that they will insist that “citizenship is not for sale” we have already seen some clues in the press that point to a system where the initial idea of an outright sale will be propped up with some investment criteria to make the idea “more palatable”.

Have Malta’s citizens been sufficiently consulted on this crucial issue? Should the fact that the two behemoths are “consulting” suffice – given how the issue was completely absent from their respective political manifestos? What mandate do Joseph Muscat and Simon Busuttil have from the citizens of Malta? These too are questions that need to be asked. I’m not comforted simply because Muscat or Busuttil tells me that it is OK.

worldupdate

Categories
Citizenship Constitutional Development Politics

The Hunter outside the Palace

When we decided to change the logo of SDM (the Christian Democrat Student organisation) in the mid-1990s we had decided to include a motto within a design that was meant to portray citizen participation and inclusion. The slogan, taken from Caldera’s tome describing the Christian Democrat principles translated as such “the ideal democratic palace is made up of the whole people”. We were very much into the notion of participatory democracy at the time and it was an interesting formative period of my  life.

One crucial question I have been asking myself recently, particularly after the discussions at the Vilnius closing conference of the European Year of Citizens, is “how far do citizens really want to participate”? Is not an ideal democracy one where citizens are duly represented and where such representatives go about with the business of managing the demos as entrusted unto them? Should a citizen be “active” on a daily basis or should his interventions be limited to the two instances of (1) electing those to be entrusted with the res publica and (2) intervening in moments of crises (taking to the streets)/extraordinary intervention by referendum.

The referendum – a method of public consultation is by now a familiar concept in Maltese politics. European Union membership and divorce have served to speed up the learning curve in this field and we know have a petition for a new referendum this time in the hope of abolishing Spring Hunting for good. It would seem that the representatives of our hunting community are suddenly alarmed that this petition for a referendum might be successful and they have kicked off a counter move – this time the move is a petition by the hunters to amend the very act that gives rise to Referenda. In the hunters’ opinion, such an act should never be used to stifle minorities.

It would seem therefore that the learning curve has hit a huge obstacle. The hunters’ move betrays a lack of understanding of the basic tenets of democratic action and participation. An act such as the referendum act is written in such a way so as to ensure that it does not become a tool for minorities to be ‘stifled’. Given the size of our population, it is already a gargantuan task to obtain a number of signatures that is sufficient to get a referendum going. Then, once the referendum does take place, one should also remember that it requires a majority vote – very much like a national election where similar issues are (supposedly) put on the plate in the form of electoral manifestos. That is why this blog (and a few others) have often insisted for more clarity from political parties during election time as to their commitments for their period in government.

hunter

That is also why the vague propositions found in manifestos are often more of an affront to representative democracy than the very clear aims of a referendum proposition. One should also not forget that a law that is a direct result of a referendum could also be challenged in the courts of law – especially if a citizen could claim that his fundamental rights are being infringed. I seriously doubt that a hunter’s right to shoot at will in Spring  time falls within the ambit of the fundamental rights of humankind and I only mention this check in order to paint a clear picture that goes beyond the PR-oriented assessment of rule of law and politics that is very much encouraged by our political classes today.

As it stands, the hunters are firmly entrenched outside the palace. They are not alone. Our political class have diluted all forms of accountability that would normally allow a democratic system based on rule of law, separation of powers, and checks and balances to work. When you have a government that first enacts a law, then rethinks it, then admits it was wrong, then admits it failed to consult stakeholders, then also remembers that there was no mention of this law in its political manifesto – and all the while such a government acts as though this was the most natural way of things and actually tries to get brownie points from its whole u-turn by claiming that it is “listening”… well then, something is rotten in Malta’s democratic palace.

“We are accounted poor citizens, the patricians good.
What authority surfeits on would relieve us: if they
would yield us but the superfluity, while it were
wholesome, we might guess they relieved us humanely;
but they think we are too dear: the leanness that
afflicts us, the object of our misery, is as an
inventory to particularise their abundance; our
sufferance is a gain to them Let us revenge this with
our pikes, ere we become rakes: for the gods know I
speak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge.”

(from Coriolanus, William Shakespeare).

 

Categories
Citizenship

Vitrines

My last visit to Vilnius was in 2002. I tend to remember the date of that visit mainly because of the inbuilt “football clock” – there was the Korea & Japan World Cup at the time. That last visit was also for a conference. I was a junior lawyer on the Maltese government’s team negotiating the accession chapters and this was a trip that would discuss competition.

I remember very little of Vilnius itself though since we spent most of the time closed up in the halls and the few times we gave the conference the slip it was to watch such important matches as Italy v. South Korea. I do remember remarking that the young country had not yet been fully impacted by the onslaught of capitalism since its liberation in 1990.

Walking up Gediminas Avenue in 2013 it feels like much more than 10 years have passed. The main road boasts a little of all the familiar names that are ubiquitous in the main cosmopolitan areas of the continent. My eyes shifted to the streets though (it’s actually impossible to keep your eyes off them anyway) and to the elegant passerelle of Lithuanians moving along the avenue.

Niall Ferguson cites consumption as one of the “killer apps” that allowed the West to dominate the rest. Attire and dress played an important part since the industrial revolution insofar as this killer app is concerned. I could not help but reflect on the fact that, along with the shop windows, you had the obvious consequence that a whole nation would dress smartly. Affluence begets affluence so to speak.

A dog’s life does not include these perks (Gediminos Avenue Vilnius)

The pan-European imprint of the shop window must say something about us, about the European citizen. This is after all the continent that perfected mercantile practices – across the seas, along the canals and on its main thoroughfares. Do our vitrines, our shop-windows, and their changing face say something about us?

I stopped in Vienna on my way back to Luxembourg and having a long stop-over I caught a quick city train into the city. I was blown away by the huge number of Christmas shoppers that jam packed the magnificently lit thoroughfares. I did not venture much beyond St. Stephensplatz but the opulence of the Graben area with its deluxe trade names, its chocolates and sweets, its fur clad ladies marching irritable and irritating poodles … well they spoke to me immediately in the language of a society that was a step or two ahead in the affluenza tables.

map
Around Stephanplatz

Our Malls, our High-Streets, our “fashion” establishments. Do they impose an implicit harmonisation? Even before looking at this phenomenon from a global perspective, is there some conclusion that can be drawn from the European Vitrines? Do our windows have an effect on citizenship?

The window is after all often to be found at the forefront of political events. The angry citizen may vent his rage and frustration on the very shop window that would have contained his wishes just before the particular storm began to brew. Cities that expect riots (remember the G8 series?) will barricade their shop fronts and turn off the light of consumerism until the rage is over. England was once famously described as “a nation of shopkeepers”. Also, we are all too familiar with the lamentations of small shops and shopkeepers as behemoths elbow them out of the high street.

The social reaction to the evolution of shops (and their shop windows) can also probably be gauged as a sign of times. The interaction is (and will) remain mutual. As the shop and its window mutates so will the citizens and their lifestyles.

1471082_10153582240200368_1224488565_n
Crowds throng to the shops in Viennese Christmas shopping spirit