Ditch campaign spending limits

I had intended to write about this for some time and a post about ditching single transferable vote (STV) and an excellent (as usual) op-ed from Times columnist Mark-Anthony Falzon provided the final push. This time it’s about ditching the limitation on campaign spending. For two reasons. First, in our particular case, because it is ridiculously low. Second, as a matter of principle, limitations on one’s freedom to express onself a fortiori as part of an electoral campaign should be a very rare exception, not the rule.

First of all, the relevant provision (Section 46) from the Electoral (Polling) Ordinance:

Subject to such exception as may be allowed in pursuance of this Ordinance, no sum shall be paid and no expense shall be incurred by a candidate at an election or his election agent, whether before, during, or after an election on account of or in respect of the conduct or management of such election, in excess of one thousand and three hundred and ninety-seven euro and sixty two cents (1,397.62):

Rev. Joe Borg, who has commented on this on a couple of occasions, points out:

A number of politicians are under the impression that this limit only starts when the elections are called and applies for the 30 days of a campaign. Nowhere in the law is there that sort of stipulation, though I hasten to add that I don’t know whether there were any specific cases in court which gave some form of interpretation or another.

That’s because the law is intended to be well and truly punitive. Some leeway is allowed for the European Parliament election with the limit going up to €18,169.08 which is not enough to send one leaflet by ordinary mail to all the households in your constituency. And while one may claim that the Electoral Ordinance was enacted in other times when the value of the lira was higher than what it was today and if lawmakers can be accused of anything it’s neglect the limitation on expenditure for EP elections was imposed by a legal notice published in 2004.

Why do we continue to actively impose such a ludicrous restriction? Falzon has an explanation:

So why pick on money? I suspect it has to do with an unfortunate cultural aversion to money. Like sex, even as we all want more of it, we persist in thinking it’s evil. The less tentative answer is that expenditure can be controlled while charisma, softened consonants, chiselled features, and the shape of down below cannot. It is also an answer which leaves us at square one, that is, it is impossible for each of us to have an equal chance of being elected.

Falzon then gives some examples why recognition for what he stands for helped Norman Lowell and not Mary Gauci and why Simon Busuttil raced far ahead of his colleagues in votes when he had not done the same regarding spending.

That’s probably true considering that we’re ready to close an eye to a hugely unfairer advantage than money. I’m pretty sure Attard-Montalto outspent Marlene Mizzi. But what did it was not money, which in the first count left the standing MEP five thousands votes behind Labour’s newcomer, but the alphabet. Thanks to that, in the twenty-sixth count, Attard-Montalto received the lion’s share of Claudette Abela-Baldacchino’s votes, putting him in pole position. At electiontime it’s always better to be an Abdilla than a monied Zerafa.

Falzon makes another important point: wealth is entwined with social life to the point that a candidate can hardly be said to be spending money on, say, entertaining friends, without that being campaigning. Falzon emphaises the inevitability but the point he makes also go to show unreasonable is a law which, while superficially may regulate campaigning, also intrudes on our social and personal lives and our right to spend our money in the way we like.

Considering that in Japan they have a silly prohibition on door-to-door campaigning we should count ourselves lucky.

Think global, act local

Bloggers have been chipping in on the future of the Green Party following its abysmal performance at the EP election earlier this month. Most of them are present or former officials or, at least, sympathisers so one cannot doubt their bona fides when they give advice.

Most of what they propose mistakes means for ends, not unlike Nationalists’ attempts at soul-searching, which assume that doing things differently will result in outcomes which are both different and desirable. That, as everyone should know, is not necessarily the case.

But even if it were, that can, at most, be described as some sort of tactics and strategy which a party in such a parlous state would need. The only proposal which comes close to being the latter (except, that is, for Michael Briguglio’s suggestion to go “radical”) is to have the Party build a strong presence at the level of local government where electing representatives has higher political and mathematical chances and, having built the foundations (or, to be greener, grown grassroots), get a fighting chance to score some success in general election.

That might be good approach. But the Greens have been there before. In the first ever electoral cycle of local councils (1993-94) the Greens managed to elect no less than eight local councillors: in Attard, Balzan, Birkirkara, Ħamrun, in the Labour stronghold of Pembroke and even south of the Maltese Weisswuräkwator in Fgura.

Now, I’m in no position to know whether this was the result of a deliberate strategic choice of the Party. But when you compare the number of candidates fielded by the Party in the 1993-94 cycle — 30 candidates in localities all across the country — to the 16 candidates fielded in the latest cycle (2007-2009) standing almost exclusively in “favourable” localities you realise that then the Party was trying harder.

With the wisdom of some hindsight we know that the Greens’ presence at a local level was not of much consequence. The Greens failed to make any impact in the 1996 general election and were decimated in local elections in the subsequent electoral cycles. Change of strategy? Possibly. But it is more likely that here was a case where the national impinged on the local. The Greens’ 1993-94 local successes followed a comfortable Nationalist general election victory in 1992 and their subsequent defeats followed (or just preceded) a Nationalist defeat in the general election in 1996.

An important thing happened in the last EP election. Until now the fact that Labour “won” local and European elections not because it attracted votes but because would-be Nationalist voters stayed at home, gave some justified hope to the governing Party that it’s supporters could be counted upon come general election day. This time round Labour won unequivocally. True, an EP election victory is not immediately translatable into a general election victory but this time Labour’s case of a Party attractive to voters will be stronger. That means that that is less opportunity for the Greens to act as some sort of “half-way house” if, come 2013, voters desert the Nationalist Party.

That may not be a certitude but it’s a liklihood nonetheless. Which adds to the urgency of James’ call for the Party to divest itself of the role it has played for the last two decades or, rather, for the period the Nationalists were in government.

Of course, that it has acted in this role for so long will make it difficult to step out of . Briguglio’s call for more “radicalism”, whatever that means, is hardly a receipe for expanding the Party’s voter base enough to take more serious jolts than the one received some weeks ago. So while it is good to see someone like Carmel Cacopardo so sanguine about the result, the Green Party current predicament is probably rosy in comparison to a post-Nationalist scenario.

Ditch STV

Following my post on how this EP election has pulled the plug on the Greens’ perennial complaint about how the electoral system disadvantages them, a commenter made the point that, still, the electoral system needs to be reformed.

Agreed, and I take the opportunity to say how. There is still reason to change the single transferable vote (STV) system at all levels of election: local, national and European. Reasons? First, it can still result in mathematical anomalies. Not all these anomalies will necessarily result in serious consequences (as was in the 1981 general election) but they are still the source of unfair outcomes. Second, STV is unnecessarily complicated. That might sound as a purely aesthetic reason but I believe that the simpler the system the more transparent the process.

Two premises need addressing. The first — and the most controversial — is to prohibit cross-party transfers. STV’s most important count is the last one when it becomes known who are the representatives elected. This is completely at odds with every single Maltese’s view on which is the most important count: the first. The evidence is all over the place: in 1981 the Nationalists protested the fact that the technical and political outcome of the final count was different from the first and in 2009 Labour is celebrating a victory of 54 to 40 percent of the first preference votes not 4 to 2 MEPs.

This was, in my view, the greatest shortcoming of the 1994 Gonzi report on electoral reform. In its aim to retain the same way of voting but with a different method of counting the commission which drew up the report proposed a system which had two irreconcilable features: proportional representation based on first preference votes and the possibility that these votes move to other parties (thus disrupting the original proportionality) in subsequent counts.

As the suggestion to cross-voting was a prominent over at J’Accuse in the run-up to the election I will take some time to address this feature of STV. Jacques suggested to readers to give their first preference to the Greens’ Cassola, second to Labour’s Mizzi or Grech and third to Nationalist Demicoli. The reason given was that ideally try to ensure that Malta has representatives in three EP groups, in this case the Greens, the Socialists and the People’s Party.

Jacques is wrong mathematically (he also gives the wrong reasons for suggesting a higher preference to Labour candidate than a Nationalist candidate but I will not go into that). STV is not the Eurovision Song Contest where you give douze points to one candidate, ten to another and eight to another (which, incidentally, is the central feature of another preferential system, the “Borda count“). You see, it’s called single transferable vote for a reason. Jacques’ vote could not have contributed to electing more than one candidate: it would move from Cassola to Mizzi only if Cassola was eliminated from the race or if Cassola was elected and Jacques’ vote was part of the surplus (i.e. in excess and not needed by Cassola to be elected).

If Jacques concern was electing an MEP in as many groupings as possible he could have equally voted exclusively for the candidates of the Greens or Labour or the Nationalists and the mathematical chances would have been the same. Knowing from past experience and from polls that the Labour and Nationalist Party would have definitely elected at least one MEP, Jacques could have voted for Cassola and Ebejer-Arqueros only and his original aim would still have been achived. The restriction on cross-party voting would not have altered any of his ultimate intentions.

Cross-party transfers are an unnecessary complication which only stands in the way of national proportionality and serves as a source of possible anomalies (see here and here for examples with regards to casual elections, by way of mentioning just one). Prohibiting them would be one huge step ahead. But here’s a second: end even intra-party transfers. Yeah, that’s right let’s ditch the preferential system completely. Why? Because it is a complete waste of time.

Professor John C. Lane who has studied Maltese STV wrote an essay on the matter. His conclusion? That “STV vote transfers create results which, to a remarkable degree, a simpler process could also have achieved” because most candidates who are in the lead in the first count eventually are elected. The outcome of this year’s EP election adds justification to another speculation: that when candidates in the lead in the first count fail to be elected it is thanks to their rank on the ballot sheet which in Malta is determined — very unfairly — by the alphabetical ordering of their surnames.

So there you have it. Voters vote simply by putting the mark, any mark, next to the name of one candidate. Votes are counted and parties are allocated seats proportionately which are then filled by the candidates for that party who have the most votes. Counting votes would not take days and can even be made electronic (the counting, not the voting) in that the technology that recognises a mark is simpler and, therefore, cheaper than one which has to recognise the myriad ways in which voters write their “1″s and their “7″s across party lines.

We woz right

The results of an election are archived and so it’s time for MaltaToday to pat itself on the back about its “spot-on” pre-electoral surveys. Labour’s final tally was pretty close to the limit of the margin of error in the survey but, rest assured, it could have been a different thing altogether and the paper would have found something to explain why it was still right along the way.

Which, by the way, also makes the EMCS survey carried out in the Sunday Times the week before the election accurate. MaltaToday ran the story — on its front page — that the man behind it was Stefano Mallia, a close collaborator and business partner of Simon Busuttil. Shock. Scandal. The Nationalist strategy behind the survey was revealed: the party was deliberately trying to make the results look better for Labour so as to get out its apathetic vote.

Then it dawned on the paper that EMCS’ survey gave Labour only one percent more (and, it turned out, was one percent more accurate) than its own survey. But still it was unconvinced because there’s always some Nationalists pefidry if you speculate hard enough. And then it turned out that the EMCS survey gave the Greens a much lower figure — which, again, proved to be accurate — and the paper that’s run by a publishing house that’s like the political retirement home of former officials and candidates of the Green Party cried foul.

Post hoc, the paper offers an explanation for the Cassola “fluke”. Only the statistical “fluke” mind you: how lowering the bar for the Greens could have aided the Nationalist cause was never explained. The important thing is that MediaToday papers never get it wrong. And that if Richard Cachia-Caruana gets sent to the European Commission in November someone else — in this case, Simon Busuttil — will fill in the role of the paper’s pet hate.

The also-rans

Maltastar reports that Green Party chair Arnold Cassola was perplexed when asked by a Net TV journalist if he thought that emulating Labour had been the wrong formula. Really? I mean, was he the only person not to notice? In any case, it should not have come as a surpire. The wheels had come off the Greens’ campaign long before.

It all started on the wrong foot by choosing the Party chair to appear on the ballot paper. But it was evident that things were going wrong when, for whatever reason, the campaign changed tack late in the day. The trans-European slogan of “Energy, Experience, Europe” with which the Maltese Greens started their campaign was ditched in favour of “Yes, we can”. It was dull but other Green Paries did fine with it. Our Greens then came with something else: “Yes, we can”. If the first slogan required little thinking the second betrayed a sense of desperation in getting hold of the first thing that came to mind while struggling uphill.

Thing started going really pear-shaped when the Party decided to become some sort of lighter version of the Labour Party. Vote for the Greens ”to send government a strong message”, Cassola said in the final week. Er, where had we heard that before? And if sending a message is the issue how could it be stronger the voting for the stronger Party promising to do so? In the end even references to the “Green New Deal” disappeared (while Cassola spoke, for example of the Delimara power station) as the Green chairman proudly announced that they’re for a “Social Europe”. You’d half expected him to announce that his will be the name right below Abela-Baldacchino’s on the ballot sheet.

The result was what it was. It should be an eye-opener for at least two reasons. First, it shows the Greens’ 2004 result could very well be an isolated episode and how damaging the Party’s complacency and the over-confidence were in subsequent years despite flunking electoral tests on both a local and national level. Second, the Party has one excuse less: the electoral system. No electoral system with its ”anointing” of the runner-up well behind the quota could have been more advantageous to the Greens. They failed a singular opportunity which is unlikely to appear ever again.

With it is also buried a type of argument which says that, while it is true that the Greens’ showing in general elections is poor to deserve of itself parliamentary representation, a more advantageous system could — hypothetically — attract more voters. Well, here was such an election which, in addition, had none of the high stakes of a general election and none of the fear that voting Green meant aiding another Party to power and still …

Still, the Party is not deterred … in blaming the electoral system. The MaltaToday interviewer rightly asked the Party Secretary General why … there was a national quota this time around. The reply was that “we still have a block-vote culture and that is part of the system”. Galea goes on to complain that he is yet to see one of the bigger parties promoting the benefits of cross voting and that until Saturday morning, people were still asking him whether cross voting would invalidate their votes. Which means that the problem is not the electoral system but that each Party takes care of its own. The concept should not be to strange of the Greens: in 2003 even when EU membership was at stake, they still campaigned for first preference votes, risking Malta’s membership.

And if there are people who are not sure if cross-voting invalidates the vote there are many more who know the correct answer. Quite a few of them in fact gave their first preference to Norman Lowell and, despite not being exactly political brethren, continued with their preferences on the Greens.

Well, what difference would it have made, anyway? Cassola started with over five thousand votes. Cuschieri, last to be “elected”, made it with close to thirty thousand. Still some way off, even with whatever number of later preferences you can expect to draw. The Green Party may not be dead after this election although it is still to be seen whether it will be back from its “also-ran” status. What’s definitly dead and gone is the electoral system excuse and the reason to be indignant about it.

Post-Electoral

It’s over and Labour won handily. Yes, the fourth MEP is only thanks to an act of unprecedented stupidity from id-Dar Centrali effectively throwing away the possibility of a third Nationalist seat. Yes, Labour’s vote tally this year is less than what it was only last year. But then in a general election – for this is what everyone really cares about – Labour has only to stay one vote ahead of the Nationalists to win.

Judging by the Muscat’s campaigning alone the success is well and truly deserved. The Labour leader is almost all that his predecessor wasn’t: he has charisma, he is at ease with people and he has none of the bitterness and paranoia that characterised Sant’s attitude post-1998.

Muscat has also dropped some baggage he can do without. He’s less of a One News journalist; the failure of Abela-Baldacchino’s and Bedingfield’s bids goes to show how that image does not find much favour outside Labour’s core. And his four years’ experience as an MEP and familiarity with big shots in the Party of European Socialists made him perceived as less of a eurosceptic, another image whose lack of “pull” these days was demostated by Ellul-Bonici’s performance. Muscat’s Labour is definitely a winning outfit.

Note please, that I say Muscat’s Labour. The formula has worked in an election where the entire country is considered a single constituency and a national profile counts for a lot. Case in point is Joseph Cuschieri’s election: an MP who’s always struggled to be elected in his district and always through casual election assumed national visiblity just by giving up his seat. It’s, of course, a different matter in general elections where local matters matter more and the less savoury side of Labour cannot be so easily hidden away.

So Labour is justified in celebrating. The question is will the party drag for the rest of the legislature? That’s between three and four years. To date there was always a set of local council elections to keep the morale high and to get Jason Micallef to say, in 2006, that with an EP victory under its belt and two rounds of local elections the Party was cruising to a general election victory. If the proposed reform of local councils goes through we won’t see another round of local elections before 2012 and little to give Labour an adrelanin rush except for, perhaps, a maratona gbir ta’ fondi.

Which could give some breating space for the Nationalist government to recover. Note again, that I do not refer to the Party. It’s likely that the cleanup the Party needs can only come after a general election – whether the Party wins that or not – a matter on which Nationalist voters can usually be counted on. And I hope it will not mean that the Party will become less ambitious. Times columnist Mark-Anthony Falzon has already expressed his concern that the poor result for the Nationalists might lead to relaxation of, say, planning regulations. The Nationalist might lose the battle if they set the bar high (and joining the eurozone showed that that is not necessarily so) but they can still win the proverbial war.

Which again brings me to Labour. Undeniably, Muscat’s “coalition” is highly opportunistic. I need not make a list of gripes but it is obvious that quite a few are irreconcilable: with the new European reality, with the rule of law and even with and of themselves. I’m thinking of things like immigration here where Labour’s “twenty points” would lead not only to a mighty diplomatic war with Italy but enstrangement, if not suspension, from the EU. I’m thinking of the Party’s calls to reduce taxation and increase welfare benefits, compounded of late with the complaint that the government has reduced its budget for capital expenditure.

For Muscat, as I said earlier, is “almost all” Sant wasn’t. One thing the two leaders share is that their concerns never went beyond winning the next general election. Cobbling together a “coalition” (anyone remember Sant’s “maggoranza gdida“?) in opposition is one thing. Holding it together is a totally different matter.

Days of Reflection

This blog is going “ballistic” according to Jacques (he who in the last couple of days has covered this blog almost as much as he has covered the election). But if this blog is going anywhere it’s offline. Thanks to disruption of the internet service, the traditional day of reflection at Thermidor will be extended to two.

Meanwhile, keep on following J’Accuse. Who knows? The blog owner might take some time off waffling and suggesting to readers how to vote and explain how (and why) he managed to mangle a four word campaign slogan. Some people, like Vince Farrugia and David Casa, should be rebuked for resorting to a easy copy-and-paste exercises when they shouldn’t; others for being incapable of something so easy … when they should.

Surveys independent and not

MaltaToday leads with the story that Stefano Mallia, who’s involved in Simon Busuttil’s campaign, was the man behind the last Sunday Times survey giving Labour a 10-point lead on the Nationalists.

The Sunday Times clearly indicated that the survey was carried out by EMCS Ltd and for years Mallia had written articles in the Indy signing off as one of the directors of the company. But somehow MaltaToday still considered this as a scoop and worthy of its front page.

And what’s the big deal? Were the survey results were tinkered with like Sarkozy’s slogan on J’Accuse? And, in any case, to what end? MaltaToday hints how:

Central to the PN strategy is propping up the Labour vote, in a bid to encourage Nationalist voters to come out to vote and minimise PN losses.

So forget the Sunday Times survey, a paper which presumably is so subject to Nationalist manipulation that in the same edition it reported on an email by the same Mallia asking Nationalist candidates not to disclose to journalists the campaign expenses so far. Find yourself an independent survey. Like the one carried out by MaltaToday which gave Labour … wait for it … a lead of a 9 percentage points.

MaltaToday, however, is undeterred:

But subtle differences between the two surveys are worthy of note: the MaltaToday survey gives AD 4.1% of the vote, while the EMCS gives it just 0.25%.

So that’s what it boils down to: the EMCS is stringier with the Greens. But how’s that part of “Nationalist stategy” other than perhaps irritating Cassola who has refused to believe a survey giving “Others” just over 3.5% of the vote? How does minimalising the Green vote, which is just about the only thing MaltaToday can charge EMCS with, encourage Nationalist voters to come out and vote?

There are different, simpler and more straightforward explanations. One is that the Sunday Times is MaltaToday’s competition. The other explanation is a consequence of the first: conspiracy stories sell.

Reduce. Re-use. Re-cycle.

You will not read about this in J’Accuse even though at one point it seemed that the man could not get enough reminding us that the Nationalist slogan for the 2008 general election “Flimkien kollox possibli” was plagiarised from Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign slogan. Sarkozy’s slogan, by the way, was “Ensemble tout devient possible” (“Flimkien kollox isir possibli“) not “Ensemble tout est possible” (“Flimkien kollox [huwa] possibli“) which Jacques regularly uses. But I guess some freedom with translation should be allowed when such an important point is being made.

Then the Nationalist came up with “Flimkien ingibu izjed xoghol ghalik” and Jacques was still on the matter because presumably one word out of five still constitutes plagiarism. By the way, the Nationalist slogan for the 1981 election was “Flimkien ghal hajja ahjar“. And Labour’s in 1992 was “Flimkien nibnu mill-gdid“. There, now you know where Sarkozy got his “Ensemble” from.

Recycling of political slogans is very common. Which is why I wouldn’t have cared much for the Greens using “Yes we can”. But Jacques is busy using inch space on the Indy for vote phishing for Cassola (if Jacques were serious in wanting to spread Malta’s MEPs amongst as many political formations as possible and giving higher preferences to candidates who least stand to be elected he’d be giving his first preference to John Zammit). So duty demands that I step in.

I had already said that the Greens slogan of “Energija. Esperjenza. Ewropa.“, borrowed (or “plagiarised” — depends how you want to see it) from the European Greens was lame. It’s lame in and of itself. But all the more so when applied to the case of the Maltese Greens. Experience is an important political asset. But it’s not the only one and when you don’t have it you don’t use it as a selling point. What political experience does Yvonne Ebejer-Arqueros have?

Halfway during the campaign Cassola patted himself on the back (“I have experience yada, yada, yada”) but ruefully noted that Ebejer-Arqueros was a “political rookie” (albeit with other qualities which, albeit, are not political experience). So the Greens decided to change slogan, possibly when a poll whose result was to their liking came along. And if not much thinking was used to come up with first much less was used for this second one. Anything that been better tested than “Yes we can”?

Neither spin nor scaremongering

Jacques called it “malicious spin that was probably suggested by the gossip inspired mentors hired by stamperija” and James has called it “scaremongering”:

I was shocked by David Casa’s scaremongering about migrants being given the right to vote and determine who wins local elections in B’Bugia and Safi. He went as far as saying that in a local council with 5 members the mayor will be elected by the immigrants who will elect the decisive seat. Talk has never been so cheap. For we should all know that the EU parliament has simply proposed granting voting rights to legal foreign residents and refugees and not to irregular migrants.

Not quite. The Socialists, Greens and Communists in the EP voted for a rider to Simon Busuttil’s own initiative report to grant immigrants the right to vote in local council elections. Here’s Cassola in an article entitled “Three misleading facts” (sic!) where he attempts to ward off Nationalist criticism on how the European Greens voted:

First misleading fact: The word “migrants” has always been used, giving the impression that illegal and irregular migrants will be given the right to vote. Wrong. It is only legal migrants, with regular residence permits, after living a number of years in the country, who would be given the right to vote. Translated into hard facts, this means that only the Swiss, Norwegians, Canadians, Australians, Americans, South Americans, Africans, Chinese etc. living in Malta legally with legal residence would be given the right to vote.

Cassola either didn’t read the report or hopes nobody does. Here it is and the relevant paragraph:

32.  Recalls that a key element is the inclusion of migrant organisations who play unique roles in the integration process by giving migrants opportunities for democratic participation; calls on the Members States to facilitate systems for the support of civil society in the integration process through enabling  migrants’ presence in the host society’s civil and political life, enabling participation in political parties, trade unions and the opportunity to vote in local elections;

Anyone spot distinctions between legal and illegal immigrants? Note the context. Can you explain how the supporters of the rider could have had Cassola’s Swiss “migrant” in mind when they’re talking about inclusion and integration?

That’s not even the fundamental point. Cassola gratuitously claims that the Nationalists “no qualms in sowing the seeds of racial hatred”. That’s rich considering that it’s Cassola who’s taking full advantage of Maltese prejudices which persist in referring to “illegal immigrants” even in the case of those who have been granted refugee or humanitarian status. We have even managed to make a noun out of the adjective “illegal” just to make sure that the arrivals from Africa are forever tarred.

Of course, Maltese prejudices don’t count for much in the EP. What counts is what is stated in laws. And those state that anyone with a refugee or humanitarian status is a legal resident irrespective of whether the entry was legal or illegal. In Malta they can also work and if James was positively impressed with Cassola’s claim that immigrants should be integrated in the legal economy where they’d pay tax and national insurance contributions someone ought to draw his attention to a recent PQ according to which some 1,000 refugees, people on humanitarian status and asylum seekers are legally employed. That’s close to half of those who are no longer in detention.

One final point James find compelling about Cassola is the view that immigrants should not be “repatriated” to Libya unless this country signs the Geneva Convention. Uh? Who’s “repatriating” immigrants to Libya? I assume that Cassola was referring to the Italian practice of returning boat people rescued in international waters to Libya. Even then, that’s what the Italians are doing and, as far as I know, the Maltese government policy of taking in people rescued at sea when the nearest safe port is Malta, has not changed. Cassola should remember that it’s an election in Malta that he’s contesting this year. Not one in Italy.

Dull and duller

Just when you thought it couldn’t get more uninteresting, it does. In the final stage of last year’s general election campaign Alfred Sant produced a document which claimed that the decision to charge for health services was a fait accompli, leading the erstwhile Labour leader to speculate that implementation was postponed only thanks to an election coming up.

One year on, Lawrence Gonzi is still PM and yet, no fees.

But there’s another electoral campaign on. So Joseph Muscat produced another report which makes a number of recommendations one of which is a “registration fees” for patients and a similar claim that the decision will be implemented after the election. The claim this time fell even more flat. First, because it is not original. Second, because while Labour’s campaigning might have given a different impression, Lawrence Gonzi will still be PM after June 6.

The GWU is valiantly playing its part in trying to “save” the story for Labour:

The GWU has called on the government to issue a clear statement that public health services would remain free of charge.

It said it was concerned about reports that the government had commissioned and discussed a report which recommended payment for public health services.

While recognising that health services imposed a burden on state finances, the GWU said it firmly stood by its belief that essential social services, including health services, should remain free of charge for all, and the government, therefore, should not abdicate its responsibilities.

Gonzi has done that a year ago and there is nothing to make one think that government policy has changed. And if there’s anyone who has to be asked the question is Labour who have never expressed a change of heart on fees it introduced on health services while it was in government. True, that was 1998. But then it was also against EU membership, a policy matter which it eventually reviewed after “accepting the people’s verdict”.

Meanwhile, on this same matter Professor Scicluna keeps on finding himself in the limelight when he’d rather weren’t. When an interview with him from last year was aired when he expressed doubts of the continued sustainability of free health services Joseph Muscat simply dismissed it off with “ask him”. Scicluna had to issue a press release claiming that he said not such thing in the interview. Here’s the interview. Forward to 9:00 and watch Scicluna saying that no country can today afford the best health for free without restrictions.

Equally interesting is Scicluna’s claims that the Maltese NHS has been found to be “40% inefficient”. Aside from the fact that I’ve still to hear of a public service that so perfectly well-oiled it runs like a perpetual motion machine, what could contribute to such high percentage? Procurement of more staplers than the service needs? Copies in quadruplicate? Or — to take a leaf from Scicluna version 2008 — overmanning at the Health Division? There’s a remedy if the problem is indeed the last one. But I’m sure no politician wants to go there.

Much to be upbeat about

After slamming surveys when the result was not to his liking, the Green Party chairman feels upbeat when the result is:

Alternattiva Demokratika candidates for the European Parliament Arnold Cassola and Yvonne Aquieros Ebejer were upbeat yesterday at a press conference to publicise the Europe-wide ‘Predict09’ survey that puts the Greens at 6.3% of the vote for 6 June- up from 1.9% in the first edition of the survey.

“It is true that polls are what they are, but scientific surveys may provide good indications,” AD chairman and MEP candidate Arnold Cassola said.

Only a few weeks before, MaltaToday, which carried the report, revealed that Predict09 is not based on domestic polling but “imputed” from the results of the 2004 EP election and the 2008 general election. Hardly what one could call a “scientific survey”.

That won’t dent the upbeat feeling it seems because Cassola goes on:

“On 6 June, we will be voting to elect five seats now and a sixth one in January – depending on what comes out of the Lisbon Treaty Irish referendum,” he added. “We envisage the sixth seat being ours because four seats are elected with full quota and the fifth and the sixth are elected from the leftovers.”

The assumption there is definitely far from being scientific. But that’s tame compared to what comes next:

“Malta is the only EU member state to be represented by just two parties in the European Parliament. This is neither the case with Liechtenstein nor with Monaco.

Pity the poor Labour MEPs who are mocked for pushing the wrong buttons. This is the former Secretary-General of the European Green Party running a campaign where “experience” is an integral part of the electoral slogan. Does he know which European states are in the EU and which aren’t?

Who’ll do the deciding?

This blog has followed the transformation of Professor Edward Scicluna from academic economist to Labour politician. Admittedly, I did not see the final outcome coming but — with the wisdom of hindsight — it did explain a few things which I had found perplexing at the time.

Let’s set aside Scicluna’s botched prediction that Malta would not make it into the eurozone. The man has held some strong views on the sustainability of various cases of state generosity. The shipyards? Subsidy of wages and low productivity for two decades. Tertiary education? Provided for free with a small salary for students to boot. Pensions? The most generous in Europe. The public sector? Over-staffed. He even seemed to have had a problem with the health sector being free.

Can’t say I ever found anything strange, in those opinions. Hell, I actually agree with them. What I found strange that Scicluna’s list did not include the complaint that in Malta fuel and energy were some of the most subsidised in Europe. Indeed, Scicluna led the charge against the hiking of tariffs which is what made him a strong contender to secure a place on the ballot paper as a Labour candidate. And that’s the point where the transformation from economist to politician occured.

Fair enough. But someone had to pop the question. MaltaToday’s Raphael Vassallo thankfully did:

Still, while Scicluna is scathing about the Gonzi’s administration’s economic skills, it remains debatable whether a Labour government will heed his own advice, and embark on the necessary reforms: which include a revision of the university stipend system, and also control of expenditure on public health. What does Edward Scicluna recommend for a political hot potato like stipends?

Labour will not heed Scicluna’s advice: the Party leader, as has become habitual before every election, is claiming the Government has the intention to start charging for primary health services once polling is over. But if Scicluna is in the wrong party that can hardly be held against him: he’s not the only one as this campaign has demonstrated. It’s his weasel answer which leaves one feeling shortchanged as he morphs once more, this time from politician back to economist:

“It would be very presumptuous of me to say that we should ‘do away’ with stipends,” he replies cautiously. “But even a recent European Commission document suggests that they are a burden on the system. But these are things the taxpayer has to decide. Does the taxpayer want to keep subsidising university students? If not, there are a number of ways the system can be revised. They could be converted to loans, or grants, or part-loans, part-grants… it’s not up to me to decide how to reform the system.”

“The taxpayer has to decide”? Unless there is a box in the income tax form where one expresses himself and which I have missed, taxpayers express themselves in elections. And they do not get to chose between whether they want tertiary education subsidised but between this party and that and this candidate and that. Once elected and given a mandate it’s the politician that has to take the decision, hopefully based on what he promised during the campaign.

Professor Scicluna, come June, that’ll probably be you.

That 80%

Josie Muscat, leader of National Action:

He told a press conference that most of the initiatives going on in Malta, from the environment to education, from changes to the law to building regulations were all being done at the behest of the EU. And while most of this was good and acceptable, as nothing would otherwise have been done, it was important to realise that, with the coming into effect of the Treaty of Lisbon, over 80% of Malta laws would emanate from Brussels and Strasbourg.

That’s a non seq. A sentence which starts with “and while most of this was good and acceptable” you’d expect to finish with something like “some was bad and unacceptable”. Which, of course, would have called for another sentence with elaborations and the details.

Instead we were informed that with the Treaty of Lisbon over 80% of Maltese laws would be transpositions of EU law. That’s a suspicious figure. I’ve seen it bandied about in connection with Nice (2002) and Amsterdam (1997). Which would mean that, despite the eurosceptics’ complaints that more powers are progressively transferred to Brussels, the figure has remained the same.

But even if that 80% were accurate how was it calculated? Is it 80% of the number of laws? If that’s the case then that’s not particularly relevant. It should be obvious that not all laws have same scope, impact and, consequently, importance. And let’s not forget that if this figure was calculated on what’s the case in other EU countries a good part of the EU acquis (e.g. rail transport, safety at nuclear reactors) does not apply to Malta.

Here’s a more significant non seq:

The Maltese, Dr Muscat said, must start learning how the EU worked, for the real Parliament would soon not be the national one but the one in Europe. And hence it made sense to send to Europe not mere representatives of parties, but people motivated by a sense of duty and patriotism who would not hesitate to take on the other 700 if needs be.

People who are “motivated by a sense of duty and patriotism” are not necessarily ones who know “how the EU worked”. They’re the kind who wouldn’t hesitate “to take on the other 700″ precisely because they do not now how the European Parliament works.

Pride comes before a fall

It may be a few days old (apologies for my slow blogging) but I can’t let the news item of Arnold Cassola having a Harry Vassallo moment go by:

AD was on its way to winning a seat in the European Parliament, chairman and MEP candidate Arnold Cassola said.

Addressing an EP elections campaign activity he said that AD had a very good fighting chance, even more so now that Malta would probably get six seats in the European Parliament.

Surveys quoted by the Times and one carried out by MaltaToday would indicate otherwise. But Cassola has explanations:

He said that surveys quoted by The Sunday Times today gave 56 to 57 percent to the PL and 40 percent to the PN.

“This anonymous survey is very difficult to believe. So according to The Sunday Times, all other parties will get just over 3.5 percent,” he asked.

And 3.5% for the also-rans is, of course, difficult to believe. But there’s information which, it seems, the chaps at Allied Newspapers are keeping under wraps:

Prof. Cassola said that The Sunday Times failed to report that AD’s share of the vote in scientific polls was increasing.

“The reality is that scientific polls show that AD is on its way to win a seat in the European Parliament. We can do it. Yes we can. Malta needs a third voice in the European Parliament. Pluralism will show that Malta is a serious and modern country.”

Which scientific polls are that? And is their some tactical reason why they are being kept hidden? To keep Green Party supporters from thinking that the seat is in the bag and stay home on the e-day?

Preparing a contingency plan would be so much better than speculating in an unlikely direction. If the Greens manage only 2-3% in the EP election and fail to re-elect a local councillor in Birkirkara it’s serious strouble. The general election and previous local council results have shown that the Party’s 2004 was not the beginning of a winning streak but a one-off. In 2009 it might turn out to be seen as beginners’ luck, the novelty of a new election. After that it would be no more than a distant memory.

Wasn’t me. Or him.

After trying to pass the buck one way the Electoral Commission is now trying to shift blame in another direction for striking off more than 900 voters off the electoral register:

The Commission explained that the voters were struck off because a proviso of the relevant EU directive had not been reproduced in Maltese law in a manner that was identical to the directive.

The proviso says that EU nationals included in the electoral register shall continue to be shown on the register until they request to be struck off, or until they are no longer qualified to vote.

More than five years have passed since the Maltese law was passed, an election has already been held under its provisions and only now they notice?

Wasn’t me

The decision to strike off 900+ voters has been reversed. The Electoral Commission has an explanation:

The Commission recalled that it had issued a notice inviting non-Maltese EU nationals who wished to vote in Malta to complete the required form. In September, the Electoral Commission’s secretary had a meeting with Julian Vassallo, head of the European Parliament office in Malta, who was given a copy of the notice before its publication. He had not objected to it.

It was in this context that the commission gave the go ahead for the publication of the register.

And yet, the European Parliament Elections Act mentions no European Parliament Office taking decisions on the electoral process. The deserved reply:

In a reaction, Dr Vassallo welcomed the Electoral Commission’s decision but said the commission had completely misrepresented the discussion that was held in September. At the time, he said, his Office had complained that non-Maltese EU citizens who had come to Malta since 2004 were not given enough time to apply to be part of the electoral register. He criticised the fact that the commission was ‘trying to shift the blame’ on the EP office instead of having the humility to admit its own mistakes.

The vanished 900

Josanne Cassar in today’s Independent:

So I was just musing to myself… why would the two major parties strike foreign nationals off the register? Do the spies at Dar Centrali and Centru Laburista know something we don’t know when it comes to their voting preferences?

Then I chided myself for being so paranoid. After all, that would mean that there are databases on every single voter in Malta indicating their political leanings.

Ocham’s razor encourages to go for the simpler hypothesis and here’s one: this Electoral Commission seems to prefer to choose the shorter, easier route.

Last year before the general election it was the decision to re-print the ballot papers of the ninth district after Nationalist candidate Albert Rizzo passed away. This year there was the decision on Norman Lowell’s candidature. An interlocutor in the Chronicle who took some interest in the matter quizzed me on why I did not object. I did explain that I cannot care much for matters which, in themselves, are and will be of no consequence. But that’s beside the point. If anything, an explantion how Lowell’s candidature could be considered admissible was given by Jacques. And if the Electoral Commission can be considerd as the “guardian” of electoral laws, it could have alerted cabinet that, while the Constitution was being amended, the relative part in the European Parliament Elections Act was not.

None of this happened. Probably it would have required too much effort. The Electoral Commission has now built a track record of sorts of taking “ad hoc” decisions without giving a cursory glance to the statute book.

Talking to myself? Could be. After all why should one mind the removal of the name of a dead man from the ballot paper even is such a situation is not contemplated by the law?

It should because, togther with many other dubious decisions, it starts telling us something about the people running the electoral process. Which is why it came as little surprise that the Attorney-General, when asked for advice by the PM (he who supposedly sought to “strike foreign nationals off the register”), said that striking off voters is not allowed unless either they ask to or no longer satisfy the law’s requirements.

Cutting corners, in this case, often means taking liberties with a process that is set out in the laws. Sometimes hardly anyone notices (except for, perhaps, your truly). But when it starts becoming a habit you can expect turbulence ahead.

Which amendment is that?

The Electoral Commission decided that Norman Lowell, convicted of racial hatred and sentenced to a two-year jail sentence suspended for four years, is eligible to stand for the EP election:

An Electoral Commission spokesman confirmed that Mr Lowell could stand for the June 6 election and said that the 2007 amendments to the electoral law made it possible for people who were handed down a suspended sentence to be eligible to vote.

Once your name appeared on the electoral register, you were also eligible to contest the election, he added.

The Times erroneously reported yesterday that Mr Lowell is not qualified to take part in the euro parliamentary elections.

That’s when my crap detector went off. In none of the elections held in Malta — general, local and European — are qualifications for voting the same as qualifications for candidature. Which is why in the Constitution, the Local Councils Act and the European Parliament Elections Act these matters are covered by different sections of the law. Thus, for example, members of the Electoral Commission itself are obviously not allowed to stand for election while (obviously) enjoying the right to vote.

Then I dug into whatever legal amendments were enacted in 2007. And, indeed, I did find that Act XXI of 2007 at section 5 amends the Constitution so that a suspended sentence (as opposed to an executed sentence) is no longer a disqualification for standing for election.

There’s only one problem though. The Constitution regulates general elections. For the European Parliament election you’d have to refer to the European Parliament Elections Act which, as I pointed out elsewhere, at section 19(1) still states:

Without prejudice to the provisions of the Act, no person shall be qualified to stand for election as a member of the European Parliament or, if elected, to remain a member thereof if, whether in Malta or in any other Member State -
[...]

(e) he is serving a sentence of imprisonment (by whatever name called) exceeding twelve months imposed on him by a court in a Member State or is under such a sentence of imprisonment the execution of which has been suspended;

The relevant section has not been amended either in 2007 or at any time since the law was enacted. Meaning that a suspended prison sentence, while not disqualifying you from being a candidate in the general election, does not allow you to stand in a European Parliament election.

Now, I’m not a lawyer and I only have access to stuff that’s online. It would be helpful if the Times journalist were to press the Electoral Commission spokesman to quote which was the amendment in question. But you can’t expect a Maltese journalist to show some curiosity and dig a little deeper, can you?

I can’t say I’m terribly unhappy at the probable consequence of this: Norman Lowell taking votes from National Action. But if the law indeed prohibts Lowell to run, it’s truly appalling that honest, law-abiding citizens get struck off the electoral register while, when it comes to candidature, where the criteria should be tighter, a convicted criminal can stand for election.

With a little help from our friends

In the wake of the Electoral Commission’s decision to de-register more than 900 non-Maltese EU citizens Labour is offering help (please keep in mind that in the Electoral Commission Labour has representatives):

In another statement, the Labour Party said it was offering those whose name had been struck off the register its services.

The party would be launching an application in court on their behalf for their name to be reinstated in the register. The party said it was also offering its services to non-Maltese EU residents who had been struck off.

All people who had the right to vote should be given that right, the PL said.

Time do change, don’t they? Five years ago Labour, through the Electoral Commission, attempted to strike off the register the names of Maltese nationals. That the Court decided in favour of the voters should have come as no surprise not only in view of the Cassola decision in the previous year but that this time round, with Malta a member of the EU and this being a European election, Labour’s case was even weaker.

What says it all about the Party’s erratic approach is that non-sensical “all people who had the right to vote should be given the right to vote”. If you have something you do not need to have it given to you and possession of a constitutional right is determined by the Court. Not the PM and not the Labour Party.

Get over it

Labour still cannot get over the fact that it lost the 2008 general election fair and square and instead it clings on silly hopes that hoaxes pandered by a man involved in a high profile bribery cars, whose story was believed, no questions asked, by the Deputy Leader of the Party.

The recent debate on the changes to the General Elections Act showed that it still hasn’t got over it. Joseph Muscat’s contribution to the debate dealt only briefly with the mechanism allowing for early voting; it was mostly anger that no moves were made to reassure Labour (no one else) that the names on the electoral register and those of people who have an unequivocal right to vote.

Here’s Maltastar:

Prime Minister Dr Lawerence Gonzi has failed to offer a reassurance that each person who is on the electoral list is eligible to vote.

Prime Minister Lawerence Gonzi was asked by maltastar.com whether he could offer a guarantee that each person who was eligible to vote for a General Election, instead he opted to discuss the proposed amendment on the General Election Act.

Pressed on to provide an answer on whether or not a person who has been living abroad for over two years without paying taxes in Malta was eligible to vote in General Elections, Prime Minister Gonzi said that anyone who had a doubt had to seek the judgment of the Court.

It did not cross the interviwer’s mind that the PM discussed the proposed amendment because that is what is on the table. Incidentally, Labour is not proposing anything of its own except the “no taxation without representation” criterion, one which would disenfranchise many who have always lived in Malta while leaving on the register many who have definitely left but who are still domiciled in Malta for tax purposes.

First things first. Anyone whose name appears in the electoral register has the right to vote. That judgement was handed by the Court in the Licari case. The constitutional qualifications (nationality, age residence, etc.) refer to inclusion in the electoral register not the right to vote. Inclusion in the electoral registered is what can be challenged meaning that, whoever voted in the 2008 election was perfectly entitled to do so.

But what about the electoral register? The PM can reasonably be asked for “guarantees” as much as the greengroced down the road. Elections in Malta are not run by the PM or the Minister of Home Affairs but by the Electoral Commission on which Labour not only has its representatives but, judging from the way electoral districts were last drawn, actually holds sway over proceedings. Instead of the PM Maltastar could have directed the question to the Labour-friendly Chief Electoral Commissioner and seen what reassurances he had to offer.

He’d probably offered none except, like the PM, recourse to the Courts. That’s what’s been happening for ages. Muscat complained that this was not fair: his Party is being told to take the matter to the Courts and when it does it is labelled undemocratic.

If you believe that’s a reasonable excuse think again. In the 2004 EP election Labour took many cases to court … and lost. It had not learnt the lesson, only a year before, that when the Court decided in the Cassola case that “residence” did not mean physical presence but a direct and continuous concern in political developments in the country. If Labour looked “undemocratic” it was not thanks to having brought cases after this judgement as much as having brought cases after this judgement which it was obviously set to lose. That’s actually worse that “undemocratic”, it’s plain nastiness.

Labour is in a quadranty. There will be no revisiting of the constitutional qualification and their clarification with the current attitude it is adopting. Amendments here require a two-thirds majority and they can forget that if they’re more into bridge-burning. On the other hand, they’ve been trying to shove the onus elsewhere. That that’s not getting it anywhere is obvious to everyone. Except Labour.

No EP election without nutters running

Compared to the 2004 EP election the political parties are offering tighter campaigns this time round. Thankfully, there’s still some offers outside the mainstream ranging from the eccentric to the creepy. Here’s Frank Portelli, Nationalist MEP candidate:

Nationalist candidate Frank Portelli said Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi had clearly stated that, since European countries had exploited Africa in the past, Africans had a right to invade Europe and take back what was theirs.

Dr Portelli said Col Gaddafi had got it into his head he could turn Europe into a Muslim continent. The number of immigrant arrivals in Malta was higher than the number of births, so the word “invasion” was justified.

He said “it is not true there is poverty in Africa” but many African leaders were spending money on armaments and nuclear weapons rather than education.

Oh yes, that clip. There was a mini-stir in the letters page of the Times recently started off by someone who claimed that while “zapping” on the Internet he came across the video on “U-tube”. Someone writing later did notice that Gaddafi is not exactly the most accurate source of information (the Colonel thinks Albania is in the EU, for example) but we should panic nonetheless. Want to think that Gaddafi is to be taken seriously? Go ahead. Maroni did, despite four decades of hindsight, and now finds he has to pick on Malta to mitigate the damage.

But what is more worrying is the claim that that the number of immigrant arrivals in Malta is higher than the number of births. This urban legend was started off — to their eternal shame — by no less than the Emigrants Commission. Mgr Philip Calleja was reported to have said that he was only trying to “convince” Europe to take some of the burden, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was adopting the same vocabulary as National Action not to mention wrong figures. That an act of crass carelessness that put at risk the same people he’s trying to protect. That no newspaper was ever arsed to challenge Calleja (or Frank Portelli) and that the claim still gets a hearing goes to show that when people want to panic they’re not bothered with being discerning.

Portelli’s final claim does not merit much comment. Whatever could be said has already been said by James Debono. Just one thing: I’m still trying to think which African leader is spending money on “nuclear weapons” when even Gaddafi has given up on that.

Let’s act even more like headless chickens

The EP election is close so the story that the European Socialists and European Greens successfully pushed through an amendment to Simon Busuttil’s report that proposed granting voting rights to immigrants in local elections just won’t die.

Let’s start with where Simon Busuttil got it wrong:

Nationalist MEP Simon Busuttil said today that the issue of voting rights for migrants was crucial for Malta because the country could not afford to give such rights to the 5,200 immigrants currently living here.

“This is one of the red lines that we cannot cross,” Dr Busuttil said at a press conference, pointing out that the last general election was decided by a mere 1,500 votes.

Here’s what’s written in the text adopted (translation mine):

32. [...] invites member states to facilitate the system of support to civil society in the process of integration, permitting the presence of migrants in the political and civil life of the host society, their membership in political parties and union and to give them the right to vote in local elections;

Busuttil’s fears that a general election can be decided by the immigrant vote in Marsa and Hal Far rather than the expat vote in Brussels and Luxembourg are unfounded.

There is, however, something which Busuttil got right. He criticised the European Socialists and the European Greens reminding that the Maltese Labour Parties and Maltese Green Parties are members respectively. Which shows in what esteem the European organisations in question hold their national outfits.

This is incidentally a repeat of what happened in the 2004 EP election. Busuttil said the European Green Party was pro-abortion. He did not say the Maltese Greens were pro-abortion; he was making the perfectly valid point that, even if the post of Secretary-General of the European Greens was Arnold Cassola, the Maltese party had very little power in determining Party policy.

That should have been plain obvious to everyone. Except for a raving mad Harry Vassallo who hastily called a press conference in front of the Hamrun Police Station saying that he was not only instituting libel proceedings against Busuttil, he was instituting criminal libel. That turned out to be little more that pre-electoral drama for when the case was called after the election it fell through … because Vassallo did not bother to turn up. When some years later the subject came up on television Vassallo could be heard to explain from his foaming mouth that he wasn’t there because for the case of the century which could have been the first time when a Maltese politician end behind bars … he was late.

Back to 2009. Cassola accuses the Nationalists for making a “partisan issue” out of immigration. Really? It has been so for a couple of months and it seems only the Greens have failed to notice. But here’s Cassola:

“It is easy but also dishonest to selectively interpret a complex and highly important EP vote. The PN’s unnecessary alarm about voting rights for legal, registered and regular migrants is simply a populist vote-catching attempt which dangerously fans the flames of xenophobia, fear and racism.

“The right to vote, according to this document, is being proposed for regular migrants at local council level only, and not to irregular immigrants.”

Oh, the Nationalists are selectively interpreting “a complex and highly important EP vote”? There were no scruples whenever the Greens quoted the Friends of the Earth scoreboard on how European parties vote in the EP on environmental matters. No questions asked then because the Greens are not only morally superior but also intellectually superior.

Cassola is trying a fine balancing act here, on one hand using the politically correct term “irregular immigrant” and on the other trying to convince himself and others that there’s something illegal about immigrants who have been given refugee or humanitarian status. A Somali who enters Malta on a boat may have entered the country illegally. But once he applies and is granted humanitarian status he legal in terms of the Geneva Convention and the Maltese Refugees Act. He cannot be detained, he cannot be deported and he also has the right to move freely and to work. For the simple reason that his stay in Malta is now legal.

At last … a rowdy Parliamentary sitting

There has just been a rowdy session in Parliament while Joseph Muscat was intervening in the debate on the amendments to the General Elections Act which would allow people who’ll be abroad on polling day to vote a week beforehand.

Soon after the start of this legislature a Select Committee was set up. It was grandiosly called the Select Committee on Democratic Change. From the onset I thought one shouldn’t hold much hope. First, because previous committees and commissions with similar but less ambitious briefs failed or succeeded only marginally. Second, with Anglu Farrugia being the most senior nominee for the Opposition on the committee you can’t really expect much, can you?

Muscat is asking why the Government is not running these proposals by this Committee. His Party’s earlier proposal, to fly a ballot box to Cyprus so that athletes participating in the Small Nations Games on polling day, did not come with such a requirement. Not only, the “early vote” proposal would only be considered if it is part of a package of changes. Those who are still star-struck after Muscat raised the expectations so high in the beginning could do well to realise that these are none other than Labour’s usual paranoid gripes about ways and means the Nationalists “steal” elections.

Take this bit of obsessive control freakery:

How was it that people could declare they would be away just 12 hours before early voting? This would not give enough time for verification. Making a sworn declaration was not enough. Voters should be required to produce their air ticket and they should be required to produce evidence, once they were back in Malta, that they had really been abroad.

Furthermore, one could have a situation where a person declared he would be going abroad, but did not go abroad and had a choice of voting either early or on polling day proper. This was not right. Persons who applied for early voting should lose the right to vote on polling day proper.

Can anyone make sense? Muscat is complaining that I can take and oath and within 12 hours I can cast an early vote. Then, within the week until the vote proper I decide not to go abroad (which decision could be for the most justifiable reasons imaginable). What does Muscat find objectionable in such a scenario?

He doesn’t consider that but moves on to list the usual stuff:

In order to clamp down on abuses, particularly the stories he had heard of ‘bullying’ by the government/PN at St Vincent de Paule Home (interruptions), voting should also take place early to ensure there was proper monitoring, not by pro-government workers, but by staff selected by the Electoral Commission.

Got that? “Stories he had heard”. Like Anglu Farrugia’s urban legends told to him by someone who acted as a go-between between a drug trafficker and a bribed judge and which the Deputy Labour Leader felt he could believe. And here’s more “stories”:

Flight arrangements should start being made early for voters who needed to be flown in from abroad, so that one would no longer have situations where some people did not find seats. Flight arrangements should henceforth not be made by Air Malta, but by the Electoral Commission. Would the government take up this challenge? (interruptions). After all Air Malta was headed by a person who formed part of the PN strategy group. There were stories in the past where persons were told there were no places on the planes, only for seats to be found after a phone call from the PN.

And then, not for the first time, it gets totally unfocussed:

Dr Muscat said that while the government was amending the Electoral Law, nothing was being said on how the sixth European Parliament seat would be allocated once it became available to Malta. The opposition would not accept a situation of having the appointment made behind the scenes or by Parliament. What the Opposition wanted and was proposing, was that the sixth candidate who got most votes at the last count and failed to get elected would be allocated the sixth seat once this became available.

That conveniently ignores that, with the same number of valid votes, more seats means a lower quota means a different result. In the last EP election the unsucessful candidate with most votes in the last count was Arnold Cassola. But had the quota been calculated on six MEPs instead of five the sixth MEP would not have been Cassola but Joanna Drake who would have benefitted from larger vote surpluses from Simon Busuttil and David Casa.

The usual tirade against voters abroad had to feature:

Dr Muscat said he was challenging the government to declare that all those who voted at the last general election met the appropriate residency requirements and had not been abroad (interruptions). The fact was that there was no verification method and no guarantee could, therefore, be given. (interruptions, Speaker calls for calm).

As Tonio Borg pointed out, the law offers a remedy. That Labour did not choose to apply it is its problem. First, because unlike the long queue at Mile End to join the suit against the Government on car registration tax it would be bad publicity. Secondly, because after the failure of Labour and its representatives in the Electoral Commission to strike off Cassola’s name from the electoral register in 2003 it is even less likely that the Court would upheld such a plea in 2009.

Muscat has a solution which, as usual, is inane:

With regard to right to vote by people who were abroad, the Opposition based itself on the principle of taxation with representation – the eligible voters should be those who paid tax in Malta, with some exceptions for students and those doing voluntary work abroad.

Oh yes, “taxation with representation”. Does he mean that foreign nationals who pay tax in Malta will get to vote? Does it mean that Maltese nationals who do not pay income tax because their income is within the tax free bracket lose their right?

Now let’s all act like headless chickens

After successfully standing up to Italy over the 150 migrants stranded off Lampedusa it’s now time for all those particular symbolic acts the Maltese are known for to show that we stand our ground now and forevermore.

I’m not referring here to the Times commenter who said that the Maltese should boycott pizzas — like the Capricciosas we eat are flown straight from Rome. No, it’s the Maltese MEPs voting against an amendment supported by the European Socialists and the European Greens to a report authored by Simon Busuttil which recommends giving the vote to all immigrants in local council elections.

In case you didn’t know EU nationals resident in Malta can already exercise this right. But we won’t let the residents in the Marsa Open Centre anywhere close to a polling station. No sir. In case they all decide to vote for the National Action candidate and overturn the Labour majority in the locality. Or worse still they’ll get attached to voting for the local council so much they wouldn’t want to leave not only for greener pastures.

Don’t think that’s too far fetched: Malta’s veto prevented a proposal from becoming European law which would have given immigrants freedom of movement within the entire EU. Reason being that we weren’t ready to give them more rights even if it were one which would have allowed them to leave the country to take up residency legally elsewhere.

They’ll be given the vote in local elections? Why should we care? Judging from the comments in the Times just in case we’re seen as conceding something even if it’s totally worthless.

Wake up and smell the (organic) coffee

As usual, James Debono is spot on when it comes to analysing what’s at stake for those who are not his political bedfellows. I had already posted, elsewhere and on another occasion, that in the coming EP election the performance bar will be lowest for the Nationalists and the claims to victory can be justified if they even manage to hold to their abysmal 2004 which, it ought to be remembered, was followed by a general election victory four years later. Debono gives the prequel to that on how it could come around the second time (and the 2004/2008 cycle playing itself out again) thanks to a high abstention rate.

Now, to the other side of the coin. It is with equal certainty that one can say that Debono is wrong when he’s analysing the fortunes of those with whom he shares things political. Ok, he does make the correct observation that playing to Nationalist disenchantment was the Greens’ greatest strategic mistake post-2004. But consider this:

In their obsession to remain politically neutral (which translates in most cases in associating with everyone except with the Green Party), many green NGOs seem to forget that their newly acquired power came from the latent electoral threat posed by Alternattiva Demokratika. Would the PN have re-invented itself as a green blue party before 2008 had AD not existed? The answer is a definite no.

Now the PN has gone one step ahead by proposing Alan Deidun — a foremost critic of MEPA’s follies — as one of its candidates. Despite being a very nice and respectable guy, Deidun has absolutely no chance of being elected. He was only fielded to compete with AD and give his adoptive party a green wash. If AD does badly and Deidun is not elected-the ultimate result will be a weakened environmental lobby.

Let’s start with the “definite no” answer Debono gives to the question whether the Nationalists would have gone greener “before 2008″ had the Greens not been around to skim off some of their votes. The Nationalists were greener for some time before 2008.

My contention is that the most environmentalist government we ever had in Malta was the Nationalist administration of 1992-96. On taking office in 1992 the Nationalists could not have been troubled by any Green Party threat thanks to the fact that they had been voted in office with the greatest margin a government has ever been re-confirmed. And if that same environmentalism was important in its defeat in 1996 it wasn’t because the voters, on that occasion, drifted in the direction of the Green Party.

This is not quibbling about a detail. In 1996 environmentalism proved to be more of a political liability than an asset. Thirteen years later that may no longer be the case but its lobbyists definitely seem to have grown more astute and are associating with those who matter. That that does not include the Green Party may be a gamble but certainly not one taken by political illiterates. The way things might turn out the EP election of 2009 might be remembered as the one in which the Maltese Green Party entered into a terminal decline.

They went through a local council cycle in which they lost three councillors (including the politically important Birkirkara). They got nowhere close in a general election without an overarching theme like EU membership. And if polls are to be believed, they risk making their 2004 “success” look like little more than beginners’ luck.

I started off by saying that in the EP election the bar stands lowest for the Nationalist Party; I can now say that it stands highest for the Greens. How they perform this time (and, may the psephologist add, in the local council elections for Birkirkara and Lija) will determine their future.

Money and elections

Some time back Keith wrote a piece on the cost of campaigning for elections:

Electoral campaigns are costly affairs, and consequently those individual candidates having deep pockets are increasingly able to conduct a slick modern electoral campaign. The problem with this is that it is not always the case that those having deeper pockets are the best choices for the job.

Unfortunately, however, the way the system is today, given that people still are asked to express a direct preference for an individual candidate rather than a political group, valid candidates who do not have deep pockets upon which to rely are turning away from elective politics. In the long run this may have very serious consequences upon the democratic process itself.

The concern is legitimate. It is particularly acute in the case of the EP elections where the entire country forms a single constituency requiring more resources of anyone deciding to stand as candidate.

Many moons ago I defended a common practice in Maltese politics: door-to-door canvassing. It started off with two news items Jacques picked upon. One was the ban on the practice in that most eccentiric of democracies: Japan. The second was the caricatured portrayal of the PM knocking on doors brought to you thanks to Norman Lowell (he who campaigns by organising fenkati at Ta’ Cetta). Jacques called for a similar ban. Thankfully, he changed his mind and move on to other things.

There is much that is to be said in favour of door-to-door campaigning. To return to Keith’s concerns, as long as they have a pair of legs with which to walk, all candidates are on the proverbial level playing field, irrespective of their financial resources to mount a campaign. Ditto for the voters. Let us not forget that not all of them can access the internet and the people that can’t often hail from the most vulnerable categories. What’s more it is a form of campaigning that reminds that candidates are “in obligation” towards the voters who open the doors. Showing up at activities (often with free food and free booze) might give the impression that the obligation flows in the opposite direction.

Such campaigning is restricted in the case of EP elections. The candidates standing in one district for a general election has an electorate of some 20,000 voters; his counterpart standing for the EP election has one more than ten times as large. In such scenario, large-scale activities and media presence, both with consume considerable finances, are the natural way to go.

How to get around this? I’ve never had any sympathy for restrictions on the amount of money a candidate may spend on his campaign. After all commercial entities have no such restricting and nobody is call for such a restriction on the money they spend in advertising. My suggestion is to have Malta divided into a number of electoral divisions. Another alternative, the Dutch method of the entire country being a single electoral division, I find unpalatable because it uses closed lists where voters essentially decide how many seats the parties get and who sits in those seats is left to Party bosses.

Small constituencies means that financial resources will make less of a difference, candidates will prefer to spend their time meeting people face-to-face than showing up on national media and they will be more atturned to local problems. It wouldn’t be insensible to cut up Malta into three constituencies: Gozo, Malta Majjistral and Malta Xlokk. There would be nothing new in that as it’s the way the country is already divided when mayors elect the Executive Committee of the Local Council Association is elected.

Keeping in mind the populations of the three districts Gozo could elect one MEP, the other constituencies electing two. If the Lisbon Treaty is approved there are many ways to elect the sixth: a general list (as is the case with the Local Council Association), as the “compensation” making the system a mixed-member proportional representation system or simply assigning it to the larger of the Maltese districts.

Must have required lots of thinking

The Green Party slogan for the EP election is “Energy, Experience, Europe”. I hope, for their sake, that it’s something thought up in five minutes flat by their PRO rather that something a political consultant created for a fee. The “Europe” bit is particularly redundant. Well, with Cassola alternating between contesting an election in Italy with an election in Malta it’s probably some reminding as to what he’s standing for this time round and which electorate’s turn it is to empathise with.

The strange ways of the Maltese left

A busy week kept me away from blogging. Not that I missed much: most of the stuff filling the papers was the usual regarding immigration. What was surprising (sort of) was the quarters it was coming from.

It first started with the Campaign for National Independence captained by the less than the former Labour leader Karmenu Mifsud-Bonnici who, immediately before that, was in the news decrying his present-day successor’s attempt to replace “democratic socialism” with “social democracy” as the guiding principle of the Labour Party.

Then we had this with a suggestion on what our candidates should be doing come the EP election next June:

Candidates and the electorate are to take part in the electoral process while protesting the situation. The candidates would dedicate their campaign to this issue while making sure that their name is not on the ballot, thus ensuring that no candidate is elected to the EU Parliament and the seats allotted to Malta are not taken up immediately. The electorate is to be encouraged to join in the protest by either abstaining from voting or by invalidating their vote, by writing a message of protest on the ballot.

Come next June the European public would come to know about the Maltese protest and would surely manifest its solidarity, so much so that this problem which is so huge for us to shoulder on our own would be resolved within the European context.

Of course once the problem has been resolved, the candidates would not only be acknowledged as the country’s heroes but be given the chance to contest the election so that those elected could take up their seats.

That’s the advice of Mario Mifsud, editor of the periodical Zminijietna which tags itself as “voice of the left”. Zminijietna was also the official organ of the Maltese Communist Party and if the latter still exists, the magazine is the only thing of the Party that’s still functioning properly.

Note, there is nothing in the case about rights and about sharing wealth, usually the hallmark of the writings of Mifsud and writers like him. It’s just a question of “rid us of this burden”. Some day these people might wake up to the fact that the fascists were hot too about “workers’ rights” and that Hitler’s Party was called “national socialist” for a reason. So, in that sense, there’s nothing in the Maltese left that distinguishes from the Maltese extreme right.

It’s also amusing the note the course of action. It’s probably what the Maltese left calls “radical democracy” in a way of patting itself on the back; had anything similar to this come from the right they’d call it “populism” as a derogatory way of describing something as cheap. What’s the difference? You tell me.

And another piece of related news regarding illegal immigration elsewhere: the UK has the same problem with France that Malta has vis-a-vis Libya. The only difference is that France is an EU country and signatory to the Geneva Convention and Dublin II and, unlike the Libyan coast, has only one point of “terrestial” departure to the UK. Poor Brits, unlike us, they don’t know how to make a fuss.

Divorce follows “koalizzjoni”

In case you’re one of those who’s in favour of the introduction of divorce, who feels offered a take-it-or-leave-it choice at every general election and ends up voting Nationalists here’s something that guarantees you will not feel that bad: Arnold Cassola telling you to vote Green in the next European Parliament election for the sake of civil unions and divorce.

Not that that would get the matter any further. Helpfully, Cassola hints at why: inheritance and social security, two national matters the EP has, so far, not got its hands on. It’s the national Parliament which can legislate divorce and the last time we voted for that the Greens decided that divorce should not feature prominently but instead stick to their pie-in-the-sky campaiging and focus on “koalizzjoni” instead.

Incidentally, there’ll be at least one other candidate who’ll be standing for election on a platform calling for divorce when in the EP he can never do anything about it. It’s John Zammit. But, at least, he can be excused for reasons that Cassola can’t.

Getting themselves a loose canon

The same cannot be said of the Nationalist Party presenting Vince Farrugia on its candidate list at the EP election in June. He was a major contribution to the Nationalist defeat in 1996, caring little for EU membership which, at the time, looked lost in eternity.

He did come around to the idea in 1998 when Malta’s application was re-activated. But one should be forgiven for suspecting that this change of heart only came about with the realisation, some way into the Sant administration, that no Government of a modern economy will let go of a general system of indirect taxation and the fiscal control that comes with it.

For Farrugia is not an “unknown quantity”. His first interview betrayed his opportunism. And, on top of, it’s no secret to anyone who follows him in the media that he’s a loose cannon. That’s different from the claim that the Nationalist Party is too broad a church and its candidates a very mixed bag, the environmentally-minded of whom should be worshipping at the little chapel called the Green Party. Not even Labour’s Edward Scicluna, whose opinions against the raised tariffs and, at the same time, welfare overgenerosity, have been the subject of posts in this blog … he is capable of circumspection.

Not Vince Farrugia. Unless they have an interpretation of what they got themselves into that is not obvious, the Nationalist leadership is most likely to regret the decision.

Bunnies out of a hat

Jacques writes about others’ ability for prestidigitation but shows that he (and his cartoonist) is not incapable of some tricks of his own:

The martyrdom of JPO had its desired effect and before you know it JPO got into parliament and the PN got a contribution of 5,000 first count votes that contributed to no end to the relative majority that allowed it to govern.

Now, Jacques has placed Pullicino-Orlando above any form of responsibility. Who cares for Pullicino-Orlando when you can play indignant and place blame at somebody else’s doorstep? But that involves not only ignoring important facts that stare you in the face but taking much liberty with others. Which is no big deal considering that at J’Accuse facts are subservient to the theory.

Let’s first bring shine some light on the stuff Jacques conveniently ignores. In March 2008 he was not interested in what Pullicino-Orlando had to say. Was planning law upheld in the Mistra application? Was it broken? Bent? Did the Zebbug MP tell the truth to his Party Leader? Was he economical with it? Did he lie outright? Jacques doesn’t care because this would involve Pullicino-Orlando not Joe Saliba.

So instead he dwells on the BA press conference. And dwells. And dwells. Like if Medialink were invited to a press conference and they want to send the Stamperija janitor as the journalist to cover the event anyone would bat an eyelid. What is truly odd is that Jacques then got worked up about Pullicino-Orlando and not, say, John Spiteri-Gingell also present at that press conference and whose journalistic credentials were about as strong as the dentist’s. If anything Pullicino-Orlando was representing a media company; Spiteri-Gingell was representing a website.

And let’s remember that the episode could have taken a different turn hadn’t Alfred Sant been the control freak that he is. Any party leader’s reaction to being told that the journalist asking the “unfriendly” questions would be the target of his latest accusation would have been “Tomato, tomatoe, potato, potatoe, Orlando, Orlandoe. Bring it on”.  He might even started his answer with “Jeffrey, last time I saw you you were filling molars, now you’re filling in for Amanda Ciappara”. But, needless to say, Alfred Sant was incapable of that. And if it a question of Sant’s incapabilities Joe Saliba can hardly be blamed for that.

Fast forward to March 2009. Pullicino-Orlando receives flak for his comments on illegal immigration (not least because they are diametrically opposed to what he had been saying less than two years ago). As was the case with Mistra in 2008 the blogger who gave you the “Le ghar-Razzizmu” and the “Lampost” campaigns is equally unconcerned about the substantive issue around Pullicino-Orlando in March 2009. Having a dig at Joe Saliba and Daphne is so much more fun: “Nobody was stopping JPO from going off on a self-destruct path twelve months ago”. Because, it seems, Jacques saw it coming.

Which brings me to another bunny Jacques pulls out of the hat. His hypothesis is that “before you know it” Pullicino-Orlando found himself in Parliament and the Nationalists with 5,000 votes they couldn’t count on before. That’s “before you know” that in 2008 Pullicino-Orlando’s performance at the polls was not outstanding compared to his previous electoral performances. Oh yes, in case you think Pullicino-Orlando appeared from nowhere in March, he had been an MP for twelve years before that.

Did Pullicino-Orlando regale the Nationalists with any votes they could not count on previously? Thanks to his martydom? Jacques is sure he did. Well, that “before you know” that:

Although the Mistra case dominated the last week of the campaign, 73% claim that it had no bearing at all on their vote on March 8.

Among Nationalist voters only 9% claimed that the case had a strong bearing on the way they voted. On the other hand, among Labour voters 34% claimed that the case had a strong bearing on their vote..

At most, that would mean that the case had no bearing on the way the electorate voted. A more reasonable serving of benefit of the doubt it would mean that Pullicino-Orlando lost the Nationalists votes and, with the margin being what it was, could have cost them the election. Sometimes, the Nationalists — like Jacques — also run out of bunnies.

Arrigo and his “gazz”

Robert Arrigo has no reason to feel disappointed. First, as Daphne points out, ministers serve at the pleasure of the Prime Minister. Secondly, Gonzi wanted a smaller cabinet and, consequently, “left out” a few people. That included not only Arrigo but politicians with long cabinet experience — something which Arrigo does not have.

He should just hold there patiently and not fall for the temptation of making a “brazen attempt at gaining cheap political points by riding on the wave of popular concern”. Arrigo is not fighting for dear political life; he’s not in the situation as the would-have-been-never-will-be Pullicino-Orlando.

And Arrigo is popular without trying too hard: he does not need to write letters like the one he wrote in today’s Times. After all, if the man has ministerial ambitions he’ll have to deal with foreign counterparts who might not look too favourably on his “one nation” proposals. Pullicino-Orlando, whose international hobnobbing career is definitely behind him, can afford to throw caution and his expressed opinions honed to suit the Council of Europe to the wind. Arrigo can’t.

One other point Arrigo makes which only Fausto Majistral would bother to answer:

Arrigo, for a long time President of Sliema Wanderers, enjoys the trust even of people known to support Labour. How does he view this?

“Where my votes come from vary. The information given to me by the Party is that I had hundreds of voters who gave me their first preference and stopped there. And there were a considerable number who gave me their first preference and the second preference to the Labour Party.”

The way elections went in Arrigo’s districts do not shed much light. Arrigo was elected in the last count without a quota on the Ninth (definitely not a case of “elett sparat” as Julia Farrugia decribes it) and when his surplus came to be distributed at the 20th count of the Tenth District none of it could be “inherited” by the Labour candidates because by that count they had either been elected or eliminated. But none of the surplus was “non-transferable”; it all went to the Nationalist candidates who were still in the race.

Now that is not foolproof but a strong indication. The amount of votes that moves as surplus is, in actual fact, a mathematical construct arrived at by examining all the ballots in the candidate’s pigeon hole at that time. Meaning that that one would be fairly accurate in saying that if, indeed, in the Tenth voters gave their first preference to Arrigo and stopped there becuase they liked him more than they like his Party there were very few of them

I’ll reiterate: he’s a popular politician. But his political value is probably less than he’d like to think it is.

I smell egg

There are more details in today’s Times report on the vote-buying case:

The employees, Kristylee Bezzina and Anthony Zammit, a man with a colourful criminal record who also goes by the nickname Is-Sej, said that Pierre Bartolo, 44, had told them that they would lose their jobs if they voted for the Labour Party (PL).

Mr Zammit took his allegations to PL deputy leader Anġlu Farrugia who included them in a report he compiled, listing between 100 and 200 people that said they were paid to vote for the PN. The report was presented to the Commissioner of Police but only Mr Bartolo has been charged so far.

[...]

Dr Giglio [the defence lawyer] also queried Mr Zammit’s credibility, pointing out that he had been fired shortly after the election when about €12,000 went missing from the canteen. The lawyer asked the officer whether the police had looked into this, raising the possibility that Mr Zammit could be cooking up a story because he was fired for legitimate reasons.

Of course, this will take time. It will be wasted time and wasted time is wasted taxpayers’ money. But if the end result will be egg all over Anglu Farrugia’s face it would have been worth every cent. I mean, imagine the yolk in that moustache.

Another one bites the dust

Anyone remember Rene Rossignaud the politician? He was Green Party councillor in Swieqi. During the campaign in the last election he resigned, saying that he couldn’t stand it seeing his Party seeking only to siphon off votes from the Nationalists. He described the Green Party as an “instrument which which to whip Lawrence Gonzi”. Ho, hum, the Green replied: the Nationalists piled pressure on Rossignaud and he caved in. “Intimidazzjoni skifuza” the Green PRO described it.

There was another Green councillor who was subjected Nationalist “intimidation” … the PM invited him for lunch. Here’s Harry Vassallo, the former Green Party Chair, ranting about the “regime”:

“Alternattiva Demokratika elected officials working in the private sector are not immune from pressure either” Dr Vassallo said. “It is a measure of the minute detail in which the regime operates that soon after election to the Sannat Local Council, AD Councillor John Mizzi, was invited to dine with the Prime Minister who did not bother to arrange such a meeting through proper channels. John Mizzi correctly advised me of the invitation and I encouraged him to attend in order to make a firsthand experience of the quality of politics as practiced by the regime. He was not impressed.

[...]

“When the Prime Minister attempts to make furtive meetings with our local councilors, we take it as a measure of the panic and desperation which has gripped the Nationalist government, its detachment from its principles and from political reality. We take such actions to be a measure of the need for a new, clean way of doing politics which can only be achieved by the election of Alternattiva Demokratika deputies to parliament and their participation in government,” Dr Vassallo said.

Vassallo later went on to compare the government to the Burmese miliary dictatorship (that’s right, for inviting someone to lunch) and his Party to the Burmese democratic opposition.

Well, John Mizzi has broken ranks. But he’s not headed towards the Nationalists:

The first and only local councillor elected on Alternattiva Demokratika’s ticket in Gozo has defected to the Labour Party.

John Mizzi, who has represented AD on the Sannat council for the past three years, will be contesting June’s local elections with Labour instead.

Mr Mizzi said the move was motivated by what he described as Labour’s newfound environmental conscience under Joseph Muscat.

Having been vociferous against the proposed development at Ta’ Ċenċ, which included a golf course, Mr Mizzi is not deterred by Labour’s previous stand in favour of a stand-alone golf course.

Local councillors elected in the name of the Green Party have now dwindled to two: Ralph Cassar in Attard and Mike Briguglio in Sliema. John Mizzi’s defection is significant. Three years ago when he was elected the Green Party made much fuss. He was, after all, their first councillor in Gozo. Little did they notice that they had lost their council seats in Birkirkara and Lija, urban centres which are far more significant politically than Sannat. Instead, they chose to be in denial, buying into their Chair’s tall tales about regimes and military dictatorships.

Buying votes

The case against the Swieqi entrepreneur Pierre Bartolo, who allegedly threatened two employees last general election if they didn’t vote Nationalist, started being heard today.

Here are the juicy highlights. First to testify was Labour Deputy Leader Anglu Farrugia who said, Anthony Zammit, one of the employees told him of the threats, told him that he was offered €200 (which is illegal), told him was taken to the polling station, told him that he had to take a photo of the ballot with his mobile phone (which is also illegal) and that he was still fired. Farrugia’s is therefore all second hand information — hearsay — and should be dismissed as little more than turning the witness stand into a political podium.

The second employee, Kristylee Bezzina, also testified. She said that she had been an employee of Bartolo’s he told her to vote Nationalist (which is not illegal). While being cross-examined Bezzina told the court that she voted Nationalist but that’s what she intended to do all along.

So this case stands on the evidence of a man who was was fired for … well, what for? Didn’t he say he voted Nationalist, if under duress? Didn’t the Nationalists win the election? In lieu of other evidence, a different theory is more plausible: this is an instance where an employee is regularly and legally fired and, post-hoc, he comes with dubious reasons why his employer did that.

090509

In case you were wondering what’s 090509 it’s the date of the next Europe Day and a UHM website whose intention is to:

bring together nine persons representing civil society, who will present their views on nine issues of local and European interest. 090509.org will become a forum for these issues, and will invite reactions from the general public. The issues chosen are likely to be important for the way people will vote in the European Parliament Elections.

The site was launched more than a week and a half ago and so far there’s only one news item and four posts on the forum and none on the blogs. You might think that a week and a half dormancy in the blog world is not much but the launch of this site was so important to warrant a press release given by the UHM chief and the Permanent Rep of the European Commission to Malta. As it should be, after all: the project will cost a whooping €65,000 and will be co-funded by the EU.

Yes, €65,000. And what to show for it? Folks, if you had nothing to say in February about an election taking place in June you should have just delayed the launch. Not that there should have been a risk.

Jacques’ blog is undergoing a facelift, by the way. It cost the owner money but I’m sure he’ll be doing it with a smaller sum.

A shoulder to cry on

If I were to sum up the point of an earlier post about the Green Party’s reaction to Demicoli’s views on spring hunting it’s that at times the Party has to choose between being the third party or a green Party. Here’s Jacques expressing preference for the first choice and a commenter opting for the latter.

The Party has usually opted for the first choice. The latest instance is that they’re now offering sympathetic ears to the hunters. The claim they hold against Demicoli is not only that he’s a johnny-come-lately that but that the 2003 “promise” made to hunters by the MIC (where Demicoli was number two) amounts to “deceit” of the hunting community.

Now Demicoli was interviewed by MaltaToday. Here’s what he had to say on the matter:

On Spring hunting we were simply there to tell the people what was negotiated. That is exactly what was negotiated. We could not foretell that three years later there would be a reinterpretation because of the Finnish court case in 2005.

That must be a good defence he made because, as far as I know, none of his detractors ever refers to it. Meanwhile, while Demicoli is attracting hunters’ ire the Greens’ Yvonne Ebejer-Arqueros paid a visit to the hunting and trapping community while on the campaign trail:

We can never agree with certain ideas of theirs, but we can surely understand their frustration at being duped by many unsustainable promises prior to the EU referendum. They in fact remarked that they are bombared by visits from PN and PL exponents promising that they will ‘remedy’ their situation. We however stand by what we have always believed: we are firmly against spring hunting in accordance to EU directives, and we are appalled by the government sitting on the fence with regards to this matter.

Note: the Greens were always against spring hunting in accordance with EU directives and in the EU referendum (held in 2003) hunters were “duped” with “unsustainable promises”. These Greens must be smart people, you start to think. In 2003 they could not only read interpretations of the Birds Directive nobody could but could actually forsee a court ruling three yeas down the road.

Until you come across what Cassola had to say in 2005:

Arnold Cassola, secretary general of the European Greens, said that unfortunately the derogation given is being used as an excuse by hunters to shoot at anything, not only at quails and turtle-doves as stipulated by the Commission. He said that now that evidence shows that the law is being flagrantly broken, the EU should take immediate action to stop spring hunting.

Which means only one thing: in 2005 the Green Party chair, just like Demicoli, was under the impression that there was a derogation that allowed spring hunting on quails and turtledoves and that spring hunting should be stopped only because the hunting community were too trigger happy to limit themselves to these two species of bird.

And, come think of it, if the Greens knew all along that the membership package would not allow the Maltese government to retain spring hunting for anything why didn’t they say so in 2003? Considering that they’re now spinning the story that in that year they instructed their voters to give their first preference to the Nationalists in order to increase the chances of membership when they did not do such thing don’t be surprised if now they’ll be saying to hunters “we told you all long while the Nationalists conned you”.

Remember that as a green party they may not see eye to eye with hunters and trappers but as a third party seeking to attract votes it’s the Nationalists they’re in competition with.

Nationalists are green goblins

Thanks to Mark I discovered a point made by engineer Marco Cremona that driving an electric car does not make much of an environmental difference because whatever gains are made driving said vehicle are lost in inefficiencies in electricity generation at our power station.

Cremona’s was a reply to the news item that Nationalist MEP candidate Roberta Metsola Tedesco Triccas’ campaign would be a “green campaign”, where commuting is done in an electric car. Cremona said that the Nationalist candidate has “a poor grasp of green issues” because, as we all know, whenever the Nationalists decide to do something for the environment they’re either (a) naive, (b) have sinister, ulterior motives or (c) are just plagiarising ideas from the Green Party. A Nationalist car may run on biofuel but you can bet your last carbon credit it’s been made from boiled babies.

In any case, Nationalist candidates have to be talked out of green thoughts in case the electorate strays from the righteous path and turns its back on true prophets even though it might have turned away with the right message.

For obvious reasons, when I think electric car I do not think Tedesco-Triccas but Edward Mallia; the bearded professor was probably driving one while Roberta was still pedalling at her tricycle. Notwithstanding that, I do not recall Cremona or anyone telling Prof Mallia his grasp of “green issues” is poor.

Two weeks is a long time in politics

Two weeks ago Watersbroken’s editor Mario Vella wrote in the Times:

To start with, once it becomes obvious that the PN cannot win another election with Dr Gonzi at the helm, there will be attempts to replace him with a younger person. Indeed, such attempts are already underway.

He promised more in a fortnight and here’s what he had to say today:

Finally, I said I would be back here to argue that “it can – and must – be done”. And here I am. Let’s take this step by step. Let’s begin by taking a step backwards. To start with, it cannot be sufficiently stressed that history is on nobody’s side. There is no guarantee that the Partit Nazzjonalista, with or without Dr Gonzi at its head at the next general elections, will lose.

If one week is a long time in politics, just imagine two. What could have happened in the meantime that transformed Gonzi in Mario Vella’s eyes? If you were to ask me, these last two weeks must have been the two toughest Gonzi has had to face ever since he moved into Castille, thanks to his poor handling of the backbench.

Vella’s prediction of the Nationalist Party not making it with Gonzi at the helm in four years’ time is somewhere up there with Jason Micallef claiming in 2006, two years before the polling stations opened, that there was an irreversible trend in favour of Labour which was on its way to certain victory.

But this is probably less a case of preposterous punditry than that Labour habit of speculating about anticipated elections and imminent bloodbaths within the Nationalist Party. I guess you need something to entertain yourself with while you wait for more than two decades in opposition.

Liquorice just doesn’t begin to describe it

A letter in today’s Times:

The line-up of candidates for the MEPs election as presented by the Malta Labour Party (PL) is a compelling one. All the 12 candidates, having a wide ranging and diverse background, accord with the policies set by the party they represent. It is this diverse experience blended into a coherent voice which shows the strength that lies within a newly invigorated PL.

I can’t say I know the candidates well or what most of their opinions are. But from what I’ve read they’re hardly coherent with themselves over time. I’m not only referring here to those who, until a few years ago, were dead set against the EU and now sing its praises. I’m referring to Edward Scicluna, one of Labour’s star candidates. Here’s what he had to say to MaltaToday just before announcing his interest in standing as a European Parliament candidate with Labour:

“You have a clearly unproductive shipyard. What do you do? You borrow heavily to subsidise their wages and low productivity for two decades. You provide expensive university education for free with a small salary to the student to boot. You provide the most generous pension scheme in Europe, free health for all, keep over-staffed ministries and government departments, and so on. And how do you do it? Tax and spend. And when you cannot tax, just borrow and borrow.”

What about “You provide some of the most heavily subsidised fuel in Europe” in that list for coherence’s sake? Nowhere in sight. This was after the Government announced the new electricity rates at the end of last year so Scicluna could have removed electricity from one column and put it under “Governmental knee-jerk reactions” while complaining of a ballooning public deficit.

He doesn’t have the comfort of hindsight with another issue which Labour now seems bent to base its EP campaign on: hospital waiting lists. Labour’s proposal goes something like this: if you’re waiting for treatment in hospital there will be a deadline and if you don’t get it by that time you’re sent to a private hospital and the State foots the bill. Labour said its MEPs would raise the matter in Strasbourg. One of those could be Scicluna who had included “free health for all” under one of those things government does which only lead to “tax and spend” and, eventually, “borrow and borrow”. So what’s the other method to have the extra private medical care paid for? Scratch and win?

Get Arnold to run campaigns

Recently the PM announced that, once Enemalta starts buying cheaper crude on the international market, electricity rates would go down. And Cassola smells a rat:

Dear Dr Gonzi, please pull the other one. The price of water and electricity rates should have been reduced at least 2-3 months ago to reflect the slump in international prices.

Now here is the time frame of the benefits that government will be dishing out in the coming weeks: between February and March the govenment will distribute the 5 energy saving bulbs to our households and then this will be followed by a reduction in water and electricity rates between March and April.

By the way, if you have not noticed it: European Parliament elections are to be held on 6 June!

Really, why don’t the Nationalists call the man to run their electoral campaign? Five months from the EP election is sure to leave an imprint in voters’ minds.

Meanwhile, instead of trying to read the minds of whoever will be masterminding the Nationalist Party’s campaign (which, I should remind, is still to be launched), Cassola should try to read or leaf through the energy acquis. There he’ll find a Directive obliging member states to stock 90 days’ consumption worth of oil products. That means, amongst other things, that Enemalta has oil stock from three months ago which it bought at the higher prices prevalent at that time. The intention of the Directive is energy security … and that, like all other forms of insurance, comes at a price.

So, rates “reduced at least 2-3 months ago to reflect the slump in international prices”? They were probably reduced not a moment too soon, not a moment too late.

Caught in the crossfire

Like a hunters’ boycott for his comments on spring hunting were not bad enough, Nationalist EP candidate Edward Demicoli finds himself in the sights of the Party which has environmentalism as its creed:

Arnold Cassola, Alternattiva Demokratika – The Green Party Chairperson, stated: “This is not  an issue any longer.  Over the past twenty years we have insisted and worked together with the European Greens to ensure that hunting in spring is abolished.  For doing this, I was personally singled out by the Maltese government as an enemy of the Maltese people and arguments in favour of the abolition of spring hunting were then considered by the PN led government as politically extreme views. “

[...]

Yvonne Ebejer Arqueros, AD candidate for MEP elections added: “It is absurd that some PN candidates are posing as champions against hunting in spring today, when hunting in spring has already been abolished. This is even more preposterous when one considers that these candidates are the same persons that, as top-MIC employees, spent five years of their life negotiating a derogation on Spring hunting with the EU authorities”.

Carmel Cacopardo, Alternattiva Demokratika spokesperson on Sustainable Development and Local Government, concluded: “Alternattiva Demokratika is a party that has worked consistently over the past twenty years in favour of our environment.  The Maltese and Gozitan people are intelligent enough to distinguish between AD and its candidates and other parties and their candidates. AD has worked consistently on this issue; others are just presenting themselves now as “last minute” environmentalists in order to gain some votes”.

That DoI press release quoted, by the way, did not call Cassola “enemy of the Maltese people” but refers to his being present to a meeting which included members of the environmentalist lunatic fringe one of whom (the Director of the Belgian society for protecting birds) claimed that “Maltese hunters are not only shooting birds but even tourists”. So if anyone is trying to make a Will Smith out of Cassola, he’s the one who’s trying.

Now, let’s say that you think that there’s no way that spring hunting in Malta can be limited to a few species and be sustainable. How would Demicoli’s claim effect your vote? Jacques has commented on the Nationalists being an excessively broad church. Well, here’s a way to do something, lighting a candle rather than just curse the darkness. When voting, give a high preference, not necessarily the first, to Demicoli. If he makes a good showing even if not elected it would tell the hunters what to do with their boycotts.

Anyone who feels so strongly against spring hunting (and the case is still pending in the ECJ) would have applauded Demicoli’s move. That’s what four major environmental NGOs did. Why not the Green Party? Carmel Cacopardo, who spent nineteen of the twenty year Green Party lifespan he refers to in the Nationalist Party and in some of its top posts, would have patted Demicoli on the back, congratulating him for having seen the light so early in his political life. Cassola might even have told supports to vote for him and Ebejer-Arqueros and give their third preference to Demicoli.

Pigs will fly in open season and hunters will not shoot them down before that happens. Because, from the way they behaved in the 2003 election, the Greens are not the kind of people to see Demicoli as someone with whom they share an opinion. They can only see him as competition.

Doing it differently

Discussion on the reform of the electoral system have been ongoing for a number of decades with the only outcome being tinkering with that system. Fortunately, the discussion did not derail proper discussion and welcome progress in the way we vote with some radical changes taking place in 1987 and 1990.

Here’s some more being proposed by Joseph Muscat in the wake of the Nationalists’ suggestion that people who will not be around on polling day for the EP election be allowed to vote earlier:

The Labour Party (PL) yesterday proposed that, as from next year, Maltese living abroad should be allowed to vote at their respective embassy on the day before the election.

It also suggested that identification cards should replace the voting document, following their renewal under the scrutiny of the Electoral Commission. The party said voting with ID cards would reduce the chance of abuse and cut costs.

For the European Parliament elections in June, overseas voters wishing to fly to Malta should make their request to the Electoral Commission, which should then make the necessary verifications and pass on the request to the national airline. This would make the process subject to democratic scrutiny, said the party.

Unfortunately, the Times missed out another reform Muscat suggested: “updating” of voting qualifications keeping in mind domicile for fiscal purposed and sectors such as students and people working with international institutions.

Apart from the identity cards issue which is a real shame (identity cards were introduced in the mid-1970s as a safeguard against electoral fraud and these days they are used for everything but) there is one thing in common with all the other proposals: Maltese living abroad.

That is one front on which little progress was made apart from cheap AirMalta flights to vote. Not that attempts were not made to change things but with the paranoia that hung around the Labour Party while it was led by Alfred Sant certainly did not help.

Muscat must have realised that Labour is not exactly popular with expats. Nothing felt so convincing that the people who were flown in to vote last March were statistically representative of this category of voter than Alfred Sant’s (unproven) complaint that only 23% of them were Laburisti. With a Party that promoted insularity and national chauvinism for decades what else can you expect?

Secondly, he must also have realised that Labour already had little room for maneuver following the Cassola case and the Court’s interpretation of the residence requirement, let alone now that Malta is a member of the EU. The amendment Muscat is proposing is an honourable way out: it probably changes nothing of the Court’s interpretation, is something the Nationalists might agree to and to his Party’s supporters something looks like it’s being changed.

Defenestration

Two draft posts were awaiting publication one concerning Jacques’ article in last Sunday’s Indy, the other about Mario Vella’s article in the Times (Vella, we learnt in this article, is Watersbroken’s editor). But the days went by and those two posts which now seem less important.

The articles (and my posts) in question were not related. Jacques’ article was about the appointment of George Abela as Head of State and how Gonzi and Muscat might have arrived at an agreement because it was in their common interest (Muscat might have got a competitor to the Party Leadership out of the way; Gonzi, a competitor for the premiership). Vella’s was that the Nationalists cannot win another election with Gonzi at the helm (don’t ask me why) and that plans were afoot (don’t ask me how) to have him removed.

With the benefit of some distance and some hindsight those two articles are related. They both fail to see that political sunsets in Malta take a long time. Not a country given to political defenstrations the exits of politicians give lie to the otherwise iron rule of a week being a long time in politics. Examples range from Borg-Olivier to Alfred Sant.

Now, a reminder of who Lawrence Gonzi and Joseph Muscat are to their respective Parties. The first has one election behind him (less than a year ago) which he won. The second has his first election ahead of him. He might lose it but can anyone remember a leader of a Maltese political party who quit after losing his first election?

Like Jacques I can’t say I know George Abela. I can infer a few things from his decision to step down as Deputy Party Leader when the Party’s General Conference decided to follow Sant towards a general election, his decision not to contest Sant after the 1998 and 2003 defeats and his strong showing in the 2008 Leadership contest without having an actual foothold in the Party’s General Conference. Abela is obviously someone who doesn’t descend for a fight unless he knows he stands a chance of winning.

So what would bring about Jacques’ hypothetical scenario? Muscat is not risking much until his first general election test. Even if he loses he’s likely to stay on. Two defeats might take him down. And that’s when Abela might decide to give it a try and step in. In 2019 when he’s 69. Ready to take on the leadership of the country in 2024 when he’d be 74. Gonzi, of course, would have aged by as much. And a septuagenerian he’s definitely at risk after having held office uninterruptedly for twenty years.

Same goes, much more forcefully, to Vella’s fantastications. He mocks “GonziPN” while being oblivious to the fact that he’s more than acknowledging the Nationalists’ winning formula last March (and if you don’t believe me think how far a “SantMLP” slogan would have gotten Labour). The Nationalists cannot win another one with Gonzi at the helm? Come on. I would understand the thinking that having won seven out of the last eight elections might make it difficult for the Nationalists to bag the next one but hard to imagine that the man who stood for his first election and saved his party from a defeat which was not unlikely.

The Leyenda Blanca of Maltese politics

Victor Galea, the Greens’ Secretary-General, replies in today’s Times to a letter that had appeared in the same paper. In order to show what an “open-minded party” the Greens are Galea re-iterated the white legend:

Mr Calì [the original letter writer] should maybe remember what happened during the 2003 election: AD then asked its supporters to vote for PN on first count, and give only subsequent preferences to AD, in order to ensure that the Maltese and Gozitans got into Europe.

Galea starts his letter by asking the previous correspondent to “refrain from spreading blatant untruths”. I invite him to do the same. I do remember the 2003 election very clearly. And to back me up here’s the Green Party’s press release from the Party’s archives, no less:

Alternattiva Demokratika is asking its members and supporters to Vote 1 AD so as to help bring about a breath of fresh air based on sustainable development, social justice, civil rights and a better quality of life for all Maltese and Gozitans.

We are also inviting pro-EU Labourites to give us their first preference. Such Labourites form an important part of Malta’s pro-EU majority as expressed in the March 8 referendum and are welcome in AD’s family. AD is the natural home for all those who believe in progressive politics.

However, given the particular characteristics of this General Election, AD is not only appealing for number 1 votes from Green voters and pro-EU Labourites. We are also making a strong emphasis for number 2 votes from non-AD voters so as to ensure a pro-EU parliamentary majority and a breath of fresh air.

No 2 votes are very important, as they will help ensure AD’s election in parliament, while retaining the full validity of a voters No 1 vote. Therefore, those who give AD No 2 votes in no way would be wasting their first preference, as this would still be counted as a vote for their preferred party to win the election.

In his letter Galea said that his is a political organisation that put the interests of the country before those of the party. The Greens’ position in 2003 risked splitting the pro-EU vote and subsequent membership and for no other reason than their sense of political grandeur that can hardly said to be the case.

Sant speaks

First political bombshell of the year: Alfred Sant speaks out and if anything is obvious is that the man is incapable of insight. Would you believe it? He complains that AirMalta brought in people from abroad and leaked personal data to activists. That’s the same person who publicised that same data in Parliament together with claims that “only 23%” were Labour Party voters as “proof” that the reservation system was manipulated.

He’s still in denial after the defeat. Power of incumbency? Like this country has never had a change in government including one in which he led Labour from a considerable defeat to a considerable victory.

Joseph Muscat has politely brushed aside his predecessor’s comments: “The country is facing new challenges and the answers to these challenges cannot be the failed solutions of the past”. Bravo!

There it goes

Jacques rightly complains that in the Borg-Olivier story seems to be heading in the direction where the Nationalist Secretary-General’s mistake eclipses the crux of the story which is the confidentiality of private data.

No surprise in it heading in that direction. And, no, the push is not being given by the Nationalists. Here’s were Joseph Muscat is taking that story:

The “scandalous web of spies” conducted by the Nationalist Party together with the government involved persons who manage the country’s assets and others who acted as secret service agents during the 1980s, Dr Muscat said.

Wasn’t it to be expected? The country has a general contempt for the confidentiality of personal data. Very often, when a public official cites protection of personal data you can be sure it’s a case of a handy excuse to shirk responsibilities.

Remember the leaked personal data Alfred Sant tabled on people who traveled to Malta to vote? Remember the reaction? Nationalist media … nothing. They were either still euphoric over electoral victory or too humiliated by the episode. MaltaToday … nothing. A scandal, it seems, ain’t a scandal if it’s not reported first by MaltaToday. And Sant … he actually waved the data in the Government’s face as if to say “Hey, I’ve got moles too! And I’m only the Leader of the Opposition!”. The information, after all, had nothing to do with the point he was trying to make.

The political mileage which could have been gained in Malta from the unvarnished version of the Borg-Olivier story was limited. So Muscat is transforming it into a story about senior state employees (political appointees, it should be said) knocking off early from work. Now is there anything which gets the country fired up anymore than a story of skartar? Especially if it involves people high up?

Like whoever would have been privy to leaked data matters. And if it did, let me point out that the Maltese secret service was only created in the mid-1990s. Unless another leak can prove the contrary.

Apologia (pro causa mea)

Jacques warns:

Fausto has had an idea. He came up with an allegation. He has thrown it in this direction and notwithstanding any denial from our part he has gone on to milk it. Why? Because it pays. It pays to try and distract from the “apologista” label that seems to have stuck with Thermidor notwithstanding its revamp (which is cool).

That’s what happens when you use the royal “we” too often: you assume that what you think is shared by the multitudes. And unless hate mail addressed to me is landing in Jacques’ mailbox and he’s reading it without forwarding it to me, Jacques is referring to very few people.

The only one I know of is the Green Party PRO who once called me an “apologist” who “parrots whatever comes out of tal-Pieta’” oblivious to the sweet irony that his post as PRO requires him to defend (“apologist”) and disseminate (“parrot”) whatever his Party’s Executive Committee thinks (an entity which, it should be reminded, have much stronger political and electoral interests than yours truly).

And that’s the impression I always get with the label “apologist” whenever, for example, I see the likes of MaltaStar use it with regard to former Nationalist Minister Michael Falzon. It’s little more than a defense mechanism of people who are either too lazy or too stupid to engage in any exchange that goes beyond superficialities (not to mention taking an occasional look at the mirror).

Jacques should put down his MLPN bible and notice that I’m not in the least interested in ignoring Borg-Olivier’s mess up. On the other hand, I’m actually concerned that the Nationalists might be heading towards the next election with their own Jason Micallef. If Jacques and his commenters think that by saying that Borg-Olivier should consider stepping down, as I did, is something that should have given me a choking fit or anything requiring Rennies just imagine what symptoms I’d suffer if Borg-Olivier were the wrong man and he’d cost the Nationalists the next election. Just ask Labour about the consequences of saving (political) face and keeping up (political) appearances: two decades of opposition.

Jacques says that he has repeated time and again that he does not condone of the violation of citizens’ privacy. Bravo and let me add that very much the same can be said of Thermidor. The only difference is, as his blog’s archive attests, when our privacy was so blatantly and brazenly violated by Alfred Sant he had nothing to say.

Transparency ain’t “his ass”?

As expected, MaltaToday’s Saviour Balzan and Raphael Vassallo are now on cue on the Borg-Olivier case. At this time of the year newspapers are to be expected to be compiling something like “the year that was” and, while I’m sure that the Borg-Olivier will feature prominently, what would have been the most flagrant instance of contempt for private data would go unrecorded. I’m of course referring to Sant’s tabling in Parliament last May a list of some 2,000 people with the right to vote and resident abroad who chose to exercise their right by travelling AirMalta on a reduced air fare.

Now, the MLPN meme requires condemning the Labour and Nationalist Parties for the mutually exclusive activities of (a) bickering and (b) collusion. But, in order to show himself as truly supra partes, whoever is bringing the charge must see that charges are brought in equal measure against both parties (to avoid, inter alia, that he gets involved in the “our side may be bad but your side is badder” exchange). Condemnation must be made with a par condicio (and that’s my third Latin expression) with the obsessiveness usually exercised by the Broadcasting Authority.

So Vassallo comes up with a “lapse” from the “other side”. No, not the Sant case but a 2000 Labour strategy document (that’s two elections ago) encouraging supporters to gather information about “non-Labourite families”, particularly their political preferences.

I don’t care for information Labour gathers about me in this manner. I actually do hope my Laburist neighbour notices my preference for the GWU and Labour papers and One TV over Net TV and reports me as a “sympathiser” to be added to the Party’s eventual vote column. After all, the best thing about the 2008 election was seeing Jason Micallef, who had counted his chickens before they hatched, ending with all that egg on his face.

But I am concerned about whatever information Government (and it’s companies, corporations, authorities and entities) collects about me. Sant’s case is particularly serious not only because of the privacy of the data. It is serious because nothing in that list can ever prove Sant’s claims that the reservations on those flights were “engineered” with the result that only 23% were Labour supporters.

It is serious because it is not, as a commenter on Jacques’ blog claimed, a question of “transparency” of who benefited from a subsidy (who were, it ought to be reminded, people who were perfectly entitled to vote and, therefore, perfectly entitled to be on that flight). After all, when Labour MPs pose PQs on behalf of welfare queens in the constituency inquiring on their “cekk tar-relief” they always transmit the names to the Minister concerned confidentially.

It is serious because Sant did it just to show that he could do it. That he has access to Government information that is under lock and key even when he’s Leader of the Opposition. Borg-Olivier could be challenged, having been caught with his pants down; nothing of the sort could have been done in Sant’s case because this episode showed him to belong to another moral universe.

But the “closet Santistas“, who let the episode pass, can be challenged. Mifsud-Cremona was alive and in office in May in case they needed to check things out with someone in the know. So why didn’t the episode even register on the MaltaToday radar?

Saviour Balzan in his commentary says that in a years’ time the country would have forgotten about the Borg-Olivier case but not MaltaToday which will continue “reminding people that”personal data is never safe and could well be in the hands of Big Brother”.

All well and good, especially since, it would seem, the Nationalists are heading to the next election with their version of Jason Micallef. But as to the Sant case, I promise Thermidor will be around to remind people of this case especially those who, despite their high interest in data security matters, decided to pass over the matter in silence.

It’s Tuesday so it must be Paris

… and if it’s 2009 it must be Malta. Arnold Cassola’s website is currently “under construction”, I suppose until the Green Party Chairman takes this down:

As a direct representative in the Chamber of Deputies of Italians abroad, I too have lived a good part of my life abroad. Because of this I feel I’m very close to your reality. I have lived in the first person many of the problems which we face and I have come to know of others through my continuous contacts with Italians in Europe.

That was April 2008 and if it’s 2008 it must be Italy. In that month Cassola was defending the seat in the Italian Chamber he was elected to in 2006 (Italy seems to get the years with an even number) by Italian expatriates in Europe. This time standing with the extreme left Sinistra-Arcobaleno, Cassola lost his seat, having lasted just over two years in the Italian legislature.

A different electorate, a different marketing approach. Cassola is unlikely to offer “having lived a good part of my life abroad” and “continuous contacts with Italians in Europe” as compelling reasons to vote for him for the 2009 Maltese elections to the EP. Indeed, his biography on his blog seems to have been sanitised aleady and while it mentions being made Cavaliere della Repubblica in 2003, incredibly it makes absolutely no reference to his tenure as an Italian MP.

Another deficit to address

Here is one area where Malta is not doing too well:

Malta has been ranked 83rd from 130 countries, from 76 last year when 128 countries were surveyed. Malta is last among EU countries, with Greece and Cyprus at 75 and 76. It is even behind countries such as Armenia, Suriname, Bolivia and Malawi.

The benefit of party machinery

Rennie Scicluna, a man who rescued stray dogs and kept them in abandoned premises (much to the chagrin of neighbours), was handed a 26-day prison sentence for failing to pay a €320 fine which he couldn’t afford. He was released on Monday, his story generating enough sympathy and funds to secure his release but still risks time over another fine of €600.

Remember the last story from the electoral campaign from last March? It was about Harry Vassallo, then Chairman of the Green Party, being delivered with papers to serve a jail sentence over failure to pay a €6,000 fine.

Here we go again …

Our electoral system may not be the smoothest on earth and there is a possibility — a very, very remote mathematical possibility — of giving a “perverse result”. So far and in most cases, it has not and the results it has given have been fair and proportionate. I have been for electoral reform for one main reason: so that the critics (which include Labour and the Greens) would realise that the current system, regardless of the inefficiency, works as well as they or anyone would hope for.

Until then we’ll have to put up with the groundless complaints. Such as Keith Grech’s (the typos are his):