‘Debate’ Articles at j’accuse

Politics has reached a shallow point in Malta. We’ve all heard that phrase by now. Trust in politicians on the island has gravitated towards the same low point as has been shared for a long time and for different reasons on the rest of the continent. We’re slightly delayed – it has only just begun to dawn on a large part of the population that “the Game” has nothing to do with power and that the alternating race to mediocrity is only destined to produce more of the same, but different. At the same time as this great realisation is happening – within the confines of cliche’ ridden appraisals that your average citizen is capable of – there is still a strong pull towards the partisan DNA that is, much to the chagrin of Andrew Borg Cardona and Charles Mangion, programmed into the vast majority of the voting population.

It’s not just Konrad Mizzi who is afflicted by the mysterious “internal conflict”, it’s all bona fide “partitarji” on both sides of the political chasm. Labourites cannot believe that their government is coming so close to repeating the short stunt under Sant… one mega-crisis and it’s all over. Deep down they all see the horrible error in Mizzi’s ways, even they understand that the Energy Minister’s position is untenable but they are loath to admit it. The pull of the party is too huge and trumps all. The Nationalist party card bearers also have a dilemma of their own. They’d love to see the back of this government but they are still not 100% convinced that their own party is good enough to lead and many have still not understood the modus operandi of Simon’s politics.

The time would have been ripe for reasoned debate centred around reform and improvement. Politics, particularly party politics, is in the doldrums. Anyone with a brain between their ears could tell that the sell-by date of mediocre politics is long past. Reasoned debate and rational argument are what the doctor ordered – it’s the right medicine for both parties internally as well as for our institutional set-up. Rational and reasoned debate requires information and an exchange of ideas and programmes with the best for the country being the ultimate goal.

What we have got instead is the return of the non-political exchange. Politics with a big P has been thrown out of the window and the machines of spin are out all over again because as soon as a moment of crisis brings the faint glimmer of a possible election round the corner our parties do what they do best – entrench and send out the soldiers: in this case one important element are the “doorsteppers”.

It’s not a new breed of political animal. The latest morph on both sides are Mario Frendo and Nicole Buttigieg. They are sent to the enemy lines in search of the soundbite that can be processed and fed into the propaganda machine. They form part of a wider circle and game played by the politicians themselves who hide behind feeble excuses, half-truths and word games to destroy any possibility of debate. We’ve seen them before. Joseph Muscat was one of them himself. Ministers and shadow ministers on both sides of parliament began their career as doorstepping journalists of sorts, as did some of our MEPs. I remember one of the earlier morphs of these doorsteppers in the form of Simone Cini who shadowed Eddie Fenech Adami all the way to PN mass meetings provoking the worst out of the worst.

It’s weird. Even the language of the two parties switches away from real meaningful essence and we now hear of accusations of “fascism”, “return to the eighties”, “stifling of speech” and more. The nationalist party brouhaha about the use of criminal libel was surreal for example for it really begged the question “What did you think of criminal libel in the 25 years that you were in government?”. Someone from the Independent did bother asking Marthese Portelli only to get some long-winded non-reply based on “just look at the good things we have done in those years so please just ignore the way we looked away from any possible reform”.

“Concentrating on the good we did” seems to be the new karma. Konrad Mizzi is magically oblivious to his textbook case of “things not to do unless you want to lose your position as minister”. He still thinks that it’s a conspiracy by the PN to remove what he believes is the best performing Labour cabinet member and nothing more. Aside from the fact that his own admission of naivety should suffice to make him lose any possibility of sitting in ANY position of public responsibility, his excuse seems to have gone down as sufficiently plausible with the rest of the PL crowd. Now he’s probably on his way to being anointed as a soldier of steel.

So we are down to looking at the doorsteppers. Planted in the middle of crowds who have the collective political nous of a football hooligan they will “interview” and provoke for the sake of getting a snapshot of the worst of the worst of the opposite party’s supporters – oblivious all the while to the fact that they could very well have sampled someone from their own inner circles with very much the same results.

… to be continued

‘The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum….’ Noam Chomsky, The Common Good

Marelene Farrugia posted this quote on Facebook last week and I find it very apt to describe what is going on in Malta right now. Take the “conversion therapy” situation. I can finally comment on the issue without having to hear yet another pseudo-liberal claim that the only problem in that case is that the PN, and more particularly Simon Busuttil, has not taken a position on the matter. Well now it has, having gathered together its parliamentary group and decided in favour of the criminalisation of conversion therapy.

Labour sympathiser and appointee Cyrus Engerer claimed on twitter that the PN exercise was simply an exercise of counting the votes and seeing on which side of the fence it is best to sit on. He may not have been far off the mark, particularly given how his chosen party’s government had long worked out that part of the equation and was foursquare behind whatever the LGBTQ lobby would propose as a law – even if it had no clue what it would be all about.

Which is where the problem lies. Much was made about what was supposed to be Busuttil’s dragging of feet once the Church Report came out. The “Min mhux maghna kontra taghna” (either with us or against us) brigade was out and this worked fantastically for Joseph Muscat’s “civil rights” credentials. Busuttil taking the necessary time to form a position within his parliamentary group meant some sort of “lack of leadership” or “victory of conservatism” to the vociferous pseudo-liberal lobby. By necessary time to form a position I mean forming a position amply before any debate and vote begins in parliament on the Bill. Amply before a vote is taken on the Bill.

What about that vote then? Well this is where Chomsky hits you with brute force. Acceptable opinion in this national debate was one: you have to be in favour of the bill. Any other nuance on the spectrum of opinions would be anathema and the LGBTQ inquisition and a bit would be out in force to bash your head in with a club. They did not want to hear anything other than Busuttil’s party say that it is in favour of the Bill. Hell, I was actually one step short of being accused of holocaust denial because I dared point out that the Bill is flawed in its drafting and definition. It turns out that if you don’t “get” the Bill then you don’t get centuries of suffering and persecution.

Which is a load of bollocks. In a sane democracy it is normal to be able to discuss different positions on a given topic. In my case I believe that “conversion therapy”, when properly defined as the direct attempt to alter a persons gender, orientation &c (a necessary addendum) is anathema to the world. I don’t believe it on the basis of instinct but I believe it because a convoy of scientists have proven that any such attempt at “conversion” is harmful to the subject of the “therapy”. So I could willingly sit at a table and begin the discussion on the necessity that society protects its citizens from any form of therapy that is intended for conversion.

A bit of research – thanks also to the #bornperfect campaign for the criminalisation of conversion therapy in the US (4 out of 50 states have enacted bills in this sense) – will show you that one important aspect of legislation being discussed is the involvement of professional entities representing psychologists, psychiatrists and counsellors. It is best left in the hands of these entities to regulate and prohibit certain kinds of therapy that are harmful. That includes defining what exactly constitutes conversion therapy and when what is considered “non-conversion” therapy suddenly becomes “conversion therapy”.

Unless it is protecting the weak, the vulnerable and the easily exploited (which is never in doubt), the state has no place in the consultation room – science should be doing its job perfectly well without its help. This proposed Bill should have been polishing the current regulation of such professionals and their representative entities if they are still not sufficiently empowered to control their members as happens elsewhere such as in the UK. Instead it goes for the typical blanket criminalisation of an scientific process based on an attempted definition at law – a criminal definition whose first port of call for application will be the policemen who arrest youth for skinny dipping.

Will we have this kind of debate? Highly unlikely. Not when any voice criticising the current draft is immediately flagged as a conservative opponent that must be shut up. It is the way our democracy tends to work when a government meets a powerful lobby and together they decide that a law will pass come what may. The Church up to the 90s and early 2000’s has been replaced by the LGBTQ lobby. The power of parliament to debate laws is neutered both by our system of majoritarian voting that reduces vote-switching in parliament to extreme and final zero-sum situations as well as by the social bullying that will occur in the run up to any law purporting to introduce or amend social rights.

A person who had a part in drafting the conversion therapy bill actually told me that “having struggled against the current for so long he was not going to complain now that the wind is in his favour”. I do not doubt that the sudden rush of being able to legislate whatever you fancy would blind anyone from the fact that he is turning into his greatest nemesis.

The bullying power of lobbies has been exacerbated under Muscat’s populist labour. The Developer’s Lobby is a notorious case in point. The behaviour of the LGBTQ lobby and the pseudo-liberals in the case of the conversion therapy bill does not bode well for the future.

There is no place for moderates or objective debate – even if you agree that “conversion therapy” should never be practiced, unless you agree with THE BILL or THEIR BILL you will be labelled as an opponent of the ideas behind the bill. Which is ridiculous, non-liberal and non-democratic. But then, who cares, so long as the bill goes through?

We are losing sight of civility in government and politics. Debate and dialogue is taking a back seat to the politics of destruction and anger and control. Dogma has replaced thoughtful discussion between people of differing views. – James McGreevey

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