A reader of this blog was inspired to write an essay-like comment after the post entitled “Your politics are ruining my country (and its future)“. I’ve decided to put it up as a Zolabyte in the hope that it provokes more conversation. Philip Serracino Inglott (currently pursuing a Ph.D. in the Philosophy of Technology at Delft writes:
Thanks for pointing out Ranier’s article, which set my mind reeling. Here’s a brain dump of the thoughts I had after reading this and Ranier’s articles:
It’s nice to see Ranier put a wager upon PN’s technical ability. The implication of his argument is: if it should turn our that PL plan works, this would mean that Austin and Gonzi are either incompetent, or they intentionally deceived the population, or both. If the PL plan were to fail, Ranier would have to call for Muscat’s and Konrad’s heads, but equally, should it succeed he’d have to be the first to call for Austin and Gonzi’s heads.
Of course the corollary to that is that when the PL claim that they are certain that their plan will work, they are implying that they are equally certain that Austin and Gonzi are incompetent, or that they intentionally deceived the population, or both.
That much, I guess, they’d willingly do. But the implication is much more onerous than that for this case. The level of incompetence and/or deceit is variable. It finally depends on the magnitude of the project or importance of the decision in the context of which it was done, in comparison to how easy or trivial it would have been to see and/or avoid.
When PL’s plan is compressed to its raw basic essentials its basically this: borrow a bunch of money from private investors; spend that money switching from HFO to Gas; Gas can be bought cheaply enough that we can pay off the debt for the conversion, the past debts, and still have left over to pass on to the consumer as reduced tariffs. The private investor who lends us the money gets to keep on selling us the gas/electricity for a long time after we have sorted it all out. So, sure, he/she’ll get a tidy profit too, but that is why he/she’ll invest in the first place. It’s that simple really. Just that one basic idea — switch to gas — is going to solve of high tariff problem. The rest is details that require a lot of work to sort out, but should be run of the mill really.
But, if this is actually it, then Gonzi and Austin are not merely incompetent and/or deceitful. If the crux of it all is the choice between gas and HFO, then Gonzi and Austin must be stupid idiots and/or criminally fraudulent, if not both. And that would be very serious indeed. If the PL plan is to succeed on the basis of the documentation revealed up to now; if that is all a voter needs to know to be confident that PL’s plan will succeed; I can see no way that, once elected, PL is not also morally obliged to investigate the current cabinet for fraud and criminal negligence for their approval of the use of HFO.
Of course, the much more realistic scenario is that there are many more variables. The truth is that the analysis required to know if the plan is worth voting for is way more complex. Even if in the future the current government will, with hindsight, be shown to have made a humongous mistake by going for HFO, the matter is complex enough that one cannot draw a straight line from there to the claim that the level of incompetence would have been criminal.
But then, this means that the whole ‘energy solution campaign thing’ going on is just a charade. That there is no way that a deep enough analysis can be brought to voters until March, with sufficient detail, that they can make up their mind rationally. As Michal Falzon seems to have implied (from Ranier’s wording), voters with have to vote on an act of faith. And that is not democracy at all! That is merely herding behavior!
So PL and PN have put themselves in a rather sad position, unless they are willing to admit that the current trend in the campaign is undermining democracy, they have to up the ante, and imply that the other side is consciously and malevolently trying to deceive and de-fraud the citizen!
They have to imply that the others are not just “not as good as us” but that they are “evil!”. Since both sides play the game the election becomes a “final judgment” that determines who is on “the dark side” and who “has the force with them”. If any of the big 2 parties actually mean anything of what their garbled propaganda implies about their opponent, we would have to have a court marshal of the fresh opposition after every election.
Thank goodness, the only party that actually means all of the claims that it makes is the little green fellow with the good ideas but no clout or voice. After all, if AD had a bigger role to play in our political scene many of these silly charades would be quickly exposed, and we might have to actually think and evaluate substantial proposals before voting.
And who wants to do that?
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Zolabytes is a rubrique on J’accuse – the name is a nod to the original J’accuser (Emile Zola) and a building block of the digital age (byte). Zolabytes is intended to be a collection of guest contributions in the spirit of discussion that has been promoted by J’accuse on the online Maltese political scene for 7 years.
Opinions expressed in zolabyte contributions are those of the author in question. Opinions appearing on zolabytes do not necessarily reflect the editorial line of J’accuse the blog.
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