Tag: crisis

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Mediawatch Politics

Europe’s representation crisis?

representation_akkuzaThe upcoming French municipal elections have unearthed a huge problem. In many municipalities there is a dearth of candidates, particularly for the post of Mayor. In the Gironde area 45% of the smaller communes are still without a candidate – and it does not stop there. The main reason given for the dearth of candidates is the stricter set of rules being enforced among smaller communes when it comes to conditions for submitting candidatures and lists. There is another parallel reality though and that is related to the fact that potential candidates are shying away from what is perceived as a great responsibility.

In Italy, new PM Matteo Renzi has chosen to merge a swathe of administrative districts in Sicily in order to make them more competitive and promote development. The new “South-East District” encompasses Catania, Siracusa and Ragusa and is intended as an injection to the often static development in the south of Italy. Italy’s Senate and Parliament have had a little bomb explode within thanks to the earthquake that has shaken Grillo’s M5S.

Grillo’s 5 Star Movement has always found it hard to come to terms with an effective working representative system. In its effort to maximise transparent and representative decision making, the Movement ends up having draconian rules and emanates a sense of inflexibility. It could be a case of a far-fetched utopian reality attempting to adapt to the circumstances of old-style politics. Or it could simply be an implosion in the making.

Probably it is a bit of the two. What seems to surface from this kind of turmoil is the fact that a “new politics” without revolution rarely, if ever, happens. The M5S tried to glide into and replace the old system of political workings. This old system is a system that had settled comfortably into a market of power-mongering, influence trading and alternating hegemonies that had little or nothing to do with democratic representation.

Matteo Renzi has been accused of being the new face of the old style politics. He is the epitome of non-representative political methodology – not having been elected to parliament, senate or power. His is but one manifestation of the disenfranchisement of representative power. Another method would be the gradual removal of accountability, transparency and basic rule of law. The latter is a method preferred by the nouveau “representative majorities”, rushed into power by popular mandate which is all too soon discarded and replaced by the service of the power-mongering, influence trading and hegemonic elite.

Finally, the European Union itself, with the elections for its most representative branch just round the corner, would do well to take a long hard look at its long term objectives and if necessary question whether or not there exists a demos to be served and, more importantly, what that demos is calling for.

 

 

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Politics

The Cantankerous Voter

The leader in this week’s Economist advocates a form of financial federalism as a sort of Plan B to combat the economic crisis. Europe has moved far from the “deepening vs widening” debates of the mid-nineties. After Maastricht the questions being asked were mainly with regard to the various geometries that the next step of integration would take and how far would states go in relinquishing sovereignty to a higher order. Then came the euro.

The launching of the single currency was meant to be a grand step in the wider project of integration. A european construct that had been built on the foundations of economic incentives and integration could not but rejoice in having its own single currency. One interesting remark in the Economist appreciation of the causes behind the euro crisis was with regard to this very moment of crystallisation – when Europe got its own coin.

In fact the euro came around a good sixty years into the roller-coaster ride that was gradual european unification. For most of that sixty years Europe had been built on the safe assumption that the project was one very good way to avoid the return to the bad habits of internecine warfare that had plagued the old continent from time immemorial. More importantly the constitutive demos of this project could be sold a series of integrative steps without having too much of a say in it.

The post-war generation did not need reminding that having the Germans and French sitting at a table discussing mutual improvement was much much more preferable than Blitzkrieg and the travails of la resistance. Up until the early nineties this meant an institutional construct that had glaringly obvious deficiencies in its democratic structures. The symbiosis between Council, Commission and Parliament together with the occasional wink from the court in Luxembourg delivered results – top among which was the huge relief that this was an ever growing club of nations NOT GOING TO WAR WITH EACH OTHER.

By the time the euro was launched the face of the demos had changed radically. Old threats and bogeys had either been long forgotten or been dropped along the way. 1989 and the disappearance of the big menace behind the Iron Curtain were also factors that distanced the link between the benefits of mutual cooperation on the one hand and the benefits of cooperation on the other.

The euro was born on the brink of world economic meltdown. A post 9/11 US was also reeling from its failed financial bets and the European crisis followed suit in the second half of the first decade of the 21st century. Europe’s baby was not exactly a crowd pleaser. The demos could only associate the euro with trouble – trouble of the worst kind that takes money out of pockets, destroys jobs and voraciously devours any dreams of prosperity,

The challenge of the European union and its leaders is to continue to sell the project for its benefits beyond the facile association with euro tinged misery. From Greece to France to Malta whether the demos will be able to relatch to a promise and a new european dream will depend on how the plan for the future is revealed and sold.

More importantly it depends on whether there is a plan that involves the kind of cooperation and integration that made the first half-century of European union such an outstanding success…. in spite of the feelings of doom that are all-pervading right now.

Categories
Politics

The “after” party

In parliament it’s been reduced to a question of motions and counter-motions. While the nation fakes a collective breath-holding session as the MP’s battle out the latest round the few who can be bothered set up impromptu betting odds as to what will happen next in the drawn-out Debono saga. In the press we have the usual white elephants – from the White Rocks Sports Complex that resurfaced a few weeks ago to the Feasibility Plans for Bridges to Gozo.

All the while the business of government is stalled and hedged because the money bills have not been voted and because – let’s face it –  every other moment is being dedicated to secret strategy meetings (pace Maltatoday) that are about as secret as whatever Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando has had for lunch or Owen Bonnici’s latest hobby. The opposition is busy painting the state of the nation as one floundering in abject poverty, expensive bills and of course mention has now begun to be made of the debts and holes that this government will bequeath to its successor. Mais bien sur.

While the circus is in full force the world around the navel-gazing isle is on a rapid mission of the “change or bust” kind – one that cannot afford to give a rat’s arse about arty farty obvious promises in the form of Joseph Muscat’s latest populist mantras. Whether the circus lasts till June or October one thing is for sure. There will be an end to the party. After that it will be down to the business of governing in a time of austerity.

Speculation is rife that this spring could end up being a hot European spring politically with the anti-austerity wave finally taking the European leaders heads-on. A Hollande vicotry in France and a failure by Merkel to push on with further measures could risk spelling disaster for the fragile instability that currently is a European reality. Within that perspective – and outside the childish noise of the four walls of our Franco-led parliament – the future looks daunting.

Will our parties take the realist approach and moderate their promises in the run up for an election? Will they participate in a much needed eye-opening campaign for voters to appreciate the realities of the world beyond the shores of San Pawl-il Bahar and Mellieha? Or will they proceed with their pie-in-the-sky populisms feeding off a skewed view of the world and the immediate economic ills?

At this rate, the after party promises to be uglier than the mother of all hangovers.

Categories
Mediawatch Politics

Franco Bonaparte?

Last time that I hinted at a link between Franco Debono and a historical figure I was told off in private by one of the blog’s more finicky readers. Well, mea culpa if Franco does not quite fit the “Generalissimo” label but the Rebel MP has now taken to quoting another general for his purposes. The Times asked for Debono’s comments in the light of this mornings Leadership Debate being hosted by that same paper and Franco was happy to oblige. The crucial statement is as apocryphal as modern day PLPN politicians can get – leaving as much leeway for interpretation as Saint John’s Apocalyptic scriptures:

The crisis will only be over when the oligarchy is dismantled, the elitist rule of ‘planet clique’ comes down to earth and democracy is strengthened. Even certain quarters of the business community have been complaining for some time about this clique mentality.

Whatever happened to the four riders of the apocalypse and how exactly will “planet clique” come down to earth? Is this a new religion? More specifically has Franco been reduced to speaking in riddles in order to be able to keep us hanging on to his every word? Joseph’s Labour still pin their hopes on stability but in truth they don’t care whether Franco goes this way or that. Joseph’s reading is clear: there is stability whatever the PM says (or does). Muscat has bought himself a joker by claiming that if Franco turns back to the fold of government (what Labour are calling a U-turn even though he never actually voted against government) he will have been “bought” so his opinion does not count.

The nationalist party is in denial too. It doesn’t care whichever way about this minor hiccup in Malta’s political history. It is buying its time till the leadership “election” to fill the vacancy that does not exist. That way we get to ignore Franco at least till the resounding “Gonzi, Gonzi, Gonzi” echoes in the halls of Dar Centrali once the result is out. Then Franco will be given the choice to either follow or get the fuck out. Simples. Next we will have the Local Council elections dragging on to Sliema’s 10th March date which will give us the opportunity to mentally masturbate about figures that have absolutely no bearing on a future national election result. As a a people we are amused and easily distracted by these controversies.

Back to Franco. He makes an interesting assertion in his Times interview.

Dr Debono, a prominent criminal lawyer who has been campaigning for Constitutional reforms, said that after the French revolution one of Napoleon’s greatest conquests was not military in nature. It was the establishment of meritocracy where careers were open to talent. It was the call to dismantle privileges enjoyed by the nobility and the oligarchy. Meritocracy was even more important in a small country like Malta, he said. These are the foundation of our European culture and identity.

I wish the Times would cut the crap of the “prominent criminal lawyer” bit. Franco has been practising criminal law as long as I have been practising European Law – and I’ve spent seven of those years at the European Court of Justice. Should that make me a prominent European lawyer? The only prominence Franco gets – irrespective of his qualities as a lawyer – is the limelight currently afforded to him by circumstance, failing that he’s about as prominent a criminal lawyer as any other recent graduate from the law course (yes… barely 12 years is recent).

Emperor Napoleon the Meritocratic

As for the reference to Napoleon’s meritocratic destruction of the nobility… really Franco? Your knowledge of history borders on the criminal. It took Napoleon Bonaparte a few years to decide that the Republic was not such a good idea after all and to Crown himself Emperor  (in May 1804 before a hapless Pope Pius VII). Oh he did get the senate to vote a law to that effect… it stated in a very PLPN style:

“The government of the Republic is vested in an Emperor, who takes the title of Emperor of the French.”

There you go. Napoleon then proceed to meritocratically install his family all across Europe in the main royal households. Here’s a wikipedia refresher point about the House of Napoleon:

Throughout its history, the dynasty, as well as being Emperors of the French, held various other titles and territories including; their ancestral nation theKingdom of Italy, Kingdom of Spain, Kingdom of Westphalia, Kingdom of Holland and the Kingdom of Naples. The dynasty was in a position of power for around a decade until the Napoleonic Wars began to take their toll. Making very powerful enemies such as Austria, United Kingdom, Russia andPrussia, as well as royalist (particularly Bourbon) restorational movements in France, Spain, the Two Sicilies and Sardinia, the dynasty eventually collapsed under its own weight.

Not looking so anti-clique now are they Franco? What can we say…

THE CLIQUE SHOULD DIE, LONG LIVE THE CLIQUE

 

Categories
Euroland

La crisi l’e bela

Fiorello revises an old Italian cabaret classic.

Modern Times?

Dreams

In my dreams I have a plan

Categories
NRD

The New Republic

Today, Monday 14th November 2011, J’accuse : The New Republic is born . We’re officially dropping the “la verité si je mens” (the truth if I lie) slogan and kicking off the new season by declaring the Age of the New Republic open*.

This is the age of crisis after crisis, the era of the 99% vs the 1%. It  is the age of the bouncing of the cheques issued by the marketing-inspired politics of taste and of the de-crystallization of the post-1989 ideologies.

This is the age of the redefinition of populist calls and the age of the clueless enfranchised cohabiting with the hapless disenfranchised.It is the age of the whiplash effects of consumerism, of the final, desperate calls for environmental propriety and of the unmasking of the financial string-pullers and profiteers. It is the age of relativist unhappiness, of consumer anxiety and of moral vacuum after moral vacuum.

Natural disasters, check. Financial turmoil, check. Spread of debt, check. Missing political compass, check. Dearth of leaders, check. It’s all set.

This is the age of crisis. We live in interesting times. However, there is a sense of inevitability in the idea that from this chaos, from this crisis and moment of questioning will arise a new age. We might be questioning the very functionality of our society’s basic functions and organisation. There might be an institutional crisis further aggravated by a political crisis and a lack of faith in those who have claimed to lead until now. There may be more questions and answers at this point in time and a sense of doom and darkness that might lead us to lose all sense of proportion.

Yes, there may be all that and more but there is also the inevitable idea that the chaotic waters following this intellectual, social and economic big bang will be pregnant with new ideas and provide us with a newly born order. The seeds of the New Republic(s) are being sown today.

As a first step, J’accuse will be proposing a series of posts under the new rubrique (NRD – New Republic Dictionary) in which we will be looking at salient concepts and issues that are at the forefront of national and international news at the dawning of this new age. The Dictionary for a New Republic starts here.

P.S. It’s nice to be back – and thank you for all your good wishes.

 

*You might have noticed the new addition to the J’accuse logo.