‘MEP Candidates’ Articles at j’accuse

I believe that I have referred to this idea at least once before. Magritte’s creation seems prima facie to be an inherent contradiction since he accompanies an image of a pipe with the caption “this is not a pipe”. In actual fact Magritte’s observation was more of the obsessive compulsive kind – “you could not stuff this pipe, it is just a representation, it is not a pipe but an image thereof”.

I like to think that our political class, and particularly the Taghna Lkoll Movement/Government have mastered the art of denying the obvious that is in your head. They will present you with a pipe – as real as can be – and then proceed to deny that it is a pipe at all. Magritte’s prima facie contradiction becomes a reality after all. In this the Taghna Lkoll Movement and its discontents are aided by a particularly malleable media and a voting class that is more than willing to dance to the tune as the piper intended.

It is only with such “politics” that a government can afford to claim not to be putting citizenship up for sale when no matter which way you look at the (revised) proposals we are still facing an outright sale of passports – changing the small print does not change anything of the final underlying reason for the transaction. It is such “politics” that allow a well-oiled media machine to “sell” the idea that citizenship has always been easily obtainable (so why no charge a price?) while at the same time denying that this has anything to do with price. Such “politics” sells you the lie that this is all about attracting “talent” to Malta. Indeed.

Meanwhile the opposition huffs and puffs and is still unable to put Humpty together again after his great fall. Right now the opposition is gearing for the forthcoming MEP elections and is investing quite a little bit of its time in hyping up its list of candidates. The latest to be mentioned is one of the biggest pipes in Maltese “journalism” – the inimitable (thankfully) Norman Vella. Not content with overhyping the legal qualities of some of its line-up, still unsatisfied with the questionable economic credentials of some of its other careerist members of the list, we now have the PN pushing Norman Vella as a journalist. “Ceci n’est pas une pipe, c’est Norman Vella.”

Will the voters have enough? Have they not seen enough posturing and over-hyping from both sides? The great toilet of so-called journalism in Malta will survive many a flush and seems to be geared to provide the electorate with more and more choices for European election day. The parties will strut up the figures of their supposedly pre-selected candidates and will over-sell them to a populace that seems to have given up on any concept of discernment. The candidates will shoot non sequiturs of the highest order – sometimes hyping up an issue as though they have discovered the world. Thus Cyrus Engerer and Stefano Mallia supposedly “agree” that the President of the Republic should be chosen from outside the politicial milieu. A non-politician. “Ceci n’est pas un politicien, c’est votre President de la Republique”.

It’s getting very, very confusing and more and more difficult to cut through the hyperreal crap that the establishment uses to legitimate the ideas that it sells. When we fail to question the obvious and to point out the embarrassing nudity of the Emperor we insist on committing a disservice to ourselves. As the various lobbies continue to struggle for a place to suckle at the teat of this Labour government’s fat pig bonanza, they become willing participants in the lie that we live in daily. It will become harder and tougher to call their bluff. And by “their” I mean all of them.

Ceci n’est pas un blog post politique.

1. The government will be revising art censorship laws. Malta does not have art censorship laws, it has censors in artists’ head. Ceci n’est pas une phrase censurée.

2. The biggest issue in the controversy on gay adoption is not whether it should be allowed but whether this government had a mandate to introduce it. Ceci n’est pas un enfant terrible.

3. The Bishop’s rant about moral duties of politicians in parliament is a huge tautology. The truth is that any politician is accountable to his own set of morals and values as well as those of his party. Whether they are legislating on spring hunting or gay adoption politicians are supposedly inspired by a code of ethics, morals and values. The trick is in finding out what values our politicians and their parties represent. Ceci n’est pas une blague.

4. 10 months into this legislature and we still have no news about those ridiculous claims by various ministers as to what they earned. Ceci n’est pas un bon souvenir.

5. The oil purchasing scandal rages on. It remains the biggest excuse yet whenever you confront Labour with anything wrong with their government. Ceci n’est pas une bonne excuse.

6. Arriva left the island. The money that went into the government side of transport planning remains money hopelessly spent. The luminaries behind the ideas that tied Arriva’s hands as from its arrival (excuse the pun) have a lot to answer for. The general public remains blind to a series of improvements that Arriva made (quality wise) – except in Gozo of course where Arriva worked like clockwork and actually contributed to an increase in public transport use. Ceci n’est pas un autobus en flammes.

We’ve been there before. This will be a useless post – a hopeless one really. In this post I’ll be pointing out that yet another aspiring politician has put his signature to an article that is full of excerpts that are not his own. You might read it if it tickles your fancy, or you might not. Most probably it will draw a few guffaws and some would go through the motions of tut-tutting for a while. The newspaper in question will probably not bother with the fact that its political contributor is a plagiarist. So why bother?

Well, notwithstanding the miasma of indifference that seems to have become the norm and standard for your average citizen I’ve decided to soldier on – go on the record so to speak. These are the men and women that your political parties will be suggesting that you send to Brussels and Strasbourg to represent you. When these men and women sign their articles in the paper and end it with “is an MEP election candidate on the PL ticket” they are basically looking for the Maltese reaction of: “bravu dan”, “ara kemm kiteb dwar l-Ewropa”, “nahseb jifhem”.

The Malta Independent has quite a history in particular of entertaining this kind of “articles” roughly shod together from bits and pieces over the internet. You can spot them a mile away. They normally carry the kind of title that would have been taken straight from an EU poster for some project and then segue into a series of very tenuously related paragraphs. It’s what you get when your “research” is any old Eu-related document that provides you with chunky “technical-sounding” phrases.

So here is il-Perit Clint Camilleri or rather – an article collated together from a document entitled “Dilemmas in Globalization – Exploring Global Trends and Progressive Solutions”. To be fair it’s a collection of essays for the Socialist Group in the European Parliament and Camilleri lifts extensively from Martin Schultz’s intervention. But he does not tell you does he? He just makes the material his own and that is fraudulent. Why is it fraudulent? Because it makes Camilleri appear to be someone who he is not – someone capable of writing an article about Social Europe in a technical manner.

Should that be important to you? Hell, I’ve given up – you decide. It would not surprise me one bit that this kind of “passing off as one’s own” is accepted as normal and ok behaviour. We’ve been rushing headlong down this path of indifference for quite some time now. Our parties have gotten us used to candidates that amount to nothing much more than hot air and pompous parading hiding behind some University degree or other. All the more fools are we when we persist in voting for them.

The text of Camilleri’s article below can be compared to the text in this pdf.

Social Europe

Today we are not only living a financial crisis but a crisis in globalization. The crises started in the financial system but have spread to every aspect of the economy, creating socio-economic disequilibrium. In order to save the financial system governments have invested millions of Euros but the problem is not to save only the financial system by restoring credit, but to sort out the huge structural economic problems which are at the origin of the problem. [J’accuse note – Lifted from introduction to document]

The growing inequality worldwide is at the heart of the problem. This is the most important dilemma we must face. We must decide whether we should restore a system that recompenses those that created the financial crises in the first place or transforming the system which will eventually address those at the bottom of the pyramid. [J’accuse note – also lifted from Introduction]

Some statistics of shame: According to the Eurostat, 59,000 Maltese were at risk of poverty – 14.6 % of the population, according to 2008 figures. ‘At risk of poverty’ is defined as meaning those living in a household with a disposable income that is below the risk-of-poverty threshold, which is set at 60% of the national median disposable income.

Eurostat said that in Malta, 16,000 were ‘severely materially deprived’. Such people could not pay rent/mortgage or utility bills, keep their home adequately warm or face unexpected expenses. They also could not afford to eat meat, fish or protein equivalent every second day an cannot afford a car, washing machine, colour TV or telephone.

If national income had been distributed more equal, with lower profits and higher salaries the overall European economy would have been more stable. If the wealth that was speculated had been fairly distributed in the form of lower prices and higher salaries we would have been able to minimise the effects from the crises.

The crises we are suffering is to a great extent the crises of a model based on the growth of inequality. Salaries which are too low and poverty amongst the middle class has driven credit consumption to the exploding point of debt. Thus credit is no longer a socially and extended and economically solvent request used for investment into new fields of real production. [J’accuse note – slightly paraphrased from intro on page 1]

Increased competitive pressures on the social systems threaten to damage the social cohesion of European societies. In face of the highly mobile global economy nation states have lost their capacity to act alone and to adequately protect social rights. While capital has swept away borders through the single market mechanism, the welfare state has remained trapped with national boundaries. For decades the EU success model was the combination of economic progress with social progress. Then the governing conservative majority in Europe decided to focus on the removal of trade barriers while sometimes neglecting the social dimension. [J’accuse note – page 16 of document]

Thinking in a global dimension has become a pre-requisite for finding solutions. Re-thinking governance and including new levels of governance expands the room for manoeuvre. Growing interdependence between societies and nation states does not only create new categories of problems, it offers the solution too. Nation states alone might not be the best vehicle for mitigating huge changes. The EU is much better equipped for finding solutions and implementing concrete measures in cooperation with other major players. [J’accuse note – page 14 of document]

Now is the time to correct this imbalance. It is time for a new social Europe that places people not the market at the centre of economic activity. Social progress clauses need to be included in every piece of EU legislation and social and environmental impact assessments needs to be taken into account. If Europe again shows its social face it will surely regain the trust and the support of its citizens. [J’accuse note – page 16 of document].

Perit Clint Camilleri is an MEP election candidate on the PL ticket

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