Category: Watermarks

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Watermarks

Water Babies

Watermarks

How do you know that? Have you been there to see? And if you had been there to see, and had seen none, that would not prove that there were none … And no one has a right to say that no water babies exist till they have seen no water babies existing, which is quite a different thing, mind, from not seeing water babies. – C.Kingsley, The Water Babies

Five consecutive days of heavy rainfall tend to instil a doomsday mentality in even the most positive of thinking persons.Europe is underwater. Literally. Old Europe that is.

In France the Louvre has been closed, parts of the metro that run parallel to the Seine are shut down and you cannot visit Quasimodo’s Notre Dame because that too has been deemed unsafe thanks to the alarmingly high levels of the river. Bavaria, home of beer and irritating football teams who get last minute draws , is also sinking. At the last count nine people had lost their lives in severe floods. More persons are unaccounted for on the German/Austrian border. In Belgium parts of Liege and the region of Limburg on the border with Germany were evacuated, also due to the floods. Italy’s north too is bearing part of the brunt of this mitteleuropean storm.

It’s water, water everywhere – in its dangerous and threatening form. Nature in its ire and full manifestation does not recognise borders. It does not ask for your passport before unleashing its full fury and requires no identification. Whether it is a swelling river filling the basement of an old couple’s home until there is no air to breathe or an angry Mediterranean swallowing a boatload of families and children, there is no discrimination. Death’s scythe accompanies the gods of winds and seas and skies with egalitarian perfection and democratic non-discrimination.

Water has become the latest instrument of the gods’ fury. The biblical story (as plagiarised from earlier epics) tells us that Noah’s ark was rocked for 40 days and 40 nights under incessant rain and storms (what people in Luxembourg call “summer”). In this end of days scenario we are made to suffer reports of Trump’s ascendancy, of the Brits sticking two fingers up to the European project, of politicians defying any form of accountability, of plans to overdevelop the island of milk and honey and of a worryingly increasing number of news items about tragedies involving animals.

 

Black hole sun
Won’t you come
And wash away the rain?
Black hole sun
Won’t you come?
Won’t you come?

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Watermarks

Watermarks: Projects and Burgers

Watermarks

The papers report that the deadline for the gas power station will be shifted for a third time. The government that loves to speak in terms of “deliverables and receivables” and other marketing bluff once again fails change words into action. There is worrying news about the actual tanker that is being converted too since there seems to be the need to remove large amounts of asbestos from it before it becomes viable. Why, in the first place, is there asbestos on a tanker that is to be used for a new project? Much talk, too little real delivery – and this missed deadline is just the tip of the iceberg.

Another report tells us that Malta’s geological maps need updating since they are missing 50 metres of rock. So it turns out that our already not too great planning decisions are based on outdated and grossly inaccurate geological maps. Such bad planning includes decisions about tunnels and quarries. It really begs the question… can we get one thing straight nowadays?

Finally much fuss was made about the reporting in the gossip columns of Muscat’s lightning visit to Rome in the company of Glenn Bedingfield to watch Milan get robbed by Juventus of the Coppa Italia. Many seemed to agree that this visit formed part of Muscat’s private life and need not have had such exposure – whether Muscat chooses to eat at Burger King or in a Michelin joint on such trips is his business after all.

They may have a point. Then again the trip did have a few elements of public interest. First of all it was a very public endorsement of the government appointed poison-pen (as some columnists would describe him). Rather than keep it private, Bedingfield tweeted pictures of him and his rival buddy (Glenn is a Juve fan) at the stadium on his very public twitter stream. X’hemm hazin? Nothing. It is just a huge coincidence that Muscat chose this very public way of affectionate buddy-buddy tripping during the Panamagate crisis when Bedingfield is playing a crucial role to keep the diehards satisfied with government rhetoric. That Bedingfield has taken to using the same underhand tactics as the ones that are being criticised here is by the by.

And then there is the queue at Burger King. Again, possibly a private matter for a private citizen looking for some grub post-football match delirium (and in Muscat’s case post-football disappointment). Images of Muscat queuing with the much praised “middle-class” should have the effect that the Uruguayan former President had on his people. But Jose’ Muscat is no Mujica. His private trip to Rome comes shortly after a private trip to Dubai in five star hotel splendor.

The admittedly irritating invasion of privacy becomes a necessary insight into the spending habits of a PM. One minute he is hobnobbing in Dubai on a highly unaffordable family trip in five star hotels, the other he is queuing humbly in a Burger King joint waiting patiently for his whopper.

Will the real Joseph Muscat please stand up?

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Watermarks

Watermarks: The Definition of Forgery

forgery_akkuza

We have moved from “misrepresentation” to “outright lie”. Minister Konrad Mizzi has become a specialist in libel law. It is a standard in the Maltese game of politics and carries with it the public assumption that “since X has resorted to the courts then X must be right”. It is not how it should be, it is not what the institutes of libel and slander were set up to protect but hey, no Maltese politician in recent history has shied away from abusing of the law in this manner so why should Mr. Konrad?

“Mr. Konrad”, now there is a curious way of referring to a Minister – or anyone for that matter unless you are a slave on a cotton plantation in pre-emancipation US. Yet that is how Karl Cini of Nexia BT refers to the Unportfoglioed Minister in his correspondence to Mossack Fonseca. Cini is speaking to Mossack Fonseca about Mizzi’s PEP status and is also endeavouring to explain the “How many?” and the “Wherefrom? of the funds that will be eventually subject to movements to companies that are set up by Mossack Fonseca.

It is here that Mr. Konrad’s speech of “outright lies” finds a huge banana skin on which to slip and fall. Without playing the special investigator one can see why Konrad Mizzi finds himself in an immense schizophrenic conundrum. Why? Well over the same period of time there had to be two Konrad Mizzi’s:

The first Konrad Mizzi is the one who delegates Cini to contact Mossack Fonseca and set up a structure that requires a considerable amount of funds in order to justify its continued existence. That Konrad Mizzi has an interest to explain that he has quite a considerable amount of personal funds and also has an interest to downplay his role as a PEP. That is why Karl Cini stresses that “our legislation openly allows PEPs to hold shareholdings in other businesses”. So whether he is lying or saying the truth to Mossack Fonseca, Mizzi (through his agents at Nexia) would like the truth to seem that he is loaded with money coming from ventures that are legal notwithstanding his status as a PEP.

The second Konrad Mizzi is the one who was made Minister by Joseph Muscat. That Konrad Mizzi was at first supposed to be a wunderkind who earned loads-a-money while abroad (fuelled by the myth that “studja barra u hadem barra ergo qed jimpala l-liri“) and owned property/properties abroad and has an international family. That was the early story to explain why he needed an international structure involving a tax haven even though his overall worth amounted to a pittance (by multimillionaire tax haven standards). The second Mizzi wanted us to believe that the whole set up cost a couple of tens of euros (was it 90?) and that it was all about family planning.

You can begin to see the dilemma facing Konrad Mizzi. The documentation that is trickling out of the ICIJ Panamaleaks is slowly but surely pointing towards the Konrad Mizzi that one would expect to exist – one who either has or claims to have the kind of funds that justify such operations. The second Mizzi – Minister Mizzi – can give us as facts his Ministerial declarations of worth that obviously clash with declarations done in his own name by the first Konrad Mizzi.

So you see. Speaking about “outright lies” is dangerous in these circumstances. In the not so halcyon days of studying criminal law I still remember now Chief Justice Camilleri lecturing us about fraud and forgery. A forged document is one that “tells a lie about itself”, he would tell us. I wonder what kind of fraud or forgery would be one that yells that it’s an “outright lie”.

Watermarks

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Watermarks

Watermarks: Walking on Water

Watermarks

Watergate

I re-watched “All the President’s Men” yesterday. It’s a 1976 movie featuring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffmann and it chronicles the work of Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein that led to the uncovering of the Watergate Scandal and the eventual resignation of President Nixon. The facts surrounding Watergate happened in the early seventies – a time without the mass means of communication and information that we know of today. Journalistic investigation was painstakingly slow and when the main whistleblower “Deep Throat” speaks in riddles there is much digging for information to be done.

Watergate was all about a money trail. Nixon and his party were using huge slush funds from the GOP campaign to finance covert operations intended to sabotage the Democrat campaign. There was no sudden discovery of all the information. It all started with what seemed to be a simple burglary at the Watergate complex and it was only thanks to the dogged work of the two journalists against all odds that the whole extent of the scandal was uncovered.

When the Post decided to run with the first big title linking big heads in government to the corruption trail, the official response was big and could be summed up in one word: denial. Nixon’s spokesperson attacked the journalists and the entity they worked for and came up with the phrase “shoddy journalism” and “shabby journalism”. Nixon’s people implied that there was a misreading of facts and that the Post had an ulterior political motive for “fabricating” such information.

All Nixon’s men did was gain some more time. They used that time to abuse their positions in power to try to harass anybody who was on their trail and close to obtaining damning information. Astonishingly Nixon won an election when the scandal had only just broke – but not so astonishingly at that point the pieces of the puzzle were far from Nixon and it was hard for the man in the street to make the connection. As more evidence was compiled – mostly by “following the money trail” – Nixon’s position became untenable.

All through the scandal that dragged on for two years, Nixon’s behaviour smacked of abuse of power and disrespect of institutional authority. At one point Nixon ordered the Attorney General (Richardson) and his deputy (Ruckelshaus) to sack special prosecutor Cox. Neither of the two accepted such a blatant abuse and both resigned in protest. Nixon only managed to get what he wanted when he found an appeasing Attorney General in Bork. Responding to members of the press for this Nixon stated emphatically “I am not a crook”.

Walking on Water

Events closer to home are uncannily similar to what happened in the Nixon days. We have a musical chairs of police commissioners who hesitate to prosecute when it is blindingly obvious that there is matter sufficient for prosecution. We have a government machinery that functions on blanket, unfounded denial and that resorts to bullying tactics when it comes to investigative journalists doing their job. Yesterday we had a Minister without portfolio mimicking Nixon’s spokesperson accusing journalists of not knowing how to read and of being “malicious”.

Every day is bringing to light more damning information linking more and more dots in a scandal that knows no equal in Maltese history. The Prime Minister and the two persons directly involved in the story choose to bury their heads in the sand and cling onto power hoping for a miracle of the walk on water kind. Apparently these scandals are not enough because some still claim that Malta is “economically strong”. I seriously believe it is only a matter of time that this fabrication of statistics falls apart – especially in the light of the fact that the greatest supposed economic injections under this government are tainted and linked with the scandalous events of Panamagate.

Muscat prefers to drag Malta through scandal after scandal rather than bear the responsibility and act in the interests of the nation. Like Nixon he believes that he will not “resign a position that he was elected to fill”. Like Nixon he prefers to use his incumbency in his favour so long as it is possible – thus protracting the agony of an electorate in need of clarity and honest politics.

One day, in the not too distant future, Muscat might face a journalist like Frost who when asked by Nixon “what would you have done” replied:

One is: there was probably more than mistakes; there was wrongdoing, whether it was a crime or not; yes it may have been a crime too. Second: I did – and I’m saying this without questioning the motives – I did abuse the power I had as president, or not fulfil the totality of the oath of office. And third: I put the American people through two years of needless agony and I apologise for that.

Watermarks is a new series on J’accuse. The idea consists in having a morning “short” taking a quick look  and reflection on current events in the news – what is trending and why.