Gone fishing or the Public Accounts Committee
I caught a glimpse of the proceedings at the Public Accounts Committee sessions. Inelegant and clumsy are the first words that come to mind. It was never meant to be a fashion statement or synchronised swimming, sure, but the overall impression before getting down to the nitty gritty is that of yet another debasement of institutional tradition.
Sitting in the metaphorical witness dock former PM Lawrence Gonzi had his patience tried by repeat questioning that seemed to be going nowhere. There was a moment of dramatic irony when Gonzi accused the Committee of not following the procedure it should (that of the COCP) when the Committee was actually chaired by (and therefore under the responsibility of) Jason Azzopardi of team PN.
Still, the line of questioning taken up by Justice Minister seems to be one of spurious fabrication very much in line with the journalistic style at MaltaToday (which revels in the idea of having kicked off this fracas in the first place) rather than the quest for some truth or other (in a land of multiple truths the first to the media machine is King). What exactly is the PAC after? What is this Enemalta business proving in the end?
In all probability this business, like surely many others to come, will prove that businesses, businessmen and corrupt persons in power (and by this I mean persons appointed to manage/run/sit on parastatal entities) will constantly try to find a convergence point in the shadows and suck from the public funds so long as they are not caught.
Amnesties and amnesia
It was also very interesting to watch the Justice Minister justify the line of questioning by claiming that the amnesty (proklama really) requires constant checking since one of the conditions it contains is that it can be withdrawn if the person enjoying its benefits is found to have hidden the truth.
So we have a “businessman” who is benefiting from an amnesty in order to assist the authorities in uncovering illicit activity by other “businessmen”. The current government’s line seems to be to question this amnesty (with the concurrent risk that many other people might end up not being brought to justice).
While all this is happening we have another sector (construction and development) in which the government seems to be adamant to offer a blanket amnesty to all those who have abused of the law (broken it) and partaken in the rape of the nation (metaphorically speaking). The Taghna Lkoll government has made no effort to hide its tight links to the Malta Developer’s Association and it’s erstwhile Chairman (or is he President?) Sandro Chetcuti.
There is no whistleblowing reason for an amnesty here. The feeble excuse that Taghna Lkoll philosophy can throw up (yes, like vomit) is that those paying for the amnesty will generate lots of money for the coffers. A blanket amnesty that allows people to buy scars on the face of the nation. Brilliant. So long as Sandro tells us that everything is just fine for the developers we must all be grateful.
Kulcha and Karnival
It may seem too facile an argument but the priorities of Taghna Lkoll in the field of culture are so obviously linked to core voting interests that you cannot but argue on the lines that sound both snobbish and classist. As the effort to denigrate the City Gate project continues to gather momentum we are told of the Great Carnival and Music set of stalls that will offset the great vacuum that exists. Minister Bonnici (him again) told the gathered press that we cannot continue with this “silo mentality” – I must confess I had to look it up since I am not a FEMA graduate and find marketing catchphrases particularly undigestible.
It turns out that fighting the “silo mentality” means copying the design of garages and stalls that some Taghna Lkoll-ing carnival float enthusiast (and ONE employee) had visited on a trip abroad and spending some 6 million euros to build a sort of samba-drone that doubles up as a garage band gig place much to the chagrin of William Mangion.
Is it facile to argue that the ditched plans for the ditch/moat are crying for re-instatement and could well have done with some of those millions? Is it too easy to argue that while we appreciate that the carnival custom in Malta does deserve an investment of sorts (inclusive of a papier-mache’ museum) this should not come as an easy-fix solution that is obviously lacking in global planning?
Personally I love the idea of a regenerated part of Marsa hosting a carnival drove complete with museums and apprentice schools. It is the way these ideas suddenly pop up and are so very evidently the result of “lapazzar” planning simply to shut the mouths of another cohort of voters that is absolutely obnoxious. Stilll. It’s better than those bastard nationalists who never listened eh?
They’re drowning again
Far from the offices of wake up and smell the coffee. Far from the populistic approaches and ISIS scaremongering. There, in the deep blue tempest toss’d seas, more and more of them are dying. On the eve of the day when Malta celebrates the feast of Saint Paul’s Shipwreck, tens of immigrants who had left Tripoli in the hope of a better future lost their lives to the sea and the cold. What value those lives to the thousands who will throng the streets of the city of gentlemen adulating the Magnus who like the immigrants had been toss’d by the same sea?
Lawyers and Lawyers
Two issues. First the hunting then the constitutional case where the PN seems to have regained two seats. We had a parade of practising and retired lawyers stating the obvious (and then even complicating matters in interviews by not getting it quite right) when it came to referenda and their consequences. Did we need that charade? It reminded me of that farce re-enacted by Alfred Sant pre-1996 when he sat down with the an accommodating notary to sign a “contract with the people” – blissfully ignorant that the whole business of election, swearing-in and governing already covered the job.
As for the constitutional case. There is a glaring silence on the PN side when it comes to arguing which seats should be compensated and why. I watched a lawyer called Adrian Delia perform logical summersaults on an interview with newsbook.com.mt. He was clearly confused by the question as to whether or not Labour should have lost two seats in the process. Let us set aside the absolute hypocrisy of a PN representative talking about proportional representation in parliament – the proportionality has nothing to do with it.
The two candidates Buttigieg and Azzopardi were deprived of their seats because of an error by the Electoral Commission when the original set of parliamentary seats was being distributed. Thus Azzopardi lost out to Justyne Caruana for the fifth seat in the 13th district. If the error is admitted and the proper count repristinated then it should automatically follow that Caruana would lose her seat and Azzopardi would take it up (ths giving a 3-2 result for PN in Gozo). Same applies for the Edward Scicluna – Claudette Buttigieg situation.
The compensation of seats for proportional purposes takes place AFTER the original election of 5 candidates from each district. It has nothing to do with the error that took place BEFORE the proportional attribution. The PN request before the Civil Court should technically have included the request to have the Labour candidates erroneously elected replaced with the nationalist candidates who had been “cheated” by the error.
Happy Saint Paul’s feast to all J’accuse readers. We are one month away from our 10th anniversary of this blog. Thank you for your custom.
5 replies on “I.M. Jack – the pauline edition”
I have not had the time to read thoroughly all the judgment on the last general elections and may comment further on this. However on the point of the conclusion that 2 additional PN MPs sit in our spanking new huge Parliament building, the Court of first instance, in its infinite wisdom, took up the suggestion of the learned lawyer appearing for the PN, Dr T. Comodini Cachia, and argued that this is the least “harmful” remedy. We still have to wait the final judgment to be delivered by the very learned judges of the Costitutional Court in their much more infinite wisdom.
Since Dr Adrian Delia may read this blog post and this comment, I send my regards to him.
I am not partial to using hyperbolic phrases when describing the workings of a court. False or pretended awe only leads to situations where retired judges end up becoming demigods for the simple reason that they warmed the bench for so long and not for having applied their brains to the analysis and interpretation of the law.
I am also not too happy to simply parrot the pleadings of this and that lawyer without questioning the reasoning in the spirit of analysis that is so often lacking. In this case you laud (or mock?) Dr Comodini Cachia’s argument taken up by the court without asking the most obvious of questions (of course you are forgiven – yours is the business of parroting not questioning). “Least harmful remedy” sounds very retributive and just, especially when phrased in those terms but “least harmful” to whom?
The provisions and rules regarding electoral processes are there to guarantee one right and one right only – that of the voter to be properly represented. The fact that one of the PLPN would be deprived of a seat that was wrongly acquired (in this case Buttigieg replacing Scicluna as the court concluded – having dismissed Azzopardi’s argument) is not harmful to the voter who would have his right to determine seating in parliament reinstated. Least harmful only makes sense if the rules were written to protect the political parties (ergo let us patch this up somehow by twisting the rules and keeping a wrongly elected Labour MP in his seat). They are not. They are there for the service of the citizens and if the court has found a mistaken attribution of the seat in the 8th district then the proper remedy – least harmful to the voter would be removing Scicluna’s seat and giving it to Claudette Buttigieg.
As for your comment regarding Adrian Delia, I am quite sure that in your parroting and reproducing tradition you have already forwarded the necessary – in which case I too salute him and welcome him to this discussion.
I am not sure if I am a pigeon, a parrot or a mocking bird. Neither am I in true, false or pretended awe at what is stated by any sitting, standing, sleeping or retired judge or lawyer or blogger though I respect all these persons and their views.
In my previous comment I just mentioned the argument used by the court to justify the additional seats since you did not state this. Its a moot point if this is a valid or a spurious argument. Your remedy sounds logical however the court may have argued that “the life of the law is not logic but experience”. There is no doubt that analysis is often lacking. Critical and serious analysis is not only often lacking but a rara if not a nearly extinct avis. Maybe the hunters killed them all.
Vir prudens non contra ventum mingit.
Just for the benefit of those who did not follow Dr Delia’s interview.http://www.newsbook.com.mt/artikli/2015/2/8/siggijiet-pn-l-avukat-generali-se-jara-r-ragunijiet-ghalfejn-il-gvern-se-jappella-s-sentenza.27425/
In my previous comments, I missed out part of the judgment’s reasoning. It stated that the fact that the election of MPs is declared invalid would question and put into doubt Parliament’s legitimacy and the laws approved by Parliament in the last 2 years.
The court also seemed to argue that the error by the Electoral Commission caused a lack of proportionality. Therefore the court seems not to have adopted the more logical approach you asserted, that is providing for correcting the counting mistake and then examining the proportionality issue. It seems to have lumped the two issues of error in counting and proprotionality together. In fact the two PN MP’s to be elected according to this judgment do not necessarily have to be candidates on the districts where errors were made. It seems that the court in no way wanted to order a correction of any error but then went to great lengths to examine and remedy the proportionality issue.
While I hope to have tried to analyse at least superficially this issue, I also hope a deeper analysis is made by the Constitutional Court. The future beckons.