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The Currency of Salaries

Joseph Muscat has renounced the right to a salary increase that is due to him after a decision taken in parliament in 2008. Apparently half the parliament was unaware of this decision – a side-issue that begs the question of “Where the f**k were the guardians of the opposition benches that day?” Even if we do grant the point of temporary lapse of attention to the totality of the opposition benches what we have here is an opposition leader and two of his party MPs deciding to not take the salary increase (honorarium).

***ADDENDUM***
Since we have no problem admitting where we were wrong, there is no “side-issue” to speak of. The decision for the new honoraria was apparently a Cabinet decision and not one taken in parliament – though we still harbour doubts about whether or not a law has to be changed for it to come into effect. The answer to our hypothetical question (Where the f was labour?) is therefore “not in the Cabinet”. We stand by the rest of our argument though – the scale of salaries is not a measure for assessing politicians’ performance. If it were so, 100% of the people who have moved to work with the institutions in Europe would theoretically make better parliamentarians. An AST1 (entry level grade) earns as much as a local (national for Privitelli) MP.
***

Cool. Sort of. As in while you can immediately understand how this latest gimmick fits in with New Labour’s fetish with salaries (remember the PQ about people earning more than the President) it is hard to reconcile this position of abnegation with anything beyond the making of a puerile point. They’re waiting for us to say it. Just in time for Christmas: would you dare criticise Labour’s leader for not pocketing extra MP dosh?

Well. The answer is Yes. J’accuse Can. For the argument we made back when the presidential PQ was posed still holds strong. It is not how much you are paid that is really important but the respect you gain by justifying whatever salary it is and doing your damn job. Even if Joseph Muscat were to suddenly get a bout of fantastic altruism and half his salary I don’t give a flying copulation. It is what he is doing while warming that chair in parliament as a representative of the people’s alternative to government that counts. I will judge him by his programmes and projects and NOT by his salary.

His alternative budget was ludicrous and only won some points because of Bondi’s hash of a programme – Bondi’s slip was Muscat’s gain in public perception. Which did not mean that Muscat’s grandiose faff that is an excuse for future planning will actually work. Meanwhile Muscat’s minions are busy on facebook reminding us how the Great Leader forwent so many euros increase from the mouths of his own babes in order to save 120,000€ that can now be spent on childcare or some other fantasmagorical mental masturbatory pink socialist idea.

The truth is that it won’t. -be spent on childcare, or on a new sleigh for Santa or whatever they might dream of in Mile End. Money spending and planning is called budgeting and that is up to the government of the day to do. To get to even write the budget you have to be elected to government. With a plan. A concrete one that does not involve not putting money in one’s pockets like some latter day St Nicholas but rather involves ideas on how our economy can survive the current climate and hopefully how money can be justly distributed into the pockets of the hard working and the deserving.

So. Bravo for Joseph for foregoing the salary increase voted by parliament. He seems to be of the type who revel in a warm round of applause and gasps of awe at his magnanimity. It is a pity that his performance as the generator of alternative government remains dismally hopeless for those who care to look beyond the antics of the latest trend in salary scale gimmicks.

Per Una Lira
(originale di Lucio Battisti – versione youtube di Giuliano Palma & the Bluebeaters)

Per una lira
io vendo tutti i sogni miei
per una lira
ci metto sopra pure lei
E un affare sai
basta ricordare
di non amare
di non amare
Amico caro,
se c’è qualcosa che non va
se ho chiesto troppo,
tu dammi pure la metà
A un affare sai
basta ricordare
di non amare, no
di non amare
no, no, no, nooo
Per una lira
io vendo tutto ciò che ho
Per una lira
io so che lei non dice no
Ma se penso che
Tu sei un buon amico
non te lo dico oh no
Meglio per te

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J’accuse : ‘Les sanscouilles’

At the time of the French revolution, part of the French population took to calling another part of the population “les sansculottes. According to one theory, the name is derived from the fact that the partisans of this particular revolutionary faction wore pantaloons (full-length trousers) instead of the fashionable knee-length culotte. (Wikipedia’s summary). I’ve always wondered why rather than being called ‘Les Pantaloons’, they were defined by what they did not wear, but that must be down to the fact that the point where sartorial affairs and politics converge more often than not involves criticism rather than praise.

Anyway, together with the Jacobins, the sansculottes were among the violent elements of the revolution. Unlike the Jacobins, they came from the working class and have bequeathed us the term “sans-culottism” meaning extreme egalitarian republican principles. The sansculottes disappeared shortly after the fall of Robespierre’s reign of terror and they left us the image of the carmagnole, the red cap of liberty and the sabots (clogs).

In today’s exciting times we have witnessed revolutions linked to colours, such as the red, purple and orange revolutions. We have also, in moments of great social upheaval, witnessed the blooming of “styles” and “fashions” that are a result of or reaction to the current political mood. In that sense, the sansculottes were the precursors to the mods, the punks, the rebels and the twittervolutionaries of today’s world but never, ever in his life would Jacques (René, if you please) Hébert, the revolutionary mentor of the sansculottes, have imagined the possibility of the movement of “les sanscouilles”.

Balls

Yet, all through this past week you couldn’t help but wonder whether just such a movement is forming in our collective sub-conscious and whether or not it manifested itself in the guise of our more prominent politicians and so-called investigative journalists when the divorce issue was once again discussed. Maltese, being the flowery expressive language that it is, lends itself perfectly to explaining what les sanscouilles is all about – and unless the linguistic fascists are hiding in ambush behind some corner, the best way to spell the Maltese version of sanscouilles is bla bajd.

Yep. The sanscouilles movement is made up of a combination of political Farinellis combined with the journalistic eunuchs who tend to fan their divas during performances. Lest I be accused of gender bias, I invite you to consider this whole ballsy business as an extended metaphor that applies to male and female alike. The defining trait of the sanscouilles is their inability to shoulder a modicum of responsibility and provide an inkling of inspirational politics; instead of responsibly taking a stand one way or another, they will wait to see which way the wind is blowing and find innumerable ways to postpone putting their neck on the line.

Contrary to public perception, the notion of the sanscouilles has less to do with ideas of virility and more with the ideal of responsible leadership. A quick run through the week’s events on divorce should really lead this country’s last remaining conscientious voters to despair. The sanscouilles movement is gaining ground… it is out there. It is everywhere.

The Emperor’s Clothes

I was told that Joseph Muscat pulled of quite a performance on Tuesday’s self-referential show of investigative journalism. I was told that by friends of mine who don’t usually bother turning up at the ballot box on Malta’s five-year anniversary equivalent of Doomsday. It was when the press started to report Joseph’s refreshed position on divorce that I wondered how my friends could buy this kind of pitch from a politician who, in the words of a commentator on J’accuse, “appears to have acquired his political education from the back of a Belgian beer mat”.

Then it clicked. Surely the prancing and sashaying of Malta’s prime example of castrato journalism could only have unwittingly (absence of wit is taken as read in most programmes) aided and abetted Muscat’s unprincipled approach to the divorce debate. Of course, if, unlike me, you are more than willing to watch the Emperor march around naked without giving him so much as a word of warning as to his glaring state of nudity, then you too will be equally appeased with his idea of “responsible divorce” combined with a “free vote for his party”.

The presenter’s position is compromised from the start. Comforted by the fact that his bias no longer needs to be declared (it’s to himself, lest you were wondering), his programmes are beyond “boring and dull”, having transformed into a self-referential sequence exposing the very best of selective journalistic incompetence. At any other time, on any other channel, Lou could be playing whatever tune he likes but prime time investigative journalism on national TV deserves much more than the image of castrated journalists playing second fiddle to whatever member of Parliament is on stage at the moment. Given that WE’s other programme has now completely taken leave of all senses and started to discuss close encounters of the third kind, the urgent need of a non-castrated style of journalism is all the more glaring.

But back to Muscat. His particular brand of sanscouillism is of the incredibly non-committal kind while sounding the exact opposite. Unless you manage to cut beyond the words and look into what is really being said, you might as well be listening to Ahmed the Dead Terrorist. Which is why Bondi’s castrato style journalism could not work. If he challenges Muscat he gets reminded that he is biased. If he goes along with him he ends up promising to endorse his “responsible divorce” campaign.

Muscat’s tergiversation stems from an inability to place the divorce issue in real constitutional terms and fails to appreciate his responsibilities both as Leader of the Opposition and aspirant leader of a nation. Divorce is not the kind of “right” that results from some majority-voting stint but is a legal possibility that is enacted in the interests (more often than not) of the few. What Muscat fails to understand is that you can be in favour of divorce legislation without necessarily being in favour of divorce.

Muscat tries to get away with this new-fangled notion of “responsible” divorce as though there is such a thing as irresponsible divorce. Sure we do not want a situation where the mere repetition of the cursèd word thrice would result in divorce like some Red Slippers gone all matrimonial. On the other hand, this shuffling of feet and hiding behind terms is not progressive at all. A progressive leader should have taken the bull by the horns and by this time presented what his idea of divorce should be – caveats and all – and be pushing to get it enacted in parliament for the benefit of those citizens who fulfil the conditions and desire to move on to a different, married life. Instead we get enigmatic “responsible divorce”. Well, so long as it’s responsible. Then again. What if I said “responsible mercy killing”? What say you about “responsible heroin consumption”? “Responsible castration”?

The high kind of pitch

And while Muscat was busy dancing with Lou to whatever music was being played at the never-ending end credits, Malta’s own Don Quixote was busy meeting our Prime Minister on the matter of his draft law on divorce. Now, I have already once more lauded JPO for the single-handed way he has pushed the sanscouilliste movement into some form of action on the divorce matter. On the other hand it was particularly jarring to see the push and pull of the JPO-Gonzi saga shortly after the meeting took place. First JPO met some members of the free press and declared that next year would be a great time for the harvest of both parliamentary discussions and referendum.

What-ho? Yep. The erstwhile backbencher had apparently been given the nihil obstat from up high to announce to the men of the realm that divorce would definitely be on the agenda in 2011, as would be an eventual referendum. Referendum? Did anyone say referendum? Is our hero tilting at windmills, suddenly drained of all mental faculties? Has he too succumbed to sanscouillism? Who on earth mentioned referenda? Do these folks even know how things are meant to work in this constitutional republic of ours?

Better still out came the OPM claiming that, yes, there was an agreement to proceed with the discussion but there was no mention of a referendum and that it would be best left to the electorate to decide. The electorate? It was like being knocked out twice within an hour. No referendum plus the electorate can only mean one thing in my book: that we will wait for the next general election for the divorce issue to be placed in the party’s manifesto and that a vote on the matter could only be taken after such a national vote.

Marchons! Marchons! A la Castille! You could hear the hordes of sanscouilles marching in line. They would storm Castille once again and spread the revolutionary fervour of the ball-less to the four corners of the islands. The divorce question had become a question of pass the parcel all over again and from Muscat to JPO to Gonzi the movement of the sanscouilles could only offer the electorate a castrato version of realpolitik. Wash your hands and let them decide. Pontius Pilate would be proud.

bert4j_101017

The seven brothers

Then it came. When you least expected it and from the last place you would expect it. The voice of reason. Seven Church brothers sat down around a table and fleshed out a declaration “on conscience and divorce”. In the land of sanscouillism, seven men of the cloth came up with an eye-opener of a declaration that made you want to stand up on the nearest pulpit or stage and shout “Hallelujah”. Here was a ballsy statement divorced from the fire and brimstone rhetoric of brother Said Pullicino and divorced from the foot shuffling opportunism of the sanscouilliste community. The seven brothers called a spade a spade. And they reminded the whole bloody lot of the sanscouilliste community of the political role of one’s conscience – and one’s responsibility towards both society and one’s conscience.

For yes, there was much more to be read into the seven brothers’ invitation than a simple reminder that a real Catholic votes with an informed conscience. They went beyond that. They had no qualms reminding the devout that “for Catholics divorce is wrong whether permitted by civil law or not”. However, they did also emphasise the importance of evaluating one’s options by acting with an informed conscience bearing in mind one’s own morals and values – in this case God’s teaching.

The seven brothers introduced a new, important angle to the argument. They have not only repaired the damage to the Church’s image caused by Said Pullicino’s media-eval stance, but have provided an important example for the wider society. I dare go so far as stating that theirs is the real Christian democrat position that is miles apart from the tergiversation within the soul of the supposed Christian democrat party of Malta.

This is the how the role of a social actor is fulfilled. With a clear indication and an appraisal of every individual’s role in society and how he should go about fulfilling it. Instead of fire and brimstone, the brothers gave us the duty to inform our conscience and decide in good faith based on those considerations. After all, it is not just votes on the introduction of divorce that require greater reflection and an informed conscience. Someone, somewhere, still has faith in intelligent voters who will get us out of this mess.

www.akkuza.com is still sick of laryngitis. We’re sicker still of the sanscouillistes but still can’t find the right prescription.

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J'accuse : Abre los Ojos

Labour (Inhobbkom’s Labour not Ed’s New New One) is busy conferencing this weekend. They’re huddled cosily in the university’s Aula Magna for a full day of talks in a conference entitled “Revisting Labour’s History” and I still cannot get over the fact that I was unable to make it there. Yes, you read that right, I would have loved to witness at first hand this conference of sorts that is part of the wider Labour strategy of “Re-”s. They’re re-visiting their history, re-inventing their logo, re-gurgitating old economic principles, re-moving their facial hair and (once again) re-cycling an image that has been a work in progress since is-Salvatur ta’ Malta went into re-tirement (never a minute too late).

There’s something manifestly wrong in the way Labour went about this whole “re-” business though, and this weekend’s conference contains some clear pointers to what that could be. Someone, somewhere is guilty of a gross miscalculation when choosing the title first of all: “Revisiting Labour’s History”. It’s the political equivalent of a Freudian slip combined with all the evident trappings of a modern day “Pimp my Party” in the making. The term “revisit” is a few letters away from becoming “revise” and I have a hunch that this is not a small coincidence.

In legal terms, when a court revisits an earlier decision it normally does so because of the necessity of reinterpreting the earlier position – there would be not other reason to revisit and reopen the case. In historical terms there is another “re-” word that is of relevance here. It’s the idea of revisionism. Revisionism need not always be extreme as in holocaust denial. Reading through the agenda of this weekend’s conference, I couldn’t help but think that Labour is sorely tempted to rewrite some chapters of history of its own. They’ve been at it for a while now and we have all become used to the polyphonic history of our islands – whether it is sung by Mary Spiteri to the tunes of Gensna or whether it is yelled from the pedestals of il-Fosos by the latest crowd-stirring nationalist orator – the messages are always excitingly dissonant and cacophonous: the result of two virtual realities and perceptions colliding.

Rapid eye movement

The political audience is already, as it is, doomed to the regular resurrection of revisited myths and legends in our political discourse. The narratives woven by opposing parties are now firmly ingrained in our collective minds and it is hard to reasonably detach from them completely. It is extremely significant that, bang in the middle of the process of change and reinvention, Labour chose to “revisit” its history and discuss, among other things: “The Worker Student Scheme: 1978-1987”. As I type (11.30am, Saturday, 2 October), Peter Mayo is about to launch into an explanation of how Great Leader Mintoff (May God Give Him Long Life and Order a Hail of Stones on All His Evil Wishers) sowed the seeds of the stipend system and how we must be eternally grateful for his insights that allowed us to progress to a university accepting 3,000+ freshers this year.

The irony will be lost on the listeners sitting in that cosy hall of the Aula Magna on the 2nd of October 2010 that 33 years and one day before this the atmosphere in that very same place would best have been described as tensely electric. I wonder whether Peter Mayo will stop for a moment to explain to the young listeners (I’d imagine a Nikita Alamango fawning in the audience – one who according to her latest Times “blog” post cannot stand the PN reminders of the past) that on the 3rd October 1977 the opening ceremony at university featured heavy protests by the medical students who had just been shut out of the course (and always risked brutal cancellation if the thugs decided that it was open day at Tal-Qroqq).

Sure, it was not yet 1978 so it might (just) be beyond Peter Mayo’s remit. He will be forgiven therefore for not reminding those present that only two days later, on 5 October 1977, the man dubbed as is-Salvatur tal-Maltin would walk past a group of students chained to the railings in Castille oblivious to the fact that his government’s decisions in the educational sector (the much lauded Worker Student Scheme) were about to deny thousands of young people the path to tertiary education and send them abroad in droves.

Remember, remember the 5th of October

To be fair to Peter Mayo he probably couldn’t dare criticise the workings of the Great Leader. Not after a wonderful morning discussing his battles with the church in the sixties and his “electrifying” speeches to the proletariat. The electric effect Mintoff and his handymen had on some parts of the population would best be described as “shocking” actually. Whatever you may think of Labour’s dim-witted purposive ignorance of the past and bulldozering of historic relevance, don’t you for one moment run away with the idea that it is only the party of Joseph, Evarist (Bartolo – of removed stipends fame) and Alfred (Sant – of interview boards at university) who is in the business of revising historical facts.

You see, I sympathise with such Young Turks as Nikita Alamango who are frustrated at having to carry the burden of Labour’s past every time they squeak a new idea or criticise the current regime (sorry – did I say regime? – it’s the “Re” word fixation). Hell, this week even the German Republic paid the final instalment in World War I Reparations (started paying in 1919 and was suspended as long as Germany was split). Ninety-two years on and the German conscience is slightly freer – so why not Labour? Most times they are right. PN lackeys all too often emerge from the primordial slew of infertile political ground and rely on historical mudslinging for want of a better argument.

The problem I have with Labour is twofold – disputing the relevance of past actions is one thing. Revising (sorry, revisiting) them is another. Revisiting them on the anniversary of events that marked the watershed of Old Labour’s hopeless politics of the late 70s is insulting – insulting not just to the PN hardliners but also to neutral observers like myself who can see through the charade. Labour cannot expect this to go unnoticed. It is strategically stupid and politically insensitive. It does not stop at conferences: Recently, someone from Labour’s “think-tank” (IDEAT) was busy on Facebook quoting a party press release which stated that the current government’s agreements with China are a confirmation of the Labour vision of the seventies. Sit down and weep.

Virtually real

Mine is not simply an angry case of indignation though. Labour’s Revisionist Conference is part of a wider mentality that is the inner workings and thinking of the two major parties in this country. In this day and age of multimedia and mass communication, the modes of communication might be evolving at such a rapid pace that we will soon be tweeting in our sleep, but there is one basic constant whether it’s TV, radio, newspaper or Internet and that constant is the word. In principio stat verbum (in the beginning was the word) and it’s going to be with us for a long time yet.

Words and their meaning are at the basis of whatever construction of reality we choose to live in. Einstein once stated that reality is an illusion but a very good illusion at that. The PLPN (un)wittingly engage in a constant battleground of establishing the reality in which we live (and that is why they NEED the media influence). Whether we are considering the “cost of living”, the “minimum wage” or the “living wage”, we sometimes fail to notice that a large number of constants that we take for granted in these arguments are the fruit of elaborate definitions of perception suited to whatever party is making its claim. We are not that dopey really – there is a general acceptance that “parties colour the world as best they see it”, and although as a nation we struggle to come to terms with irony and sarcasm we still manage to joke about the PL-PN chiaroscuro worlds.

I am not sure however about how much the electorate is in control of the button that switches us between perception and reality. How capable are we of switching off the virtual reality and putting our foot down when we believe that things have been taken too far? Can we decide when we want to open our eyes? Are we, like the character in Almodovar’s Abre Los Ojos (open your eyes – spoiler warning) still able to opt out of the programme that creates a “lucid and lifelike virtual reality of dreams” and yell that enough is enough? Worse still – have the very parties that are responsible for the manufactured realities that we inhabit become so embroiled and enmeshed in them that they are unable to find the switch themselves?

Denial

Take the Nationalist Party. They are an incredible subject for this sort of test. This week they engaged in a mind-boggling collective exercise of denial of truths. We had Minister Tonio Fenech and his cataclysmic Tax-Free Maid slip. Watching The Times interview that gave Tonio a chance to right his previous wrongs was like watching an exercise in verbal prestidigitation featuring a ministerial equivalent of the Mad Hatter. Quizzed on VAT he replied on Stamp Duty and vice-versa, and then went on a trip about not having to answer about private affairs that he himself had brought up as a public example. You could only squirm in your seat as you watched Tonio attempt to make his statements vanish into thin air. Apologists tried other tactics – the cream of the crop coming from the Runs claiming that since the law is inadequate then Tonio and his maid are right in not following it to the letter. Perception? Forget the doors… they’ve swallowed the key.

Meanwhile El Supremo del Govermento was busy wearing the party hat, having been asked to pass summary judgement on the PBO-VAT saga. Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi found absolutely nothing incongruous with the fact that his very exacting sec-gen failed to apply his own standards of political propriety when faced with a legal crisis of his own. Same same but different – just like in the alleyways in Thailand when they sell fake brands. Fake – it’s just an illusion of reality but not exactly so.

As if PBO and Tonio were not enough, we also had the DimechGate spin-off in the form of the uncomfortable presence of Robert Arrigo – the last of the disgruntled backbenchers. PN councillor Yves Cali was the latest to slip in a frank interview with The Times in which he more than just alleged that Arrigo was in the business of throwing his weight around the council to get what he wants. Yves (or Bobby) tried to retract his statement so an irritated Times published a transcript of the interview in which the allegations were made. A transcript – that’s a word for word proof that the statements were made. Quizzed about this, Paul Borg Olivier (fresh from his own reality check) came up with the quote of the week by insisting that the transcript published by The Times was “not faithful to the statement of clarification made by Yves Cali”.

Open your eyes

bert4j_101003

Take your time and read that short, Orwellian PBO phrase. If ever there was an example of the convoluted logic somersaults performed by parties to twist your perception of reality, here it was.

The transcript (a text bearing witness to reality at its crudest) was not faithful to the statement of clarification (an attempt at revising/reinterpreting that reality). And which reality does PBO want you to believe? No prizes for guessing.

We need to open your eyes. This is a political generation that one week expresses its love for the environment on car free day while parading in front of journalists using alternative modes of transportation and then, in the following week, the collective parliamentary group (PLPN) self-allocates a huge chunk of (previously pedestrian) Merchants Street for reserved MP parking in connivance with the Valletta Local Council (remember Cali? “We serve our MPs and Labour serve theirs”). The excuse? It will free up more parking for residents and visitors. Park and Ride anyone?

It’s time we opened our eyes – and remember, sometimes actions speak louder than words.

www.akkuza.com would like to congratulate Toni Sant (and friends) for the www.m3p.com.mt project. Happy Student’s Day to you all!

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Labour's Redprint

From Ed to Joseph with love (inhobbok)… Here’s a summary of the main parts of Ed Miliband‘s new vision for New New Labour. It is advisable to familiarise oneself with these visions and terminology for you can expect Joseph Muscat and his Merry Band of Progressives to pilfer them like there is no tomorrow. (A bit like GonziPN and Sarkozy’s slogans). Not that the borrowing of a good idea is wrong – if it is a good idea that is – but that JM and his Merry Men will have no idea of whether or not the vision will work for Malta. They will just be happy to find something that sounds serious, looks marketable and contains the kind of populist promises to win over the ever so enigmatic “middle class“.

From today’s Independent here is Ed Miliband’s vision all set out for Muscat and his idea banks to clone:

New leader’s policy vision

Spending cuts

“I am serious about reducing our deficit… I won’t oppose every cut the Coalition proposes… But what we should not do is make a bad situation worse by embarking on deficit reduction at a pace that endangers our economic recovery.” This formulation is designed to help win back Labour’s credibility on the economy while giving Mr Miliband some wriggle room to amend Alistair Darling’s policy to halve the deficit over four years. Critics will accuse him of trying to have it both ways.

Low pay

“I believe not just in a minimum wage but the foundation of our economy in future must be a living wage.” A future Labour government could force employers to pay a “living wage” of about £7.60 an hour, rather than the minimum wage of £5.80 an hour. The move would be opposed by employers, but Mr Miliband will point out that their warnings about huge job losses before the minimum wage was introduced proved unfounded.

High pay

“The gap between rich and poor does matter. What does it say about the values of our society, what have we become, that a banker can earn in day what the care worker can earn in a year? Responsibility in this country shouldn’t just be about what you can get away with.” Mr Miliband supports a High Pay Commission to investigate the gap between top and bottom pay levels in the private and public sector.

Welfare

“There are those for whom the benefits system has become a trap.” Mr Miliband will oppose “arbitrary” benefit cuts proposed by the Coalition. But he is sympathetic to “tough and tender” reforms drawn up by James Purnell, the former work and pensions secretary, which were not supported by Gordon Brown.

Crime

“When Ken Clarke [the Justice Secretary] says we need to look at short sentences in prison because of high re-offending rates, I’m not going to say he’s soft on crime.” Mr Miliband’s support for Mr Clarke’s “prison isn’t working” approach marks a break with New Labour’s tough stance on crime.

So the living wage risks becoming a battleground for the next three years as Joseph Muscat will continue to harp on about the notion. Where will the money for the “living wage” adjustment come from Joseph? Will the taxpayer subsidise the employers to pay the employees? Or will the employers be expected to magicke the extra dosh out of thin air in order to pay for the years of abuse of the impoverished middle-class workers?

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PerjuryGate – Justine's Dilemma

There’s one more thing that’s been at the back of my mind in this Chris Said saga. It took Justine Caruana quite some time to distance herself from the perjury challenge that was made by her client. We then got Roberto Montalto explaining to the press that “his client’s decision was not a personal vendetta against Dr Said but simply a necessary step in his battle to gain custody of his only child”. It is not that easy to separate the political from the legal in this matter given the position held by Chris Said and given the way the Labour leader tried to gain whatever political mileage could be had from the issue at the first opportunity.

The nagging thought I have had relates to both the legal and the political side of the matter. I need to give you a hypothetical case for you to see this clearer. Imagine (just imagine) we were talking about theft or (heaven forbid) a more grievous crime such as murder. Imagine (just imagine) that we had a similar case but instead of perjury, a Parliamentary Secretary is being accused of theft or murder. Now imagine you were a lawyer whose client is claiming that the PS is guilty of one of these crimes and that you also happened to be a member of parliament for the opposition party.

You’d have two options available:

(1) In the first option you would be the one to strongly pursue the allegation because (a) you believe it and (b) it is your duty both towards your client as well as towards society to uncover the criminal acts of a representative of the people currently entrusted with governmental responsibilities.

(2) On the other hand you may feel that the accusation is actually not well-grounded and that being identified as the initiator of such an accusation would not have very good repercussions on your political career in the long term – so you make sure that you are not identified with such an accusation.

Legally this argument is not relevant since it is a lawyer’s duty to inform the client of his options and repercussions of such options but in the end he will take whatever action (within the boundaries of ethics) that the client requires.

Politically though the argument is important. In tis cynical age, there is much mileage to be made by a politician who actually uncovers the misdeeds of another politician. The graver the accusation the greater the duty of the politician to uncover it if he or she believes that this is the truth.  Even without the cynicism though there is much to be said in favour of the politician uncovering this kind of truth as a duty towards society. Politically this is the work of the servants of the people, ensuring that anybody else posing as as servant of the people is not tainted with a criminal record that could put into question his ability to handle his public duties.

So the nagging thought I have is this. We have Joseph Muscat trying to gain short-term brownie points BEFORE the actual case is decided by tut-tutting at Gonzi’s rashness to back his PS. At the same time though, we have Justine Caruana who is extremely eager to create an ocean between herself and the case in question – we are led to presume that this is because she is not entirely convinced that Said is actually in the business of the crime of perjury.

Can we presume that she believes that his was a genuine mistake that opened a window of opportunity for Mr Xuereb and his new lawyer to try their luck with a very wide interpretation of the law? Incidentally, the luck starts and ends with the right to institute proceedings for perjury – i.e. no need of very high level of proof at that stage pace the Criminal Court – once the actual perjury proceedings start Mr Xuereb’s lawyer might find that judges will require stronger arguments than “this is not a vendetta”.

The nagging thought is that if Justine were certain that the perjury proceedings would be successful (having been Mr Xuereb’s lawyer throughout the civil side of proceedings) she would be squarely behind her client in that step too – if not legally as his representative (for whatever reasons she may have) then politically. There is nothing wrong with Justine Caruana the politician distancing herself from the proceedings – nothing at all. She is fully entitled to do so. In doing so though, the political message she sends to many (and that she should have insisted upon with her dear leader) is that behind this cloud of smoke there lies nothing much. At least nothing that a politician acting in good faith would deem worth pursuing in the courts of law and taking up in the political forum.

There. Now we wait for the courts to get moving on Tuesday.

Categories
Fireworks Politics

Do You Feel Lucky?

Writing in yesterday’s Sunday Times, Inhobbkom Joseph told anybody who cared to listen that he was “deeply saddened” after the nation “experienced another frustrating and an-gering fireworks tragedy”. He went on to tell us that we have waited too long for legislation on fireworks and that he too lives in dread of the next explosion. It might not all boil down to Joseph’s dad being an owner of a chemical importing business (of the kind used to make fireworks) but Joseph’s Times appeal smacks of opportunism of the highest PLPN degree. While Lawrence was on radio pointing fingers at some sort of PL protectionism for the failure to regulate party funding (and PL answered with their own dose of just as predictable finger pointing) Joseph had a little problem.

He had to look like he was in favour of taking action against the irrational way in which the whole firework industry is managed and run. We are used to Inhobbkom’s reactions now – the moment public feeling is on a high about something, Joseph is quick to leap onto the bandwagon and tell us how he feels and empathises with the people’s situation. He then promises some form of knee-jerk legislation that might (only might) solve the problem. In this case though there are too many ties that bind him to the situation. The ugliest tie of them all, and the most difficult one to shake off will undoubtedly remain his dad’s business. There’s no two ways of going about it. Now J’accuse was among the first to insist that Joseph should NOT be held responsible for his father’s deeds and actions. In saying that we do not even intend to imply in any way that Muscat Senior is responsible in any way for what has been happening.

We are bound however, to take the role of the Senior into consideration when Junior tries to create a Private Lives of Saints moment with his parable of the old man who lost his palm saving a kid. After a lot of faff about the history of firrework legislation (probably written for Joseph not by Joseph), the Times article ends in a little parable:

I was inspired to write this article by a man who years ago at a village feast saw a young boy he barely knew parading an unignited petard which he was banging against a wall. The man lunged towards him, yelling at the boy to stop what he was doing because the firework may go off. He managed to seize the petard. As soon as he did so, it ignited. The boy was unhurt. The man lost part of his right palm.

Had the man failed to act, the young boy would have lost his arm, his eyes, possibly his life.

During his long term in hospital, the man, a humble salesman who earned a living from writing and carrying boxes, learnt to write with his left hand and how to handle things with his disabled body part. Years of practice led him to re-learn writing with his right hand.

He never complained, always feeling it was his duty to save the young boy, whom he did not know, and he would undoubtedly do the same again. That man was my father.

You might be moved to empathise with the father – and indirectly with the loving son who is being “martyred” by the spin in cerrtain quarters. We are not. To us this parable is equivalent to the story of the weapons dealer who walks in on a kid playing with a pistol and ends up getting shot while wrestling the pistol from the kids’ hand. We could come up with many more distressing stories of the kind but the end game is really not that difficult to perceive. Even in Joseph’s parable the danger is not represented by the child but by the petard. The petard is a dangerous product whether or not it is manufactured under the right conditions. The point at issue in Malta right now is whether the country can afford protracting its lackadaisical approach to the whole matter.

That Joseph has such close ties to the firework industry is unfortunate. That he tries to turn this tie into some story of a martyr and a saint instead of coming clean about his ties is even worse. The same goes for each and every MP and politician who is into the clans of firework enthusiasts and festa committees up to his neck. MaltaToday have published a list of these MPs (well done sleuths – still waiting for newspaper version though). That these clans of enthusiasts might operate with the illegal secrecy of weapons dealers might not have been any clearer had not the Malta Independent on Sunday broken the news that there actually were witnesses of the Gharb explosion but they are refusing to speak.

We have Joseph coming up with biblical parables worthy of George Preca, we have a body of MPs torn between the votes of the faithful and reasonable action and we have an industry worth millions of euros and thousands of votes that seems to be reistant to all forms of intervention.

In wondering whether we need new regulation politicians just need to ask themselves one question:

“Do I feel lucky?… Well do you, punk?”