Tag: Anglu Farrugia

Categories
Mediawatch Politics

The idiots among us

idiot_akkuza

“Quand j’entends, par exemple, madame Taubira dire qu’elle n’est pas au courant (du fond du dossier), elle nous prend pour des blaireaux. – Gilbert Collard.

One hot issue in French politics right now is that of Sarkozy’s tapped phone. It turns out that Sarkozy was being tapped while conversing with his lawyers and a huge fuss has been made about this – literally left, right and centre. Collard is a Front National representative and he was talking about France’s Justice Minister Mme Taubira who had claimed not to have known about the goings on. According to Collard, it is all a question of accountability and responsibility – Taubira’s portfolio means that police and fonctionnaires with the police and magistrates fall under her jurisdiction. “If she says that she was not aware”, Collard says, “then she is treating us like imbeciles”. Yep. “Blaireaux” means “badgers” but in street language it means idiots.

There’s much of that going around nowadays – politicians treating citizens as though they were idiots. Nothing new under the sun, only that it is becoming much more an “in your face” kind of treatment.

Last Sunday, one of Malta’s main newspapers carried a strongly worded editorial criticising Labour’s one year in government. Anyone who managed to read it would have been pleasantly surprised by the reality check being proposed on a number of fronts by the Sunday Times. A particular paragraph dealing with the impeachment proceedings against Judge Farrugia Sacco did not go down well with the person currently sitting in the institutional seat of Speaker of the House. For the benefit of the members of the public who like me prefer not to pay for the fare on offer on the online papers here is the offensive paragraph in question:

“Once that commission (note: “for the Administration of Justice”) reached a conclusion that was obviously inconvenient for the government, Dr Muscat and the Labour-appointed speaker went out of their way to ensure he (note: Judge Farrugia Sacco) would not be impeached before he reaches retirement age in the summer”. (STOM Editorial – 9 March 2014)

It so happens  that the person currently occupying the post of speaker did not take too kindly to the editorial. Free as he was to disagree with its conclusions – and point out his disagreement publicly if he so liked – he decided to take it one step further. Labour-appointed speaker Anglu Farrugia has demanded that the Sunday Times withdraw what he described as “serious allegations against him ‘as a person and as a Speaker'” and threatened to take legal action should the Times not give the withdrawal equal prominence as its allegation.

Reality check: this is the two thousand and fourteenth year of the christian era. 2014. For the second time during the Labour-led legislature, a labour-appointed public official has decided to use the parliament and its structures as a means to silence criticism. Joseph Muscat had earlier taken exception to a statement by opposition leader Simon Busuttil and transformed the parliament into a mini-jury in order to get the man to shut up (only to scuttle off to watch a football match rather than be present for the proceedings that ensued).

Heaven forbid, of course, that we insinuate in any way that members of parliament and its speaker are not within their rights and prerogatives whenever they try to defend themselves and their reputation. Having said that the zero-sum game that Farrugia is engaging with the Times is not a defence of a prerogative. It would not take too much of a genius for even the leak-recipient that is the Times to notice that the chain of events leading to the postponement of the possible impeachment smacks highly in the very least of incompetence for want of trying. It would be the duty of a vehicle of the press that notices such a lacuna in the mechanisms of our institutional representative structures and processes to point such a lacuna out. It’s a fair comment – accuse it of bias if you like (bias? the Times?) but do not gag it.

Using the “position of Speaker” in order to throw unnecessary weight around is an unfair attempt at gagging the fourth estate. Such cases have been dealt with long ago in real liberal democracies. The freedom of the press and its right to point out deficiencies in democratic representation has long been encapsulated and spelled out in the jurisprudence of the aforementioned liberal democracies. We even had our own moment of glory before the European Court of Human Rights with the famous  Demicoli vs Malta – where the Court found that the requirements of impartiality must always be preserved whenever the House felt its privilege was violated.

Incidentally, one of the two members of parliament to raise the original breach of privilege back in the eighties was the Joe Debono Grech. Another of the old-timer appointments to token but remunerated positions by this meritocratic government (we also learnt recently, among others, of Alex Sciberras Trigona’s and Joe Grima’s appointment as envoys to World Trade and Tourism Organisations). The revamped (Daily Mail inspired) MaltaToday reported yesterday that “Debono Grech refused to stay for a public consultation meeting for the Gozo minister when he learned that he was not to be placed at the head table.” Not much of a twist on the learning curve there either.

And finally, for something completely different and pythonesque, since we are on the subject of institutional disfigurement we might as well mention the news that Minister Manuel Mallia’s minions are organising government official activities in the very impartial venues of PL Clubs. Yes, that’s Kazini tal-Labour. Here’s how the Times reported the matter (my bold):

Government officials employed with the Home Affairs Ministry’s customer care unit have been detailed to attend meetings with the public organised at PL clubs located in the minister’s constituency. According to newspaper adverts titled ‘Always close to you’ (Viċin Tiegħek Dejjem), Manuel Mallia will be holding a series of meetings with the public in the coming weeks in seven localities in the districts from which he was elected last year. Without giving details of the actual place where Dr Mallia will be meeting the public, the adverts state that two days before each meeting, “people from the ministry’s customer care will be present at the respective locality’s Labour Party Club to meet the public”. (Times Online – 11th March)

What will the excuse be this time? That we are saving public money by using venues kindly provided by the Labour Party? That the Minister did not know and was not aware?

Blaireaux anyone?

 

“The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers… [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.” – Thomas Jefferson

Categories
Campaign 2013

Resigned to reason

The “Christmas Truce” has gone up in ashes with a Ho! Ho! Ho! and without so much as a by your leave. It was obvious from the start (as we had predicted) that the two parties would be unable to contain the inertia of the electoral swing. The 9th of March has a gravitational pull of its own that knows no truces and acknowledges no pauses. Even before the big Anglu Farrugia bomb had fallen into the atmosphere like a big party pooper, the two parties were still heavily active on the promotional front but nothing really changes there.

Anglu’s resignation promises to be much more than a blip on the “truce” agenda. Labour have been forced to hold an extraordinary council meeting between Christmas and New Year. No time to unwrap the presents and no time for Luciano to regale us with the latest news from under the Christmas tree at Casa Busuttil (Labour). Instead Labour will be cooped up voting for their new Deputy Leader for Parliamentary Affairs. Which is quite a bitch really. In the first instance, Parliament is all but wrapped up now and Labour could have provided an interim leader without having to go through the pains of an expedited deputy leadership campaign. The post itself – as was the case with the PN – is not an issue really. Labour’s deputies have been useless props all along – causing more harm than damage (and you cannot say we didn’t tell you so before this happened) – so this is nothing to do with the post per se.

So what IS happening? Why has Labour so evidently gone for this step? Let us see what we can read in them while the facts are still fresh:

1) The Truce

The run up to the truce was an all round victory to the nationalists. Poll gaps were softened and thanks to the shenanigans of Anglu Farrugia (and the complicity of TVM) , the last memory before Christmas would definitely be the bumbling deputy’s antics on Xarabank. Not good, Labour would say. What Labour needed was not a truce but a “casus belli” – an excuse to reset its train on tracks. Ironically Anglu’s perceived moment of triumph over Simon – the very appeal case of which Simon was absolutely ignorant – turned out to be his cup of hemlock. Comments made by Anglu later in the week would become the excuse for Labour to dump excess baggage and to keep the momentum going. Forget Santa… this Christmas the people will have “a new deputy leader”. It was a bit like wishing for an electric car racing track and getting a woolly jumper instead. (Ghax dak ghandek bzonn).

2) The Resignation

I’m quite sure that whoever is supposed to be planning Labour’s campaign must be believing that they have carried out the smartest of moves. In one fell swoop Labour rids itself of an inconvenient bungler, keeps the electoral momentum going and has paved the way for the election of a deputy leader who is capable of returning the swings from that supposed Goliath called Simon. Wrong. We do not need to wait for the election of the new deputy to find out why. First of all Labour has shown once again that it is reactive and never proactive. They allow the Nationalist Party to dictate the rules of the game once the election is in full swing. No matter how much Joseph twists and turns about a “culture of resignation” he will never sell it through. The real reason is that Labour needed a replacement and they needed it fast. In falling for this trap they have allowed the discussion to shift into the barren (and relatively irrelevant) land of Deputy Leaderships. Again J’accuse asks: Since when do Deputy Leaders or Vici Kapi run the country?

3) The Culture of Resignation

Yes. Labour do have a point to win here, albeit a very minor one. Nobody is kidding anyone – this was not an automatic resignation by Anglu Farrugia. He was asked to resign and as we have seen from his reaction and letter, he was not exactly pleased with the result and showed so clearly. He DID resign though – which is the point I mentioned earlier. Muscat still CAN move his people around with relative ease something that Lawrence Gonzi plainly could not do throughout this legislature. It’s a damp victory of course since I am quite sure that the mechanics of this system depends very much on whether you are in government or still desperately aspiring to get there. Farrugia was not in the same position as a Pullicino Orlando or a Debono to mention the obvious two.

It is also about a culture and approach to resignations. I still cannot understand Labour’s fully. On the one hand they are rather cynical and are prepared to break up Christmas in order to realign their electoral plans. On the other hand this resignation turns out to be weakened and diluted by Joseph Muscat’s offer to Farrugia that “the door is still open” for him. How exactly Joseph? What does that mean to us idiots who still believe that a party candidate is accepted when it is clear that his opinions and ideas conform with that of the party ticket? It’s the “anything goes” mentality really – and it also goes to show why the resignation was more about replacing Anglu than about removing him.

4) Teamwork

A small word about teamwork. Joseph got to kick out Anglu without too much squealing and protesting. Labour is taking a risk (whether it is calculated though is another thing) here. An internal election in this period is either going to be a doctored affair – with the anointed one already chosen and pushed – which will make it look fake. It could also be an acrimonious affair that exposes certain faults in the party. The PN media have already started pushing on the weak link of Jason Micallef (as though electoral district rivalries were non existent in the PN camp). Joseph Muscat has been forced to declaim one of his usual tautologies: after a break from promising the eradication of poverty (St. Francis will not be proud) he came back with the assertion that “anything that the PN says is a lie”. If I were the PN Communications office I would issue a quick festive press release in the light of this statement: “Joseph Muscat ragel tal-ostra“.

5) The Nationalists

They’ve definitely been thrown by this sudden earthquake. They might smile while gritting their teeth at any mention of the culture of resignation that so plagued them during the last legislature but that will be a small price to pay. What they have to hope is that the new deputy leader from Labour HQ is not a clone of Simon – which he can very well be. Bar the fact that such a deputy will inevitably have militated against membership of the European Union (or protested mildly) we can expect another person with experience in the EU – an MEP. They’d be surprised at how fast the Labour supporters and the ditherers might warm up to a Louis Grech or Edward Scicluna di turno. Simon’s call until now has been “to bring something new” to Maltese politics since he always worked in Brussels (although he DID write the last electoral manifesto for the PN). Well, Labour might just be about to clone Gonzi’s new toy and in the local world of zero sum assessments it might not be too long before the “Simon move”  will have been replicated.

So the nationalists are right about the Simon effect. Anglu Farrugia did end up resigning after that ill-fated debate on Xarabank. It was not because of any kind of outstanding performance by Simon though. This was a delayed reaction by Labour who has realised very late in the day how badly one of its deputy leaders was effecting its points at the polls. The truth is that Anglu should never have been on the team – or at least he should have been hidden smartly in the same manner the PN hides its more embarrassing (but vote promising) candidates.

Conclusions

There’s much more to be read and seen in this but these are the first impressions. The main certainty we have is that this Christmas will be tinged in red with a couple of PN sideshots every now and then just to keep us in the spirit. The early impression I get is that Labour was pushed to immediate action because of the results that it was seeing the polls – which can only mean that the great divide is no longer so great. It also means that the next campaign promises to be much much more than a simple walkover.

 

Categories
Campaign 2013

That inexistent opposition

Anglu Farrugia’s smile should haunt Labour diehards for years to come. I say should because I am convinced that they are probably in the throes of jubilation and singing his praises at how his performance far outshone that of Simon Busuttil. Unfortunately it is only those blinded by the wrong kind of passion for politics who will have seen anything of value in Labour’s bumbling deputy leader. His performance was catastrophic and whoever coached him must have been tearing out his or her hair from the first minute.

It has nothing to do with Simon Busuttil and whatever performance he put on. As I said in yesterday’s post, Anglu Farrugia would be capable of losing a debate with himself. He is completely at loss in 99% of the subjects brought up and it is evident that he can only sound convincing to ‘kerchief waving constituents gathered at a coffee morning. How many more times must he be forced to face the agony of prime time television only to squirm and faffle the moment anything technical or specific is brought up.

The Living Wage? More like living hell. The moment Anglu attempts to describe the economic reality of the living wage and what it is about he makes it sound like a cross between viagra and self-raising flour. He had absolutely nothing to go on – and were it not for the PN bungle with regards to taxing the minimum wage I have a strong suspicion that Labour candidates would have absolutely no other example of taxes that would be changed to alleviate what they call the burdens on the less wealthy.

Which is where I have to speak about the man who sat on the sofa and who had approximately a quarter of an hour to have his say compared to the interminable 45 minutes in which Anglu Farrugia gave us his little bit of circus. Carmel Cacopardo’s interventions were not only incisive and clear but they were relevant. No theatrics, no faux rhetoric or time wasted on personal arguments – straight to the point. Cacopardo spoke of policy. He had questions, he had criticisms and above all he had solutions.

It is such a pity that Carmel Cacopardo and his party will once again be a victim of the winner-takes-all politics that is so useful to the PLPN. You’ll see how on the eve of the election Simon’s nationalist party will be busy unearthing the ghost of Franco and instability in order to scare votes away from electing the third party. It will be too late then to explain that this third party has concrete ideas and would stick to a coalition on terms of principle not for the sake of power. A coalition government would be the stuff that dreams are made of – with a serious AD keeping the arrogant arms of PN in check.

What would be more realistic in a world where voters vote with their minds and not with their hearts would be AD winning over the cape of opposition party from a Labour party that is devoid of ideas and that has become a veritable farce of a party – all slogans and no substance. In a real world the 62,000 persons living below the poverty line would be voting AD into parliament and making sure that they get a strong say in the opposition. In a real world that is…

but this is the world of Anglu Farrugia, the Where’s Everybody aquarium and endless spin that will do its utmost to make a very serious party as AD seem as irrelevant as Franco Debono.

In un paese pieno di coglioni ci mancano le palle.

Categories
Mediawatch

A Time to Gag

Anglu Farrugia will cry crocodile tears at the Labour Party General Council. Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando will resort to reporting “evil bloggers” on his Facebook wall. Franco Debono will include a new law regulating evil attacks in his program of legislation (which program, having its hours counted, threatens to be the largest amount of laws proposed in the shortest time). General appeals and not-so-subtle implications will be made that the PM should do something about the bloggers and columnists who are resorting to “personal attacks”. And we all get carried away.

Your average listener or reader will not hesitate to chime in with the scarcely researched tautology of “Yes, there should be some form of decency, we have gone too far”. But have we? Or rather – what kind of legislation and control are these paladins of democracy seeking? While the general public showed the predictable kind of ambivalence when the laws dubbed as the New Censorship laws were published the sweeping statements about controlling other fields of expression than the arts multiplied.

First. A note about the new laws. They have nothing to do with such issues as libel and slander. What we have there is a new system of rating theatre and cinema that includes an element of self-discipline. This approach is highly commendable from a libertarian point of view because it emphasises (and exalts) the individual capacity to take responsible decisions. The theatre producer is invited to “censor” his own piece before any official scissors come into play. Self-control, self-censorship – an ability to assess what is and what is not acceptable in wider society : that is the heritage of an intelligent, emancipated and responsible society. Are we ready for the show?

Well, insofar as the political arena is concerned it looks like it is going to be tough. I am of the opinion that the current laws (if we DO have to look at legislation rather than policy first) are more than enough. It is a combination of publish (responsibly) and be damned. Defence in libel includes the “exceptio veritatis” (exception of truth) – the defence that is based on the idea that whatever was said about someone can be seen to be the truth. This is sometimes the reason why somebody who claims to have been libelled fails to go to court for fear of the “libel” being proven to have been the truth.

The “exceptio veritatis” is also itself controlled. While proving that a statement that is being scrutinised for libel or slander might stand strong if it is proved to be true, the truth is not a useful defence in the case of invasion of privacy. Stating that a Minister hosted a party with drugs freely available is defensible with the truth exception – i.e. if the fact is proven to be true. Saying that a Minister has the backside the side of a lorry it is an invasion of privacy and the mere fact that it is true (though even there – the exaggerated hyperbole is such that even the truth is obviously non-existent) will not suffice as a defence.

The fact of the matter is that libel, slander and defamation laws when applied constitute a solid last resort in the battlefield. On the other hand calling for more regulation is a perverse counter-productive move that demonstrates an ignorance of the law and, sadly, an intent to revert to the times of “Indħil Barrani” when our laws were tailor made to serve the interests of whoever needed to gag uncomfortable elements.

Check out again the Newt Gingrich video (top right) starting from 2’20”. Gingrich is asked a very uncomfortable question during a prime primary debate. It is an issue that is very private and Gingrich’s reaction says it all. “I would not like to answer it but I will”. Gingrich goes on to tackle the method of questioning and shoots some repartees of his own towards the press that has peddled the story. There and then. No courts. No gagging orders. Pure and simple intelligent response. And then the question is left to the voters to judge and value. Will voters give more importance to the story of Newt wanting an open relationship or to the fact that Newt was considered enough of a heavyweight to warrant a relentless barrage of mediatic coverage of the fact?

Which brings me to the question of politicians and privacy. Unfortunately the risk of reneging on most of what is private in their lives is a risk that politicians (and footballers, and actors, and prominent businessmen) take in a calculated manner more and more. When campaigns are built on family values and when consorts and children are used in campaigns to be paraded as some form of assets to the main storyline then we should not be surprised that the vultures in the press will be probing to examine whether this too is a facade. When you commit errors during a campaign and these are highlighted, parodied and caricaturised you’d be stupid to claim that these are personal attacks.

Our democracy does not need gagging orders and stricter regulation. Our democracy needs intelligent citizens and … if it is not asking for too much … intelligent politicians.