Some happenings during silly season have to be reported for posterity’s sake. I had thought that we had seen it all for summer of oh-nine with Karmenu Mifsud-Bonnici (lifelong bachelor and no children) claiming lower birthrates in Europe are thanks to the EU promoting contraceptives and the post-Communist Żminijietna protesting the ban on barbeques in Għadira presumably because the workers will have nowhere were to grill their proletarian sausages.

I was wrong. A letter in today’s Times, which forms part of an ongoing silly season debate on whether we should remove the George Cross from the flag and, if we do, what will we have in its stead:

Both the above-mentioned regimes [the British and their George Cross and the Knights and their eight-pointed cross] represent only a few years of our history and are not Maltese. Let us have a real Maltese emblem, one that is unique and over 5,000 years old, namely, the Neolithic temples. We already use this on our euros.

Er, the Neolitic temples? Every single stone of them? For accuracy’s sake, what’s represented on the Maltese euro coins is only the main altar of the complex. But the writer probably did intend all of the temples (Ħaġar Qim, Mnajdra and Tarxien, presumably). After all this country suffers seriously from horror vacui (anyone remembers the first official photo of the President?).

So we could have the temples. And while we’re at it why not a ġbejna? Zalzett and a ħobża tal-Malti anyone? And a dollop of bigilla please. With a galletta sticking in it. I could go on and on but I’m waiting for the Times‘ commenters to see what they can come up with.

This blog goes on holiday until further notice. Readers shouldn’t worry as the silly season, probably because there are no immigrant boats to report, this year looks like it will be seriously silly.

So far my favourite stories have been Karmenu Mifsud-Bonnici claiming that low birthrates are caused by the EU “spending large amounts of money promoting the use of contraceptives” and Communist Party paper Żminijietna criticising the barbeque ban in Mellieħa Bay as it gives the public “less space for recreation, especially in times of increasing cost of living”. Barbequers of the world, unite!

So I pack my blogging bags reassured in the knowledge that there is still much to read and that I will not need or feel the need to blog about it. Some news items do not need any commentary or elaboration, they stand on their own.

So have a smashin’ summer and, remember, you can still enjoy ħobż biż-żejt at Għadira.

From maltastar.com:

The Malta Council for Culture and the Arts decided to exclude a Maltese artists’ exhibition of 16 photographs which put together images of politicians, including ministers, and “representations of strangely erotic acts”, claiming that the artworks were “libelous”.

Thankfully, what the Council did was not described as “censorship” — which it is not. Censorship is a categorical ban states do (which, after all, is the only institution which can impose a categorical ban). Thus, Stitching was censored and it cannot, unless the decision is reversed, be staged anywhere in Malta. This exhibition can still be held in the curator’s garage while he waits for sixteen court summons to come in.

But the fact that no mention was made of the “c” word does not mean that it was not implied:

When contacted by maltastar.com, the artist, Raphael Vella, 42, said that foreign artists are comparing the situation of the arts in Malta with that of the Soviet Union and Germany before the war.

They could have compared us to France 2008 when French magazines felt they had to airbrush Sarkozy’s love handles in a real photograph not a photo montage as is in this case. Or Germany in 2002 when then-Chancellor Schröder sued a German news agency over allegations that he dyes his hair.

On matters of freedom of expression Malta gets more punishment that it’s due. The Stitching ban was unfortunate. While it reminded us that the Board of Film and Stage Classification has powers it shouldn’t have it gave the wrong impression that in recent years they have deprived Maltese audiences of much. Some of the criticism on the prohibition to insult religion, a legal provision applied earlier this year at the Nadur carnival, may have been justified. But let us not forget that, for the sake of not insulting Islam quite a few European governments have been mulling the idea.

Which leaves us with libel. Yes, Malta’s libel laws may be somewhat punitive (and they have been relaxed in recent years) but even there, I get the impression there’s much freedom of interpretation for the presiding Magistrate. What is certainly not unique is having libel laws.

Which brings us to this case in question. Is it grounds for libel? Here’s more:

The excluded artwork was to be part of a collective exhibition, “The Life Model,” curated by Patrick Fenech, which opened this week, as part of the Malta Arts Festival. Yet, the Council argued that the images are “potentially libellious” because some Maltese individuals in the images were still recognisable, despite the artist having “blurred them partially.”

Partially, understandably. Or how would viewers have realised that they were politicians “including ministers”?

But why politicians? Is it just because they happen to be the category of people we love to hate, a bit like Americans and their lawyers. There is a bit of explanation from the artist:

Dr Vella made it clear that the content of his work is not pornographic. “I am not interested in cheap pornography as an ‘art form’, but I am very much interested in the fact that politics has become a bit like pornography.”

“Cheap” pornography as opposed to what? Pity the description cuts off there. I would have been equally interested to hear how politics has become “a bit” like pornography. Hmm, sitting through budget speeches might be more interesting than I thought.

Update: It turns out that Raphael Vella, the artist in question, is more level-headed that one would have initially imagined. Here’s his reaction to the original maltastar.com article:

Maltese art is often excessively ‘heavy’ with metaphysical ideas about life and death, the ‘sacred’, and so on, and I felt that a piece that could invert the seriousness with which we still approach subjects like the nude in art by linking it, teasingly, to an even more taboo subject – politics – was necessary in this exhibition.

The curator of ‘The Life Model’ liked this perspective too, and I will venture to add that I think he appreciated it because he is an important Maltese contemporary artist with international experiences, with whom I have had the pleasure to work on other occasions.

This was also the attitude of the ‘foreign artist’ quoted in the article, who jokingly reminisced about the ex-Soviet Union. My reference to this artist’s opinion was not meant as a factual statement about Malta – artists and writers here do not end up in gulags, of course – but it was a way of saying that my work might have been taken too seriously.

There is one point which I note with sadness, however: it’s no longer a case of similarity between “cheap pornography” and politics as we we told in the first article. It’s merely a link between the seriousness — presumably undeserved — of artworks and politicians and their nudity.

But if that’s the case then the link could have been established with just about anyone, the nudity taboo being pretty strong in Malta.

Why politicians then? I get the impression it’s really a question of someone drawing in a moustache and an Elvis forelock on the photo of someone important and feeling happy he can get away with it. Or maybe even get away with plaudits like this (complete with a feeble attempt at sarcasm):

Dear Raphael, how dare you try and criticise the political class? Don’t you know that our lives depend on these kind and hard-working persons who dedicate their lives to us, to give us jobs, food, shelter, entertainment, I would say, even spice up the air we breathe to make it healthier (sometimes with their small cars, sometimes with the effects of their bigger Delimara decisions)? You definitely cannot be allowed to criticise the political class.

Criticise? Hint: the target, remember, is “seriousness”. How about mockery? Not that our politicians are above it but, then, should anyone?

Yesterday we had Victor Ragonesi telling us to keep our hands off the “original” entrance of Valletta which nobody has a right to “desecrate”. Ragonesi was Borg-Olivier’s Private Secretary in the 1960s. Which begs the question: did his former political master have any right to desecrate the city entrance the way he did?

Today, Kenneth Zammit-Tabona writes on the Piano plans in Times:

Meanwhile, the government, with pennants flying and trumpets blowing, announced Renzo Piano’s blueprint for Valletta and, if their perennial apologists are anything to go by, are in a right royal miff because it was not received with the right amount of adulation. What on earth did they expect? After waiting for 67 years for something to happen on the opera house site, the government’s brief to Mr Piano was devoid of any thought, sensitivity and without reflection as to what the long-term consequences of this open-air theatre that we need like a hole in the head will mean with regard to Maltese culture or the lack of it.

I don’t know what government’s brief to Piano was and if it said “make the old Opera House into an open-air theatre”. If anything, Piano, it seems, dissuaded the government from constructing a parliament on the theatre’s site. And as I have pointed out elsewhere, Piano is not a starving architect waiting for some commission to come in. I’m sure he has enough artistic and professional dignity to tell the government to find someone else if he felt the “brief” he was given was below him.

But Zammit-Tabona seems to know something the rest of us don’t. He was one of the plans’ first critics:

Art and theatre critic Kenneth Zammit Tabona was not at all amused: “I have never felt so insulted in my life. This is another confirmation of the poor attitude this government has shown towards culture. We’re going to have a roofless theatre which can only be used when the weather permits. But they’re not going to be roofless in Parliament, are they?”

That, by the way, was soon after it was announced that it would be an open-air theatre but before the plans were unveiled. And notice the criticism was directed at the government: Zammit-Tabona, unlike the paTRioTs wIth a caPs loCK prOBlem who comment on the Times, is not so philisitine to accuse Piano of philistinism. Such charges work better with Austin Gatt so that’s were he directs it.

But then Zammit-Tabona goes on:

Last Tuesday, La Traviata, starring Renee Fleming and our own Joseph Calleja, was transmitted live from Covent Garden to an enthusiastic and numerous paying audience at Argotti Gardens. A son of Malta has really made it to the top echelons and will, any minute now, reach iconic status. A suggestion, which, I hope, the ministry will take up should this lovely event happen again, is that it should be shown free of charge in all the towns and villages in Malta that have a suitable open space.

It’s heartening to note that on this occasion — end of June — it was a case of “weather permits” in an “roofless” venue as was the Argotti Garden. And why does Zammit-Tabona suggest that the screening be held in “towns and villages in Malta that have a suitable open space”?

No fear of wind, rain and hail? Adrian Buckle, who had been one of the most vociferous opponents of having parliament built on the old opera house site, spoke in favour of an open air theatre because, bar the ludicrous venue at Ta’ Qali, there is no such thing in Malta. Both Buckle and Zammit-Tabona seem to be aware that the performing arts have stiff competition in the summer and both realise that an open venue is the answer.

But while Buckle’s reaction is the obvious reaction of someone who got something he could have wished for, Zammit-Tabona persists in criticising the plan and the government (not Piano). Why? Is it the cheap and easy way to sophistication?

Coda: Another point in Zammit-Tabona’s op-ed is worth addressing:

This [foreign governments' attempts to popularise opera] was an exercise that took up the trend set by Pavarotti, Carreras and Domingo when they performed together in that unforgettable Three Tenors Concert in Rome 19 years ago and which I had the unforgettable privilege of attending. In those days one could hear men attempting to sing Nessun Dorma in the shower as they lathered themselves: so much for the irrelevance and mustiness of opera Lou Bondì.

That’s a hypothesis. Here’s another: Pavarotti’s Nessun Dorma (one of the worst renditions of the piece, one should add) was the theme song used for the BBC’s coverage of the 1990 World Cup finals. Most people learnt of the piece (and its existence) thanks to that, not the Three Tenors concert. Which might explain why it was men attempting to sing it in the shower.

Was the BBC’s then attempt a laudable case of “popularising”? Yes. But as “propologia” is pig-Greek so is Puccini-before-a-football-match “pig-opera”.

To my surprise, the greatest objections to Piano’s plans are being made to his plans for Freedom Square. Not to the Parliament building as such. There were objections to that, of course, from people who cannot see that it fully complements the military architecture of Valletta (St James Cavalier in the back and the new city gate at the side) or people who fail to appreciate the role of a parliament in democratic life.

No, I mean the ones who lament the loss of “much needed open space”. But before we move to that let me remind the “traditionalist purists” (“give us the old opera house!”) that until the late 1960s that space was built. No walled city in the world would have placed a square next to the main gate. The gate tends to be the weakest spot in the wall, the point where the enemy would be most likely to breach and having a tight space would have given defenders a last-ditch opportunity to fight back from close quarters (if not confuse the infiltrators as they make their way in). Mdina is a great example: the “civilian” square is in the centre and the “military” square is at the point furthest from the main entrance.

And of course calling Freedom Square a “square” is an excessively generous description of what’s little more than empty space. No, it’s not simply the victim of that Maltese habit of using space either for parking or to clutter with plastic chairs and umbrellas. A square is a focal point (which is why they tend to host markets) and Freedom Square is simply space on the side of the route people usually take moving in and out of the city. Indeed, the Square is, in my view, the point which needs most urgent addressing. The ruins are a monument to our failure to act and the gate a monument to our sense of aesthetics but it’s Freedom Square the real mutilation to the architectural and urban structure of the city.

But back to the main subject. Alfred Mifsud wrote in today’s Indy. He’s generally positive about the entire project, by the way, and the point he makes about pedestrian access from Floriana to Valletta, imperiled as it is with the buses that go by is valid. Here’s Mifsud on the Piano’s proposal for Freedom Square:

I am sorry but this is just crazy. Not because there is anything wrong in having a parliament building in the City entrance; but because Valletta needs more not less open spaces. Freedom Square should be a people’s parliament not a representative’s parliament. It should be where people meet, talk, discuss, argue, demonstrate and do whatever is democratically allowed in the pursuit of freedom of expression. And this can be done in a pleasant environment with full view of St James Bastions by redeveloping exactly as Piano has suggested but without parliament dual building, which should be replaced by landscaped gardens instead of the present car park cum shopping complex.

Let’s put aside the silly (and communist-sounding) distinction between “people’s parliament” and “representative parliament”. Let’s also put aside the fact that a landscaped garden and a space where people demonstrate are hardly compatible ends. Why does Valletta need more open spaces, whatever they are?

Readers will hopefully forgive me for having to rely, once more, on the excellent writings of Mark-Anthony Falzon. Some months ago he wrote about communities, largely imagined, in whose name political agendas on the use of public space are being pushed. And since the rhetoric is so compelling, government (and opposition) buy in. Here’s Falzon on the “desires” of these “communities”:

There are three main types of desire. First, a perceived need for specialised — and sanitised — spaces of recreation (this is the speciality of the local councils). Second, desires that have to do with practices (festi, for example, or Good Friday processions) linked to local church/parish ‘communities’. Third, things like local facilities for team sports, which may be read as collective celebrations of the ancestral attachments I mentioned earlier.

My point is that ‘local communities’ tend to be formulaic. They also have depressingly unimaginative ideas about what they ought to look like. A couple of years ago, for example, Cospicua council in conjunction with the government (there, dialogue) embarked on a project to create a new recreational space for the area. Hundreds of thousands of euros on, we have the ghastly — and utterly useless — ‘Cottonera Garden’. The (good but misguided) intention of the council was to provide the people of Cospicua with a recreational space, irrespective of the indigenous patterns of leisure of the place. The mistake of the government was that it listened.

Falzon’s choice of example is salutary in the “Freedom Square as garden” debate. I don’t know how many more rehailitated gardens it will take before government, central and local, realise that, in effect people are not really interested. Oh, they might pay lip service but they vote with their feet and public gardens end up as places for teenagers to get sloshed or junkies to get high, if we’re so lucky to have them used. Which is why many local authorities abroad are transforming gardens into centres for community gardening (privatisation, in a way, of public space). Which is why the part I find most suspect about Piano’s plans is the garden in the ditch.

As someone who’s worked in Valletta for many years I cannot fathom why any office worker should want to spend time in a garden with high buildings all around. For, if there was something my colleagues and I were on the lookout for — as an alternative to the many hidden watering holes in the city — was vistas. That of the Grand Harour from the Upper Barracca. Of Marsamxett from il-Mandraġġ. And of the open sea from near Fort St Elmo which gives you a greater sense of freedom than any grotty garden would.

And Valletta residents? Don’t worry they have their open recreational spaces, away from spaces where “outsiders” hang out. They won’t be enjoying the fresh air in Freedom Square Garden.

The discussion following the presentation of Piano’s plans for Valletta’s entrance continues. As they say, it’s generating more heat than light. Here’s a sample:

I hope I am not the only one by suggesting that the parliament looks like an alien super UFO who has just landed from its journey from Mars … lets take this opportunity and turn Freedom Square into a typical European city square, paved in the same manner like Republic Street and in the middle, a grand monument to the knights of Malta depicting their victory over the Ottomans (aka lord Nelson type monument in Trafalgar Square but with our La Vallette towering over the city with his famous sword by his side).

Spaceships come in various shapes and sizes but this would be the first one that’s “very squarish” as someone else called it. And a “typical European city square”, whatever that is, is usually found at the centre of the city not at the entrance to the side.

But if you think the La Vallette on a column was tacky (with his “famous sword”, the one with which he cut off Dragut’s head, by his side) here’s more:

I wish the Prime Minister read my Recommendations in my Dissertation, which includes the whole area. I recommended the Opera House re-built with a touch of modern architecture, the arches changed into round marble with Designer shops underneath and the Square, with a beautiful large Romanesque Fountain with Dolceria and coffee businesses around the square. I also suggested auditioned Street theatre. Now that is what Valletta needs and it also compliments the rest of the city. As far as City Gate is concerned, I made that entrance into a modern Tri Glass Pyramids where Art Exhibitions and other that can utilize the space in line with our Cultured mindset.

An Opera House in neo-classical (19th century) with “a touch of modern” (21st century), a large Romanesque (circa 10th to 13th century) fountain and tri-glass pyramids (20th century Louvre?). Sublime.

I remember a tongue-in-cheek argument which went something like this: assume you are the voice of the people, assume the voice of the people is the voice of God (“Vox Popoli, Vox Dei”, no?), ergo your voice is the voice of God.

The argument is logically sound, it’s the premises that are fatuous. Not that that ever served to hold back commenters on the Times from making claims on behalf of the people, with one letter today going as far as to claim that the people “have voted” just by commenting online. Oddly enough these opinions are often accompanied with the tired quote that Valletta is a city “built by gentlemen for gentlemen” — when “gentleman” obviously signified a class distinction to show detachment from the hoi polloi.

Renzo Piano is not some poor, starving architect desperate to get some sort of commission. He has a long track record, a reputation and admiration to go with it and, I’m pretty sure, a long list of potential clients in his waiting room. You may not like his Centre Pompidou (which, it is worth reminding, houses a museum of modern art and a research centre for acoustics). But that is definitely not enough grounds to dismiss him considering his portfolio is long and extensive.

Which also means that the “money motive” was hardly the strongest in this case. This point is worth making for no other reason that the commenters on the Times, think they smell a rat. Architects’ fees in Malta, by the way, are fixed by law and it has already been made clear that the law will be applied and Piano will be paid as much as any other architect would have been paid for a project of that size.

Now to the main changes proposed. First, the characterless Freedom Square is to go. The attempt to redesign Valletta’s entrance in a monumental style in the late 1960s was not only lamentable, it was thwarted to render any sense of “monumentality” the design concept might have had into sheer blandness. Loss of open space, somebody complained, in a city that’s surrounded on three sides by sea. A walled city which can afford some extra space for … parking cars. Oh, and Carnival, although for some four centuries before the space was cleared, space or perceived lack thereof did not seem to be a constraint on the revelry.

Second, city gate. No longer to be a gate just a breach in the wall, say some others, oblivious to the fact — probably due to the fact that it’s convenient — that that’s what Glormu Cassar Avenue already is. The Turks might even considering staging another siege. If they do they will presumably not take note of what the Germans did in the last one rendering the military value of the walls to nil. The bastions may be “firm” and “high” as they are praised in the ludicrous song “Viva Malta” but the Luftwaffe and the Regia Aeronautica seemed unimpressed. And they got to the Opera House without the need to breach walls. Piano’s proposal gives Valletta a more welcoming and open look while, at the same time, retaining and emphasising the austere and sparse geometric feel of the rest of the city’s military architecture.

Which brings me to the third element of the design, the site of the Royal Opera House. I had previously noted that the calls to rebuild it “as it was” had died down. Well, not on the Times comment pages, I regretfully note. Just as a reminder to those who lament Government commissioning a foreigner that Edward Middleton Barry was British. Piano is manifestly a man interested, if not in love, with Valletta having had a keen interest for some twenty five years. Barry did not even visit Malta let alone the site which, at first, he thought was flat. When informed of the slight slope he simply added a “platform” which, thankfully, alleviated the nauseating effect of the colonnade.

Barry’s achievement is that he managed to combine an attitude of condescension (include here the neo-classical features, so favoured by the British colonial authorities) with the Maltese love for over-wrought lavur. The result was something which, incredibly, few seem to have found at odds in the “baroque city” — that catch-all category which somehow could include the elaborate faced of the Auberge de Castille, the military geometry of St James Cavalier, the “libertine” style of Palazzo Ferreria and Barry’s ħamallata.

Or maybe they did. In the immediate post-War we almost got something that was not Barry, a design by Italian architects (yeah, foreigners … unlike Barry) which only got shelved because of other pressing priorities. And it would not have been unique. None of the significant Valletta buildings that came down during the War were rebuilt like the original. Well, almost. The facade of the old Auberge d’Auvergne Provence was reproduced in the case of the Law Courts with the unfortunate addition of … wait for it … a colonnade! A homage to Barry and all things neo-classical? Don’t know but that should have been enough warning.

A final point on the open air theatre. A poor man’s version of a theatre is has been said. Exposing possible operaic performances to the elements. They stage open air opera in the Verona Arena but — if we’ll ever afford to stage an operaic performance — the exception maltaise applies. Here’s Joseph Vella-Bondin, Malta’s “acknowledged leading bass singer”:

A project cannot be justified on the rationale that open-air venues in historical ruins like the Terme di Caracalla do well. Malta is a small island in the middle of the Mediterranean and consequently, with its specific climatic conditions and its particular demographical, religious and social situations. In the context of a permanent open-air theatre, these factors may require a careful assessment before scarce resources are committed to such a project.

Now somebody please tell me why being a “small island in the middle of the Mediterranean” should give you any specific climatic, demographical, religious and social conditions which are not the case in Rome.

Wont of something sensible on the subject and can’t find it? May I suggest Mark-Anthony Falzon’s column last Sunday. Here’s a lengthy extract:

For my part, I choose to belong to that community which will most likely win the competition (provided the project actually materialises – I have said before that I will only believe it when I put my finger into the wet cement). Let’s call it the ‘let Piano do as he pleases’ community. Just as well it will win, for the following reason.

An architect is a bit like a judge. A judge presides over court proceedings and listens to a number (at least two unless the defendant pleads guilty) of interpretations. At some point, however, the judge must perform the violence of stopping the ping-pong process in favour of one interpretation.

Likewise, an architect has a number of options available, each of which usually expresses the desires of a particular community. Because they must at some point build, however, the architect performs the violence of ‘freezing’ a community and representing it in brick and mortar.

That is why we need such a great architect for such a great space. The skateboarding and melitensia boffins simply wouldn’t do. Whatever Piano chooses to freeze will very likely be worth the trouble, because he is Renzo Piano.

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.

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.

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.