Tag: representation

Categories
Divorce

Understanding Eddie

Former President and Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami has chipped in to the post-referendum debate with an article on the Sunday Times (MP’s credibility on moral issues being put to the test). The article is bound to attract its own corner of controversy – particularly because on the face of it, it is firmly grounded on theological interpretations and principles that have come to be closely associated with pronouncements made by the retired politician.

Part I – Understanding Eddie

It would be unfair not to try to understand the constitutional underpinnings of Eddie’s (forgive the familiarity but it was Eddie for too long to be easy to drop) reasonings simply because the moral values that Eddie subscribes to are so deeply intertwined with those of a particular church. As a small aside in these days when nostalgia for “Salvaturi ta’ Malta” seems to be a new trend it would be good to remember that the moral foundation of the wave of Solidarity, Work, Justice and Liberty was inextricably linked to the christian-democrat interpretation of the Catholic Church’s social doctrine.

Back to Eddie and MP’s credibility though. The former PM is no longer in the driving seat and he can afford to assess the situation from a more principled approach without the quasi-macchiavellian calculations that tarnished his later years in power. To put it bluntly the saving or crumbling of a government is no longer a part of Eddie’s calculations so he can afford to be morally honest with regard to his guiding principles.

The former PM first distinguishes between the moral issue behind the Independence and EU referenda and the moral issue that underlies a referendum on an issue such as divorce. Those among the media (and politicians) inclined to sensationalise will point to Eddie’s reference to Pope John Paul II’s list: divorce, free love (whatever that means), abortion, contraception, the fight against life in its initial and final phases, the manipulation of ‘life’. They will rush to compare it to KMB’s meanderings pre-EU accession about AIDS and Sicilian workers etc. At J’accuse we don’t think that Eddie is in the business of cheap scaremongering this time round. His question goes deep to the constitutional mechanism this country will choose in the future for determining issues that fall heavily on the “moral” side as against the “pragmatically political”.

Part II – Parliament’s Dilemma

This is where we begin to understand Eddie. Better still. Once the noise of controversy and rash anti-clericalism subsides we can even agree with him. Not with his position on divorce legislation but on his outlook towards constitutional frameworks that we form to enact such legislation. You see, the huge problem that this parliament has is that it is unable to come to terms with the fact that no matter how many times it twists and turns this Rubik Cube of Divorce the final decision will ultimately lie in its hands.

Our parliament is  designed around – and bends to – the will of a duopolistic anachronism. Once the divorce issue hit the fan it exposed the fundamental weakness of both parties: contemporaneously. No matter how much a “wobbly coalition of economic, social, religious and cultural forces” you can cobble together, no matter how far you can go with the oxymoronic faux progressives it is blatabtly impossible to retain a semblance of coherence when faced with a clearcut decision on a “moral issue”. The only party that would have been comfortable at the outset is still lying outside the closed club of our parliament.

J’accuse wrote at the outset: this is an issue for parliament to decide, not for the people to be lumped with. For parliament to decide this issue it needs to have at least one party that is committed (as a party, as a leader as MPs) to introduce divorce. This commitment must be clear at election time and the electors will have implicitly accepted divorce legislation as part of the party’s manifesto. Neither the conservative nationalists nor the pussyfooting progressives could get themselves to do that. We do get the sophistry of flags of convenience (cue PN with its token gay, liberal and ultra-cool section) or of the logistical sumersaults (cue PL with its private member bills, free votes) but no party wants to assume the responsibility of being the pro-divorce party on election day.

Part III – Why Eddie may be right (and wrong)

Here’s what our former PM did in 2003 – when Labour’s Sant insisted that the referendum result is neither here nor there:

The last two referendums held in Malta dealt with two major political developments. The people were asked to approve the proposed Constitution for Independence and Malta’s accession to the European Union. In both referendums there was a clear majority for the two proposals. Yet the Labour Party MPs continued to oppose both proposals notwithstanding the positive referendum results on those two eminently political issues.

It is worth recalling that as Prime Minister in 2003, faced with that stand by the Labour Party, I opted to advise the President to dissolve Parliament forthwith and call a fresh election in which accession to the European Union was the main issue. I have always maintained that moral issues should not be decided on the principle of democratic majorities but, rather, on the principle of what is morally right.

On the one hand Eddie distinguishes between political and moral decisions. For political issues it is simple. If one party insists on not recognising the will of the people then the solution is to dissolve parliament and call an election. The people can then either choose between two parties and their options (yes, sadly the dualism will prevail).

Eddie does however create a vacuum – legally that is. Here is his reasoning on taking decisions on what he terms “moral issues”:

I have always maintained that moral issues should not be decided on the principle of democratic majorities but, rather, on the principle of what is morally right. As a Christian I believe, on the authority of none other than Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that divorce is morally wrong and therefore wrong for society. Should one change this view because a democratic majority decides otherwise? Definitely not.

Which leaves us with a political and constitutional vacuum. Who will decide on divorce legislation for the people? The conscience of 69 parliamentarians? Elected on what basis? Eddie is being economic with the truth here because the convenient classification of a vote on civil divorce legislation as a “moral issue” effectively creates a vacuum of representation. It sabotages the very heart of representative democracy which is based on the principle that someone somewhere takes decisions “for the people”. You know the mantra: “a government for the people by the people”.

How do we therefore solve the impasse? The answer is written on the walls. Our political parties should be obliged to shed their convenient status of “wobbly coalitions”. On issues such as divorce there should be a clear position: not a free vote. I expect a party presenting candidates as future representatives in parliament to be clear about what they believe on such issues. By voting for a party I would then also be exercising my choice of or against a particular issue – and expecting it to shoulder the responsibilities in parliament.

Part IV – A parliament of representatives (with a clean conscience)

A parliament that would have been made up of representatives elected on a clean bill of ideas – and not on a mix and match of ideals in order to throw the widest net – would not have wasted the infamous €4 milllion euros finding out what was already a known fact before the debate. Such a parliament would have had a clear mandate to legislate beyond the individual member’s conscience.

Our current parliament will in all probability patch together a law of sorts that is passed with (what now seem to be) 37 ayes but it remains a parliament that is unable to come to terms with the requirements of a huge chunk of its demos. The battle for the emancipation of the Maltese citizen is far from being won.

Former Prime Minister and President Eddie Fenech Adami is right in one thing. The best solution in this kind of situation is probably the dissolution of parliament. This would allow the formation of a new parliament based on new parties hopefully committed to particular principles and policies. Hopefully too, parties will be clear with potential candidates about what the party represents and will ask them to leave their individual conscience at the front door, in the confessional or in any case outside parliament.

The greatest hope I reserve for the eventual voter : that he or she may learn a lesson from this hobbled parliament and choose to discern between false menus and the real deal the next time he or she has to make a choice.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Categories
Articles

J’accuse : Sophistry, Protagoras & San Ċipress

The return of summer has meant the return of the time-slot dedicated to listening to podcasts at a leisurely pace while lapping up the sun on a beach. This week I caught up on the “History of Philosophy without Gaps” series delivered by Peter Adamson of King’s College (available gratis on iTunes). As luck (and universal karma) would have it, I had stumbled on the episode called “Making the Weaker argument the Stronger: the Sophists” (ep. 14 if you care to look it up) and it couldn’t have been a better time to discover the sophists and their school of thought.

Thanks mainly to Plato (see “Protagoras”), the school of the Sophists has had quite a bit of philosophical bad mouthing through the ages and this is mainly because they were seen as a professional class of thinkers who dabbled in the art of “spurious learning that would lead to political success”. From the sophist school (or rather from their detractors) we get the word “sophistry”, which is invariably defined as “an argument that seems plausible but is fallacious or misleading, especially one that is deliberately devised to be so”, or as “the art of using deceptive speech and writing”.

The early sophists invested much in the concept of “virtue” but would soon inject it with a huge dose of relativism − as Protagoras himself would tell us: “Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not”. The problem with sophists however was that via this relativism they were more concerned with persuasion than with the value of truth. In teaching the early politicians the art of persuasion they also thought them that truth could only stand in the way of a successful politician. Truth was not a priority − they would boast that a good sophist could persuade someone that the worse was the better reason… they could make black appear to be white.

The Sophist school lives

The Divorce Debate Hot Potato has left the hands of the people who spoke decisively on the matter and is back in the hands of the bungling lot who are still at odds trying to understand why the rest of the world calls them “representatives”. This is the short-term after-shock when the rocked establishment does what it does best and pulls out the shots for its own survival. Let me put it bluntly: We have two anachronistic parties that had been stripped bare of any semblance of principle beyond the one and only grail of vote-grabbing. Both parties are at this point busily attempting to show the people that they represent their will (Hell Yeah) while contemporaneously attempting to have officially nothing to do with it in the process (Heavens No).

A few weeks back I wrote about Pontius Pilate. His ruse of “release Barabbas” never worked. The people threw the Messiah back into his hands and all he could do was wash them. Not with our modern day Sophists though − far be it from them to wash their hands publicly. Instead they do the impossible and find themselves ditching truth in order to sell the implausible and fallacious packaged as political dogma. To me, the prize of the day, nay the millennium, must go to Inhobbkom Joseph. Sophist to a tee, il-Mexxej has wriggled his way out of Labour’s non-position to the extent that a huge amount of his supporters actually believe that the Labour party is in favour of the introduction of divorce legislation.

Muscat’s post-result speech fell just short of letting people assume that it was thanks to Joseph and his party that Yes carried the day. Nothing new there… I still meet Nationalist Party card carriers who believe the spin that the Yes movement seven years ago was a purely in-house affair. Muscat then performed logical acrobatics of an impressive kind in which he managed to imply that the Nationalist Party is obliged to vote Yes (or resign) while conveniently ignoring the fact that this paladin of progressive politics has not got the balls to tell his own party to stuff the free vote where the sun does not shine. The fallacy (Labour is a pro-divorce party) had been sold − hook, line and sinker to the electorate − while Muscat abetted anti-divorce MPs in his own party. Epic representative fail but huge sophist success.

The powers of an MP

At the other end of our poor political spectrum, the only man with a pair of considerable male attributes remains unsurprisingly Austin Gatt. Much as I disagree with his position (completely and utterly) on divorce itself, there is no doubt that Austin Gatt was clear from day one and his position is an interesting standard in the sea of wavering compromises that are the official party positions. Austin said he could never fit in a party that would be in favour of divorce and that he would resign if his party would pronounce itself in favour. His position is that his conscience trumps the voice of the people in this matter and that he is willing to face the consequences with the electorate (luckily for him he will not be contesting the next election so not much facing to be done there).

I have consistently argued that a referendum was not the right way to introduce a civil right such as divorce. One reason was that in the real world we would have clear direction from parties who could legislate responsibly and professionally with the balance between common good and minority rights in mind. The mess this referendum has put us in is not a result of the YES/NO answer (it has been pointed out that the 53/47 per cent ratio was the same as when the “debate” was officially launched) but a result of our representatives abdicating their responsibility at the start of it all. We cannot have spineless parties without a position (two sets of free votes − 69 consciences − and a collective bandwagon of shameless sophistry) suddenly being trusted with the enacting of such a delicate piece of legislation − and all the signs show that they cannot seem to understand how to do it either.

Kollox suġġettiv (everything’s subjective)

It’s now all about fine-tuning for the parties and the electorate would do well to take note. Muscat’s PL and Gonzi’s PN are about to pull one of those wool-before-your eyes tricks in which they excel. Our tendency to be card-carrying voters before being free-thinking emancipated citizens risks nullifying all the awareness that has been gained over the last four weeks. Both PL and PN want to be seen as fulfilling the will of the people while also being non-committal as parties on such an important aspect as a minority right.

Through the divorce debate we saw the gradual rise of a kernel of a Civil Rights Movement. It was one that “Stood Up” and called a spade a spade beyond the useless rhetoric and empty sophistry of the parties. It was promising − and we recognised the momentum. What seems to have been heavily underestimated though was the pulling power of the parties in their attempt to hegemonise (and in the process mollify) the political decision making in our country. Sure, eventually the Ayes will have it − and Austin will do his little tantrum − but will we revert to the spineless politics and the slow pace of opiated Maltese dualism?

The answer to this question seems to be a resounding “of course”. Deborah Schembri has done us the honours. She was a more than promising leader for the kernel Civil Rights Movement and proved her ability to argue above the noise. She surprised everyone by announcing on the people’s forum − (very aptly) Xarabank − that she would choose a career in politics over a vocation as people’s representative (my choice of words). Another one bites the dust (forgive us for being sceptical about the chances of Debbie changing Labour rather than vice-versa).

San Ċipress

And if you were wondering whether Debbie’s absorption will be a one-off distraction factor then look at the new spin from the PN camp involving another budding star − Cyrus Engerer. No sooner had Deborah announced her “career path choice” did the spin begin to portray the liberal side of PN as the new stars. Much as you might like Cyrus and Deborah as politicians who showed their mettle in the divorce debate, you might be heading towards grave disappointment as they are transformed into the latest tools for survival by the PL-PN opiates.

The boredom threshold of a tired electorate is lower than that of a prime time “journalist”. Having taken great pains to cast his decision, the voter just cannot wait for his representatives to just get a move on beyond the fuss and enact the damn law. The voters’ impatience is the political party’s boon − they will reason their way out of this mess and both will try to sell the idea that they are the people’s party. Meanwhile, the short-lived Civil Rights Movement risks being the greatest loser: can you imagine the PLPN handling other important issues beyond divorce? Of course not. And yet Cyrus and Deborah chose to obstinately operate from within the rudderless ships and allow themselves to be paraded like the latest “vara” (statue) at some village festa.

In the words of one of Malta’s foremost philosophers of the 21st century… “jekk intom ghandkom vara, ahna ghandna vara isbah minnkom, jekk intom qieghdin hara, ahna qieghdin hara iktar minnkom,… u jekk intom ghandkom lil Debbie… ahna ghandna ‘l Cyrus (ahjar minnkom)”….

Will we ever learn? If you’re still not convinced by all this sophistry then you might want to try to take a peek on Alternattiva’s quest to remind our representatives why they should stop dilly-dallying. They’re meeting (aptly again) on 7 June at Hastings Garden at 9.30am. If you’re taking an iPod along then do buy the single “I’d rather dance with you”… by the Kings of Convenience − a pleasant tune to listen to before the latest round of philosophy – hopefully there will be less sophistry involved.

www.akkuza.com − thinking different because you don’t seem to want to.