Tag: change

Categories
Mediawatch Rule of Law

The Progressive Left

Listen to what Malta’s left has to say. Listen to the political arguments on the systemic failure. The neoliberal experiment has failed. This is the answer to the assertion of the lackeys of the government who go on television to tell anyone who still has the patience to listen that “is-sistema ta’ Muscat hadmet”. 10 electoral victories, an increasing electoral majority. The lawchitect with questionable grasp of basic constitutional principles repeated this again and again on Xarabank.

The real world begs to differ. Aside from the criminal corruption that is festering within the system there is also a socio-political reality that is best expressed by the Leftist Movement assembled under Paul Boffa’s statue today. Theirs is a damning criticism of the trojan horse politics that Muscat used to capture the system. Theirs is a reminder that outside the world of business and barons and friends of friends there is a Malta that is desperately in need of clean politics.

This too is part of the change. Graffitti and all the other NGO’s gathered today outside Castille are part of this new revolution. The road to the New Republic is long but we are in this together. Till the end.

Categories
Politics

The change we need and how to vote it in

 

I am not a nationalist

I am not a nationalist. The very idea of being a partisan card-carrying member of a party nauseates me and I feel insulted whenever I am told by anyone that I am a “nationalist”. This blog, created in 2005 has always been a strong promoter of constitutional change. Whenever I have written, whether on J’accuse or The Sunday Times or the Malta Independent on Sunday, I have taken this philosophy with me: it has come dangerously close to a creed. The analysis is simple really – our constitutional structure has been hijacked by a two-party system, it no longer serves the people who should be the ultimate depositories of sovereign power but it serves as a structure that enables to well-oiled grease machines that serve a “career” system entrenched in a not too fine system of networks. My belief: that system needs to change.

To change that system, to really change that system, we need a blanket reform – as we say in Maltese “bl-gheruq u x-xniexel”. That change means bringing down the whole palace including the two behemoths that have striven to set it all up. Yes, a real commitment for change by any of the two main parties would be a sort of hara-kiri in many ways. A party proposing this kind of real change would consciously be subscribing to its demise while preparing to start over in the new system with new rules. That is why it is difficult to trust any one of the two parties promising change – and this in a the sanitised world of the hypothetical, not counting the contexts and realities within which we vote every time we are called to the polls.

The biggest challenge the sovereign people have had every election, particularly since deciding on European Union membership has been whether to adhere to the Gattopardian motto (If we want everything to change then everything must remain the same) as represented by the status quo or whether to push the main parties off the edge and provoke a constitutional shift for the future. The people have not been sufficiently convinced to let go of old habits. The card carrying partisans have always won the day. The race to the bottom was allowed to happen. That is where we stand today.

Corruption, Maladministration, Bad governance

I am not independent. I don’t think anyone can really be independent – whatever that word means in political discourse of today. The notion of “independent” in local discourse falls part of the cobweb infested partisan way of thinking that for a few years managed to create the myth of “super partes” – persons who were supposedly allowed to play and comment in the political arena without having their motives questioned. The whole point of accusing people of claiming to be independent today rises out of some confused attempt at trying to identify which of the two parties they are trying to back. The level of political discourse is such that people are unable to participate in discussions based on clear cut values. Add to that the zero-sum nature of our voting system and you can barely blame anyone for sticking their flag to a mast rather than arguing the nuances of policies with which they may agree or disagree.

This election has very high stakes though. Coming as it does in the age of post-truth, it is becoming much more difficult to decipher on the ground yet when one takes a step back and looks at the wider picture one finds a perfect opportunity to trigger off the much needed change that I spoke about earlier. The system is shaking at its foundations. If you want to follow a partisan narrative you will end up comparing and justifying different levels of corruption. You will still end up discussing the social and economic future of our nation in very shaky terms unless of course you are on the side of the believers of Newspeak. Marie Briguglio’s brilliant analysis of the steroid-driven economy really drove the message home insofar as this particular point is concerned. No party is really thinking about the long term sustainable future of the country – just look at transport and think of the difference between promising what people want and what the country needs. The parties’ electoral manifesto is in both cases a dangerous mix of promising the earth to everyone and everything.

Which is why this election you have to ignore their manifestos. Yes. You read that right. Ignore the manifestos. The manifestos are just the Wizard’s Big Curtain behind which, for the most part, lie small parties with small ideas. At least most of their ideas for the nation are small – meanwhile the candidates will be vying for the greasy pole: a place in parliament, a parliamentary secretariat, a chairmanship, a ministry…  If any of these manifestos were to be implemented within the current institutional framework then we will have failed. I say we as a country because whenever we allow whatever party it is to operate within a system that guarantees absolute power to the party in government with a hold on all other institutions then we fail. The signs are more evident now because of Muscat’s team’s gargantuan effort at exposing them to everyone.

Up your manifestos

Yes. Ignore those manifestos with tunnels to Gozo, slashed taxes, trains, racecourses, freebies, jeebies and heebies. The manifestos are a useless waste of paper this time round. The ONLY promise that counts is the one regarding change. Which brings me back to the original point. I make it not as a nationalist, an independent or as one who voted AD for the last few elections. I make it as a person who believes that we might already be too late to bring about this change but that it is still worth one massive try. I also make it as an expat of thirteen years, with a comfortable salary and great job who needs ask nothing of my country (and who never needed ask anything of any party) if that counts for anything in your appreciation. I make it with a genuine interest in getting a better future for the country I was born in, the one I love to love and hate.

Change. It is all written into the much maligned coalition/non-coalition agreement/non-agreement between PN and PD. It is the one promise to which I am attaching my hopes in this election. It is the one promise which I will hold each and every member of a new government answerable for. Radical constitutional reform. It is hard to trust the nationalist party on this one. I know that because I have been there before. Once in power the temptation to retain the status quo will be strong as usual. As I said, commitment to real change means radical change both for party and for the country’s institutions. Which is why there will always be opposition from those used to the past ways of operation. Which is also why the struggle will not end on June 3rd.

THE JUNE THIRD REVOLUTION

On June 3rd the struggle begins. First, with a vote for the coalition promising change we will set the wheels in motion. Then it is the duty of each and every person who has stood up to be counted to bring about this change  to pressure the new government to start that wave of change. It has to start yesterday. No dragging of feet, no excuses. The political parties have been allowed to play Politics for too long with the wrong results. It is time for politics to return at the service of the people.

On June 3rd my number 1 vote will go for the PD candidate in my district. I chose the PD candidate because they are our Trojan horse to bringing about this change. By accepting the difficult conditions of a coalition with terms dictated by the current electoral laws they were prepared to sacrifice the party for the good of the country.  I will continue on the nationalist and alternattiva candidates. I have never in my life been convinced by the Labour party to give even a fraction  of my vote to them. I will surely not start this time round having seen the Labour party machine put in motion to defend the indefensible.

CLOSING

One final note. It has been 12 years of blogging but there are still people out there who think I write anonymously. So here goes. My name is Jacques Rene’ Zammit, I am a Gozitan lawyer specialised in European Union law and I work as a referendaire (which means I assist a judge to draft judgements) at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. I have been involved in politics for over 25 years, my first political “intervention” was a speech in the run up to the 1992 election. It was at a PN event at the Crystal Palace in Marsalforn and i spoke about the need of organisations in Gozo getting together to pull the same rope. At University I was a member of SDM during the time when a group of idealists in the organisation tried to cut off all ties from the Nationalist Party. That particular experiment was a partial failure – partisan ties are hard to break.

Among my credible adversaries at the time were Mike Briguglio and James Debono. I am glad to see that our generation produced free thinkers who believe in the country and believe in the future. I am honoured to be on the same wavelength as these two gentlemen and comforted by the idea that there are more of us out there – ready to stand up and be counted and constantly working for change.

This has been J’accuse telling you how I will vote on Saturday. I cannot sufficiently stress the importance that voters look at the country’s future before and above anything else. The future is not the cash in your wallet or the bills in your postbox, the future is the quality of your life, the social and the cultural, the possibility of living in a normal country where everyone is equal under the law, where we are all servants of the law so that we may be free. Good luck, we need it.

 

 

Categories
Constitutional Development

Il Triangolo No

triangolo_akkuza

 

I. Stability is a partisan word

Third parties, third ways. An online poll conducted by the paper Illum showed, among other things, that 14% of respondents would vote for a new party since they have no more faith in either the PN or the PL. Talk about a possible third way being a panacea for our political representation problems has belatedly gathered momentum on the island. Muscat’s government is on rapid implosion mode while the general feeling is that the PN alternative would generate more of the same style of politics – one that is deeply enmeshed in corruption and deceit to the detriment of the citizen. Marlene Farrugia’s rumblings as a dissenting politician within parliament are much stronger and coherent than those we have heard until now during the last months of the Gonzi executive. Add to that the fact that scandal after scandal the tempo of public discontent does not seem to subside and a few “public personae” are prepared to throw their weight into the ring and you have the recipe of what is being touted as the panacea for all this evil feeling: a third party.

Regular readers if this blog may well recall that the “Third Way” solution has long been advocated over the whole stretch of our blogging history. Often the election of a third party’s representatives in parliament has been described here as “driving a wedge in the bipartisan hegemony”. I still believe that a third party (and fourth and fifth) can have positive effects on our political system. The problem however lies elsewhere since the third party is not a solution in itself but it is actually a possible result of the solution that is necessary in order to definitely improve the state of our politics and consequently the health of our nation.

What do I mean? Let’s take a look at the PLPN reaction to the very public rumblings of a possible third party. Their rare chorus of unanimous disapproval was to be expected. More parties in parliament would cause “instability” they claimed. Worse still they could not envisage having to share the burden of government with some coalition party – anathema.

The PN might be investing in the concept of good governance but the philosophy behind the driving forces of this rekindling of values stops short of contemplating an utter reform of our representative system that might not be two-party-centric. Of course we can have good governance they will tell you, but applied to our system of alternation – and not beyond. In other words the current set of rules should be good enough for Busuttil’s new party philosophy – we only have to ensure that the tenets of good governance are properly applied therein and all will be fine. I beg to differ.

II. Self-preservation is a natural instinct

Let us use a coding metaphor. The structure of our constitutional system has been built using a language that reasons in bi-partisan terms. A bi-party rationale is written directly into the building blocks of our political system – both legally and politically. Since 1964 the constitutional and electoral elements of our political system have been consolidated in such a manner as to only make sense when two parties are contemplated – one as government and one as the opposition.

We are wired to think of this as being a situation of normality. The two political parties are constructed around such a system – we have repeated this over the last ten years in this blog – and this results in the infamous “race to mediocrity” because standards are progressively lowered when all you have to do is simply be more attractive than the alternative. The effect of this system is an erosion of what political parties is all about.

The political parties operating within this system are destined to become intellectually lazy and a vacuum of value. The intricate structure of networks and dependencies required to sustain the system negates any possibility of objective creation of value-driven politics with the latter being replaced by interest-driven mechanisms gravitating around the alternating power structure. Within the parties armies of clone “politicians” are generated repeating the same nonsense that originates at the party source. Meaningless drivel replaces debate and this is endorsed by party faithfuls with a superficial nod towards “issues”.

The whole structure is geared for parties to operate that way. Once in parliament the constitutional division of labour comes into play – posts are filled according to party requirements and even the most independent of authorities is tainted by this power struggle of sorts. Muscat’s team promised Meritocracy and we all saw what that resulted in once the votes were counted. In a way it was inevitable that this would happen because many promises needed to be fulfilled – promises that are a direct result of how the system works. With all the goodwill in the world Busuttil’s team promising Good Governance will be placed in the same position with the same rules as Muscat’s and Gonzi’s before them.

The point is that the system needs to be rebooted. Even a third party elected under these parameters would do little to shake the system at its foundations. What needs to be targeted are the laws and structures that have developed into an intricate network of power-mongering and twisted all sense of representative politics. A third party might be the result of that change of system but what is needed right now is that one (or both) of the two parties enjoying the uncanny and undemocratic advantages of their home-made rules is forced to accepting a program of constitutional change.

III – Restoring the supremacy of parliament

Malta’s constitution owes much to the concept of parliamentary sovereignty. Constitutionally political parties did not count for much. When forming a government the Head of State was invited to choose from among the members of parliament that member who enjoyed the support of the majority of members elected. No mention of parties. It is only through a series of shenanigans and legal changes to electoral laws that the parties became the be-all and end-all of the electoral process. Laws were changed to ensure majorities, seats in parliament and quotas – all in relation to the bi-partisan system. It led us to the infamous wasted vote.

The problem was not so much the theoretical guarantee of stability afforded by a bi-partisan system. No, the problem lay in how the guarantees afforded by alternation gradually became a threat to the “political” nature of the parties themselves. Instead they were replaced by careerist powermongers eager to climb up the ladder of our home-grown system of power-broking: from candidate to backbench MP to Secretary to Minister. Fiefdoms developed and by taking advantage of a system that guaranteed their presence on authorities, boards and watchdogs the constitution would play second-fiddle to the needs of the party in power while the opposition barked and whinged waiting their turn for a piece of the action.

How does this change? it changes by changing the whole system starting from its building blocks. Parliament has to be strengthened and revalued as the supreme guardian of constitutional representation. The new system should ensure that politicians elected to parliament fulfil their role of representatives of the people by acting as proper legislators and competent watchdogs on the operation of the executive that must remain subservient to their will. In order to obtain this we must wean parliamentarians away from the ladder of power as currently perceived while strengthening their role and function.

I have already put forward the four points that should be the groundwork for such a reform:

  1. The removal of districts from national elections.
  2. The introduction of party lists elected on the basis of proportional representation into parliament (with a minimum threshold of between 5% and 7%).
  3. The introduction of technical ministries with ministers chosen from outside parliament but accountable to parliament.
  4. (A corollary of 3) MP’s who become ministers should resign their place in parliament.

As I said in an earlier post this would remove the idea of careerist politicians. By clearly differentiating between the roles of the executive and the legislative/representative aspects we would ensure that parties are rewired to become effective in both. A technical executive with a proper plan and project will be one side of the coin while a strong representative body acting on behalf of the people monitoring and endorsing the work of the executive would be the other. Such parliaments could afford to have a hundred Marlene Farrugia’s who do not bow to a party whip for the party’s sake but use their vote in the best interests of those who elected them to parliament.

Conclusion

Electing a third party for the sake of electing a third party and simply out of spite to the two main parties is not a solution as things stand. This blog would advocate for stronger pressure on the party that is most willing to take up this programme of groundbreaking constitutional reform with the express understanding that should it get elected this would be its top priority. That mandate would end once the reform is achieved and new elections based on the new parameters would be held. What Malta needs is a Reform Movement that picks on the current momentum that is not endemic to Malta. What it certainly does not need is more parties playing from the same score as we have till now.

Categories
Constitutional Development

Crossing the threshold of faith

believe_akkuzaCriticising the workings of a government or an opposition is what this blog has done with consistent regularity. No matter who was in “power” the line taken from these pages has always been consistent. Also, very consistently, this blog has always managed to ruffle some feathers in some quarters. More often than not it would be the partisans of a faction that is being criticised who would vociferously disapproved of the contents of J’accuse’s latest missive. More often than not it would be the messenger and not the message that would be shot at.

In these halcyon Tagħna Lkoll days I often find myself in a quandary as to how often I could put finger to keyboard and criticise yet another mind-boggling move by the people who purport to manage this country. The fear (or self-censorship) is really unjustified. The worry is that repetitive ‘assaults’ on the same tribe gets you quickly labelled as a member of the “other”. Having said that what really gets at me is the way Joe Public is prepared to gloss over the inconsistencies of the PL brigade much quicker than when the Gonzi team was in government.

No matter how shallow, how inconsistent and how potentially corrupt the Labour programme is seeming to turn out, Joe Public is still thinking in terms of the perceived evil that was. I particularly liked a comment on facebook by the man who goes by the moniker “Ze Heckler” – not for reasons that he would appreciate. Here’s his status update:

Min bi Snowden, min bil-Pussy Riot, min b’Grillo, min b’Wikileaks u ahna b’Daphne. You get the rebel you deserve, too.

Admittedly the class of “rebels” is not exactly your average Che Guevara, nor is it your Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi. Heckler’s list is a list of non-conformists (Grillo might be verging on the breakdown though) but I am not here to create a scale of “rebelliousness”. I just found it weird that Daphne would fall in the rebel category. Is it the anti-government streak? The brazen nature of her posts that openly target the above-mentioned inconsistencies? Does that a “rebel” make?

The way I see it, to be a “rebel” in Malta you cannot operate within the system’s parameters. Daphne, like anybody else operating in the system is guilty of accepting the general wider parameters and rules by which our system is run. Throughout the Gonzi years the “rebelliousness” was nowhere to be found. On the contrary, much like the prominent “journalists” of the time (now either retired, MEP candidates or playing to the Labour fiddle) Caruana Galizia would selectively pick out the “interesting news” in order to help preserve the status quo. That kind of blogs must have been grateful for the fact that Malta was kept in election mode for long periods thanks to the antics of that other fake rebel – Franco Debono.

The (quite predictable and understandable) position of Caruana Galizia’s blog is not among rebels but among anti-Labour blogs whose aim is to simply get Labour back out of the driving seat. Nothing wrong there. What is missing is the realisation that the framework within which the alternation takes place is only destined to produce the same. Or worse. “Rebels” are those who are pushing for a paradigm shift that moves the whole framework into a new dimension. A real second republic if you like (not the marketing one that Muscat smartly nabbed).

A failure to acknowledge that the system (the framework if you like) is faulty and will produce more and more of the same means that you are a willing participant in the system. That’s not rebelling. That is opposition. Thankfully, there are signs of early realisation, even in the quarters such as Caruana Galizia’s blog, that much more must be done than simply playing along. Whether such elements would be willing participants in a discussion about (let alone action) the possibilities of a paradigm shift is another question. Old habits die hard – and more messengers will be shot.

As things stand we are moving further and further into a system built of two parallel worlds in which the value scales are very very different. Which is why all Labour’s moves will continue to be accepted by a large chunk of the Maltese population. Their value scale is different from that of those who might have shared a value scale with the PN in the near past. The same applies vice-versa. The dynamics of democratic representation should have allowances for such possibilities. In our case though, the inertia caused by the PLPN system is gradually moving the very tenets of representative democracy towards a breaking point. This too is what is meant by the race to the bottom.

Our parties have created two faith systems within which it will become less obvious why and how people will cross the threshold to the other side. A re-calibration of the value scales of one party might serve to trigger the beginning of a change.

* One final note. This blog post is not meant as some kind of competition in comparing the size of “light sabers”. Consider it an observation – as we always have done – of the current situation on the ground. The interesting thing of inhabiting a system with multiple value scales is that suddenly there is not one “right or wrong” but a multiplicity. Take the following simple example: “Selling citizenship without residency requirements rakes in millions”. Value scale one cannot agree more – Malta gains. Value scale two is appalled – Malta is sold cheap. Value scale three examines a European dimension. On each of their scales they are “right”. Not the “it’s my opinion so it is true” kind of right (which is irritating) but right in the sense that in each case the policy position is feasible – the consequences are different.

 

 

Categories
Campaign 2013

Dogs of War (DeLorean Unveiled)

They say that a week is a long time in politics. In that case twenty years must seem like an eternity. Churchill is often attributed the quote “Show me a young Conservative and I’ll show you someone with no heart, show me an old Liberal and I’ll show you someone with no brains.” Time and experience changes people. Under normal circumstances and outside the partisan fog of war it is considered normal to weigh your options every time an election comes around. Of course your own political preferences and outlook might give you an automatic preference towards one party or another but there is no shame in changing.

It’s not change for change’s sake that I am talking about though. That’s plain stupid. Sadly many voters will be voting for change for change’s sake next Saturday and, yes, I do think that it is plain stupid to do so. What I am referring to is the possibility of having evolving politics and ideas, of having the opportunity to compare parties who in turn have evolved their ideas and projects. That is important for a healthy representative democracy. That voters get to choose between parties healthily vying for their trust by proposing good plans for the nation, its citizens, their rights – that is healthy.

For a long time this blog has advocated the idea that our bipartisan system is geared to becoming a race to the bottom. It is a race to mediocrity that promotes populism, contradictory promises to everyone and everything and – because of the inevitable entrenchment of a political elite – it weaves an intricate web of inter-dependent interests that are conducive to corruption. In short the PLPN method sanctioned and strengthened by the constitutional amendments that kicked off with a Government White Paper in 1990 is wrought in such a way as to kill off (or greatly minimise) any terzo incomodo and strengthen the stranglehold of the bipartisan duality.

The combination of a series of amendments since 1987 (1987, 1996, 2007) to the sections of the constitution has continued to strengthen the PL and PN positions to the detriment of a possible third party. This has been one of the main criticisms directed from this blog – particularly at the phenomenon called “The Wasted Vote” that ends up killing all hope for potential third party voters on the eve of elections. It’s simple really – the PL or PN spinmasters wait till the last moment and then shoot the “you’re wasting your vote” argument : from Austin Bencini’s traditional “constitutional” article to Daphne Caruana Galizia’s “setting yourselves up as objects of hate”. It’s the death knell for AD.

Back in 1991 when the proposed amendments were still under discussion we had one particular columnist who got rather hot under the collar about these changes. In an impeccably written article the columnist presciently summarised all that was wrong with the system and even managed to predict one of the inherent dangers of the system. I copied out the second half of the article yesterday as a guest post under the name DeLorean (smart geeks among you will have recognised the car from Back to the Future). You can see the full article here in “Voting like it’s 1992” – actually it’s the second half of the original article, the first half was full of not so kind descriptions of Austin Gatt and Eddie Fenech Adami.

The whole philosophy of the importance of electing a third party to government is encapsulated in the second half of this article under the subtitle “The Argument”. Gems of thought such as the importance of representation over and above governability leap at you conspicuously. The article includes a prescient worry:

What if we find ourselves, in 20 years’ time with the choice of two absolutely disreputable political parties? What if the Nationalist Party disintegrates into the kind of sagging, soggy, useless mess of the Sixties… a heap that gave rise to the joke “Tgħajjatx għax tqajjem il-gvern!”? What is a traditionally Nationalist supporter supposed to do… vote for the Labour Party, vote for a mess, or not vote at all?

20 years from 1991 … that’s just two years off the mark, yet it is still so very tangibly relevant. The complaint by the author is clear – are we to end up with a Hobson’s Choice? A gun against our head? Are we to end up being blackmailed with the haunting idea of the “wasted vote”? A Daniel I say, a Daniel.

Most intriguingly one of the most telling paragraphs remains the following – and this mainly because of the author’s subsequent metamorphosis and absorption into part of the Leviathan that is so aptly described:

Third parties cannot be created out of nothing. They must grow, and their growth must be spawned by a real need within the people. Even if this need exists – and there is no doubt at all, it does – all growth will be warped by Malta’s all-pervasive fear and ignorance, which has effects similar to that of radiation on a growing foetus. Through this fear and ignorance, the Nationalist Party and the Labour Party survive, thrive and continue to grow.

Fear and ignorance. We were so close weren’t we? Fear and loathing we described it, plus an incredible propensity to abuse of ignorance. 20 years down the line and we have observed a campaign imbued with fear and thriving on ignorance and misinformation. Half truths are mixed with political assassination of the cruellest kind and yet even when you work out your sums and eliminate the two possibilities – the two podgy kids on the see-saw – you find out that your remaining hope has been nipped in the bud. Yep. the wasted vote argument. Not only that. The moment you boldly announce that you are determined to be represented because governance is not the be all and end all, because representation is just as important – that is when the dogs of war are unleashed.

Which is where the sweet irony hits home. Yes. It is time to reveal who DeLorean, writing with so much passion against the death knell that was writ into our constitution two decades ago is. Well it is none less than Daphne Caruana Galizia – the passionate put-downer of the third party, currently engaged in a character assassination of Michael Briguglio (last time round it was Dirty Harry) through a mixture of half-truths and the usual dose of “wasted vote stupids”.

As I said in the beginning, there is nothing wrong with change in a person. Daphne has already commented on this article this week : “Probably filed with the article describing Eddie Fenech Adami as a villager lawyer in a folder called ‘Mistakes I made at 25’. There are a lot of them. Fortunately, I had the good sense not to persist in error.” (it was actually the same article but she has to feign that it is not important so she would not remember would she). Probably the folder of “Mistakes I made at 45” includes backing JPO to the hilt in the 2008 election and actually voting him number 1.

People change. Daphne has every right to change her opinion about what makes the country tick. It makes you wonder what the motivation of this change is though. From a passionate advocate for third party systems to a staunch defender of the PLPN dichotomy.  I do hope this is not considered “calling names by the AD crowd”. It is sad though to see the transition from what was evidently a motivated young liberal to a dog of war baying for Briguglio’s head – and why? Because voting Ad will get you Labour according to Daphne. But Daphne…

Alternattiva is not the crux of the problem. The hypothetical small party is. Many people might disapprove of Alternattiva, but they should not be so shortsighted as to assume that they will disapprove of any other political party that might grow out of unrest and discontent over the next two or three generations. We must be unselfish enough to think beyond the next two or three generations. We must be honest enough to admit that we do not want our children to live their adult lives as we are now living ours. We must stop thinking in terms of our immediate future, because many of us will live for a great deal longer than that, ….

Unselfish. Honest. At what point did those kind of values stop being important, I wonder. Still, I found a good maxim in that article, it fits my philosophy perfectly, and it seems of many others:

Governability is not the Holy Grail, and we should not allow the government to sell it to us as such.

And we won’t Daphne. We won’t.

 

 

Categories
Campaign 2013

Briguglio’s Faux Pas?

This is only the second national election being covered by this blog (which incidentally turns 8 on the day of the results). For the first time we have been ever more outright in our support for getting a third party elected into parliament particularly since alternattiva demokratika has not only proven to be a particularly apt vehicle for that process but also (and more importantly) it has proved its worth as a party with full credentials for representation. In other words it is much more than simply electing a third party for a third party’s sake.

Having said that the recent revelation regarding Michael Briguglio’s 2008 vote have caught many of the party’s supporters on the wrong foot – myself included. How can you trust a party that is led by a Chairman who openly declares not having voted for it last time round? A legitimate question if ever there was one.  Should AD have their version of Malcolm Tucker he would be down Michael Briguglio’s throat in no time. It would have much to do with the idea that there is a place and time for downright honesty and an electoral campaign is not one of them. There doesn’t seem to be a Tucker though and Briguglio seems to be happy enough with his version of “I have always been a floating voater and see no inconsistency”. Isn’t there?

Well I am not one to be satisfied by this and I have asked for a better explanation. Why did Michael Briguglio – an AD councillor in Sliema at the time – not vote for AD at the General Elections? The answer is not only comforting but also encouraging. It turns out that “AD mark 2008” run by Harry Vassallo was not turning out to be as incisive and effective as Mike Briguglio hoped. Compare that AD to today’s AD for an answer – today’s AD is confident, with a clear vision and is not into the business of begging for your number twos. Briguglio’s AD is definite about its position on everything – no half truths, no lies, no corners – just a clear “with us you know where you stand”. It also turns out that Mike had some concerns about the administrative running of the party. Mike had concerns on matters of principle.

I can understand Mike’s worry in that respect. Last time round the campaign from this corner of the blogosphere focussed on the third party for the third party’s sake and that might be a mistake. A party cannot simply be elected out of the need for a third party. It has to have clarity of vision. This might have been lacking to a point in 2008 and Mike’s contribution since his election to the chairmanship has contributed to making sure this lacuna is filled. Which brings me to the next point. Mike chose to sit back during the last election (he did NOT contest for AD – and retained his seat in the Sliema council out of respect for his voters). He did vote for Sant’s Labour given the choice. His disillusion with what was being wrought in AD at the time might have had a part in that decision.

One point that springs to mind is that Mike acted out of principle. Not agreeing with what was going on in the party at the time he stepped back. Did not campaign actively, did not contest (of course). Compare that to what was going on in the PN camp in 2008 with ghost writers and secretary general’s turning somersaults in order to sell the lie that was Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando. Would you barter Mike’s honest stand with that load of crap?

After that election Michael was approached by Labour to join the new movement. He turned this down. Surely if Mike wanted to be part of a Labour wave as some bad tongues are wagging right now he would have jumped on Muscat’s Train of Misfits? Surely it would have been easier for Michael to sell his progressive ideas in a Labour government than from the hypothetical partnership in a coalition? Surely. You’d have to be stupid to believe that Michael Briguglio has the Labour Party’s interests at heart.

We know what happened next. Cassola asked Mike to return to the AD fold. Vassallo was out of the picture working for the Nationalist Commissioner in the EU John Dalli (after having been hounded by the same nationalists on the eve of the election for having forgotten to file some VAT documents relating to defunct companies). Mike rejoined the new project with enthusiasm and charisma, bringing the experience garnered from years of political militancy. Sure, Mike brings a leftist touch to the Green politics of AD but anyone wanting to look at the credentials of Mike and his party need only look at the uncompromising principles in their manifesto. This is not a party that would sell its soul to the FKNK.

In the Maltese atmosphere of exploiters of ignorance and purveyors of fear it is easy to pounce on Mike’s honest answer to the question “who have you voted for in 2008?”. The gullible and the easily exploited will fall for the ruse that Mike is Labour disguised as green. Mike is none of that. Mike is one of the few honest candidates running for the election on the ticket that could make history.

For that reason and because I have full faith in Michael and his team I will be putting a number 1 next to Michael Briguglio’s name next election. (And yes, this Gozitan votes on the 10th District).