imagine 18 impressions

Yesterday I was in Valletta for the opening of the imagine18 Conference & Workshops organised by the Malta Council for Culture and Arts in order to prepare for Valletta’s bid to be the European Capital of Culture in seven years’ time. The event was held in the sumptuous surroundings of the Manoel Theatre and was by open invitation. Anybody interested in contributing ideas to the bid could register and attend. Unfortunately I could not make it to the workshops this morning which makes me quite a passive attendee. On the other hand, J’accuse being J’accuse, we could not resist a little brainstorming exercise that resulted from yesterday’s sessions. The points are in no particular order and use twitter-ish convention… but here goes…

  • @organisers – great move to kick off in the insiprational setting, set the tone of seriousness balanced with casual exchange of ideas in TED style
  • the biggest question running persistently through my mind as the first presentations went by was : Who is this for? I got the feeling you get when you are having a bath and let your head go underwater … and start to hear the muffled noises get further and further away. Was Malta’s “cultured” crowd about to embark on another fancy trip of navel-gazing? Is there an audience for culture with a capital “C”‘ Should we be looking for it?
  • @toniattard invited people to start networking from now. In Malta? Do they really need to? Don’t they know enough of/about each other already? Will we be repackaging the current “culture crowd” and standards for the sake of the bid or will the (what I deem necessary) reinvention of cultural approaches be the happy result of this bid.
  • @adrianmamo culture is about recognising what we are and where we come from. Definitely. How to fit this into the @creativity works concept will be interesting.
  • the festa and village breeding crowd of malta’s equivalent of “popular culture” must be nurtured not invaded. The bandisti and the village space that is celebrated mostly at festa time must be recognised as a building block. When @toni put up a photo to represent Malta’s 71 theaters it was a photo of Gozo’s two main theaters – Astra and Aurora. No surprise there. Gozo has long built it’s cultural milieu around the civic conscience of its citizens. It may be time to ditch any snobbish attitudes towards this manner of expanding culture – centred around the kazin tal-banda, the pjazza and yes, the enemy of the liberals (?) the catholic church in its social vestige. “Modern” culture must be prepared to relate and not invade into this cultural breeding ground that works. Take the fireworks and package them well. You might even get a colourful success out of them.
  • I have a socialist twitch whenever I see culture being thought of in terms of revenue. €4m here and €4 there IS important but is that the only way we can sell this idea? I can guess that roping in politicians requires a bit of this too but surely there is a value in culture that goes beyond euros and cents?

I’m running short of time right now. Got more bullets to write later…. click back this evening for more.

 

imagine 18 on maltainsideout

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Sfegatati

We’re in our 7th year of blogging and the fourth one of our Sunday column and we like to think that J’accuse has had a rather consistent “editorial line” throughout this time. When I started blogging I chose “la verité si je mens” as a sort of motto for J’accuse. “The truth, if I lie” is an apparent contradiction picked up from a social commentary comedy film by the same name that pictures the world of the “tunsian-jews”. We later appended another motto – “ludendo castigat mores” – he makes light of serious values. I still like to believe that J’accuse remains an outlet of personal opinion and commentary on current events and beyond.

Dedicated readers will have noticed that my position on national politics is one that insists on the importance of proper representation and as a corollary points out the inadequacies and drawbacks of the bipartisan grasp on local politics. In other words we dish out deserved criticism to whoever falls within the line of fire of our argument. It is with huge disappointment that I still find that my blog is seen as a vehicle of “the PN” or “the PL” by some parts of the reading world. There could be a reinforcement of my original thesis here since anyone who is groomed to think in PLPN terms will only be able to be “hurt” by criticism of “his party” without seeing the wider picture of why the criticism is there in the first place (and by ignoring the fact that the criticism is meted out to other parties too).

The latest manifestation of the pigeonholing of J’accuse into “the other side” (a relative term) was on Saturday’s l-orizzont. A geezer by the name of Joe Fava had this to say:

Dan il-fatt lampanti, jiġifieri li llum GonziPN tilef kull nitfa ta’ kredibbiltà huwa aċċettat minn kulħadd. Saħansitra anke opinjonisti anti-Laburisti sfegatati bħal dak li fil-ġurnal The Malta Independent on Sunday, l-għaxqa tiegħu jakkuża b’kull malformità politika lill-PL u biex jikkopja lill-awtur famuż Franċiż Emile Zola jintitola l-kontribuzzjoni tiegħu J’accuse (jien nakkuża), kellu kontra qalbu jistqarr li l-opinjoni pubblika tant irriġettat lil GonziPN u tant qiegħda temmen lil Joseph Muscat, li kieku xi ħadd jgħid li Joseph Muscat ivvinta t-‘toaster’ u l-‘washing machine’, jemmnuh ukoll!

Whatever drugs this guy is taking should be distributed freely to the sad and bored of the land. J’accuse is not an anti-laburist, nor is it an anti-nazzjonalist. It is anti-bipartisan opiates. Incidentally Joe we acknowledge openly the Zola inspiration and we like to say that we are not copying the words but the spirit of J’accuse. It is evident that you have not noticed how the fact that the people are currently in gullible mode with regards to Muscat was not a complement nor a grudging acknowledgement. It was part of a wider argument that claimed that Muscat has gained such trust (if trust it is) through deceit and abdication of political responsibility.

Sfegatati we may be. But our tireless quest is the age old one shared by philosophers of old and young thinkers of new. As some friends commented on facebook there are good conclusions to be drawn out of this. Two in particular:

1. if ‘re getting it from both sides it means you’re doing something right! (M. Tortell)
2. There are worse things in life Jacques!! … Either one of them could be calling you ‘friend’… (C. Cassar Torregiani)

Q.E.D.

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J'accuse : Pater nunquam

Paul Borg Olivier has told the Nationalist Party General Council that the Nationalist Party remains “the party that proposes values without imposing them”. Take some time to chew on that one. Meanwhile, top guest on Xarabank, Joseph Muscat, regaled us with another assertion of Labour’s non-policy on divorce. Labour too, it seems, is not into the “imposing business” and it plans to do this by: (a) still not having a party policy on divorce (b) respecting the people’s choice and (contemporaneously) (c) allowing its MPs to vote as they damn well like. Still chewing?

Sometime last weekend I gave up trying to understand the Maltese voter and his priorities. I may have a (not too modest idea) or two about “prescriptive politics” and how a party ought to be run − together with the obvious corollaries of how a voter ought to vote. I am comfortable and, I do not hesitate to add, suitably trained to understand the constitutional implications of the role of values in representative politics. But the gap between informed opinion and voter instinct is as wide as ever.

What I cannot by any standard fathom is how, after these two separate announcements on Friday evening, Facebook (that inaccurate gauge of popular feeling) is populated with fawning subjects of either kingdom in our political spectrum. Over the last week we saw the two main parties pull off a great con (successfully I would say) and monopolise their corner of “new liberalism”. In their own way the PLPN politicians are grooming the voter to believe that he can still feel comfortable under their umbrella (the Umbrella Party survived the divorce scare) and by gosh are we swallowing the bait… hook, line and sinker.

Value-less

You would have thought − for even a fleeting second − that a party does not simply “propose values” but actually is a guarantee for a set of values. Borg Olivier’s reasoning is, I am sorry to say, a coward’s way out. Or a populist’s. It allows a party like the PN to shed its value-based backbone in favour of a variety of propositions. It’s the “anything goes so long as the people who elect us will it” solution. Nice. What use the rhetoric of a party position? Why bother anyway if the MPs elected on your ticket will simply follow the flow at the end of the day?

Muscat’s reasoning is only ever so slightly different. His party fence-sat the pre-referendum stage. Once “the people” had spoken and once “the people” could shoulder the responsibility, he moves into phase two − “my MPs OUGHT to vote yes”. Even in this fence-sitting stage Muscat cannot bring his party to take a solid position. Not even with the “people have spoken” business can he oblige all his members to vote yes (or abstain). Why bother?

The first survey on voting trends after the referendum shows Alternattiva Demokratika down a few points. This was the most shocking result to my mind. Shocking because I cannot understand how someone answering a survey (no electoral commitment here − how about using it for a tbeżbiża?) does not use the opportunity to show the value-less parties just how he could switch to a different option that was clear about its position from the start.

I can afford to be shocked at the voter. I can even afford to blame him. I can do that because I do not contest the election as a party. Alternattiva Demokratika cannot. They have to read the writing on the wall. They are obliged to do their homework from now and ask themselves how come, notwithstanding all the newfound exposure in the new media and old during the referendum, so few people view them as a viable alternative. The answers they find may be even more shocking than they think.

Clue-less

The absorption of a budding liberal civil rights movement into the fold of the two Liquorice Allsorts parties probably means that we will have to make do with bipartisan foot-shuffling and pussy-footing for some time yet. That deal is now reinforced with the abdication from representative value politics by the parties, in exchange for this populist knee-jerk vision. It does not bode well. When Eddie Fenech Adami went on radio and spoke of the dangers of relativism to a political party you could not agree with him more.

Come next election the voter will be clueless as to who or what he is electing to represent him. Muscat will write his manifesto as he goes along and Borg Olivier will be busy “proposing values” without the intention of “imposing them”. Whether another JPO will be lurking in the back of one of our ballot sheets − happy with the idea that whatever party he is representing never really asked him if he had any “private” ideas for a bill − will be anybody’s guess. Chances are that barring a “tkaxkira” of four seat majority proportions, any group of private minded newly-elected MPs could decide to embark on a bit of Pullicino Orlando politics of their own. Who’s the Kingmaker now?

Father-less

The amazing tricks our politicians can pull mean that in a short period of time it will be business as usual. “Se vogliamo che tutto cambi bisogna che tutto rimanga lo stesso”. “Issues” that require a key code of values for solving will not suddenly vanish though. From IVF to the management of transport on the islands to marriage for same sex couples, there is much more on the agenda. Each of these issues would normally require a clear position. They will of course find politicians to “mother” them − and probably from both sides of the House. What remains to be seen is whether this modus operandi, where laws are mothered through Parliament by ad hoc coalitions while they are left fatherless by the parties who should have left their stamp one way or another, will actually work.

Elsewhere on the island it has been shocking to see that as Valletta gears up to becoming European cultural capital, vandals struck at the freshly unveiled monument in Bisazza Street. The biggest news on the continent, apart from the spread of the E.coli scares, remains the perilous state of affairs in Greece. Depending on what press you read, you could expect anything from a new “Lehmann Brothers for Europe” to the “possible death of the EU”. It’s a tough one to call − let’s hope our parliamentarians will not be caught bickering over their latest value shift if the economic repercussions head our way… if they’re anywhere near Parliament that is.

www.akkuza.com will be coming to you from an event filled week in Malta. Happy Father’s Day to all dads (this time I got the week right). Pierre Mejlak’s new book is out on Wednesday and I am glad that the launch will happily coincide with my latest escapade to Malta. After I finished typing this article PM Lawrence Gonzi described PN’s politics as a “rainbow of options” − so there you have it: Mater semper certa est, pater nunquam.

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Unplanned

ARRIVA is due to launch the new nationwide transport system on the 3rd of July this year. Drivers are being trained, fares have been calculated and new routes have been on the drawing board for quite some time now. While the size and type of transition will justify glitches along the way there is an irritating feel to the kind of transitional glitches that have surfaced recently. Two of them in particular:

1. The Bisazza Street gaffe: The man who would love to seem to be the brains behind the scenes a.k.a Manuel Delia of the Austin Gatt ministry (and PN candidate to be) explained that the detour around newly pedestrianised Bisazza Street would throw Arriva’s intelligent information system out of the window. As pathetic excuses go this one takes the ticket. Even the online commentators on the Times – not usually the best measure for spontaneous bursts of intelligent remarks – pointed out that an intelligent system does not get “thrown out of the window” every time there is a deviation.

It then transpires that, based on the agreement negotiated by Manuel Delia’s government with Arriva, the transport company will be entitled to compensation every time government works will oblige it to reroute. If we were to take the Times reporting as a fact then it would seem that such compensation is only due in the case of permanent rerouting:

The contract also lays down a formula for compensation under which a re-routing of this nature* will have to take place. This is calculated by multiplying distance by frequency, with the latter being the crucial element in this case. (…) Meanwhile, Mr Delia said rumours that councils would have to pay some form of compensation to Arriva for closing a road off temporarily were “complete rubbish”. In such cases, councils should inform Transport Malta of the planned closure which would in turn inform Arriva, who would tell its customers accordingly, he said.

*we are not told what “of this nature” really means and are assuming it is “permanent”

So in a country where roadworks are the norm – blockages almost a standard and government planning as controlled as a Brighton Beach Party – we have a government that ties this kind of clause into a contract. At least there is always the Resources Ministry to blame if the government is obliged to pay compensation for a Transport Ministry sanctioned contract. (see ADDENDUM) The left hand blaming the right anyone? So Mr. Delia… I guess what with all the lovely clauses you negotiated you also have one explaining to the taxpayer why he must cover the bill for your half-arsed planning.

2. The Bus Driver Shortage. And since bus drivers are not in great abundance it seems that the Transport Authority is having difficulties finding bus drivers to run the current system since many drivers are off training at ARRIVA.

As the yellow buses struggle to keep the public transport service running, with drivers being taken up for training by the new operator, Transport Malta has stepped in to ease the burden by helping with dispatching. (Times)

You cannot really blame ARRIVA can you? Then again.. what were they thinking?

3. Fare’s Fair?

Unless I am completely mistaken the fare business seems to have been settled. ARRIVA will be going ahead with the resident/non-resident distinction as the tiny disclaimer at the foot of the FARES page will show you:

*All the fares shown above are discounted Adult fares for Malta ID card holders.  To take advantage of these fares you must carry your ID card when travelling.  Full fare information for non-residents, as well as concessionary fare details, can be accessed here.

There is also the ARRIVA SAVER card that will require you to download and print a form, trundle off to the POST office (33 available branches), pay a €5 administration fee and choose between a 30 and 90 day top up.To be fair it seems that online top ups are in the pipeline. Still… this will not be the last that we hear on discrimination on basis of residence.

Interestingly there is this disclaimer regarding Gozitans or what seem to be the Maltese who carry an ID with an address in Gozo to save on the Gozo Ferry fee…

Please note, the Arriva Saver Card can be used in Malta only – unless when applying the customer can produce a relevant Malta ID card with a Gozo address, in which case they can also use their Saver Card for travel in Gozo.

I cannot understand this one. Is it telling me I cannot use the card in Gozo for buses in Gozo? What else can you have if not a Malta ID card? What kind of difference/distinction/discriminatory condition is “a relevant Malta ID card with a Gozo address”? This seems to me a very convoluted way of justifying the double-insularity exception for Gozo (the same one that allows Gozo Channel to “discriminate” fees). It would probably have been easier for two companies to have been formed ARRIVA MALTA and ARRIVA GOZO – each with their separate ticketing system. But hey… who am I to know?

ADDENDUM: In a MaltaToday report we read the following:

It turns out that it was only on 21 April – five months after Transport Malta signed the agreement with Arriva – that the Ministry for Resources and Rural Affairs asked Transport Malta to consider the complete pedestrianisation of Bisazza Street. This meant the decision to have a fully pedestrianised street was left up until too late for any changes to the Arriva contract.

Which might seem to be a saving point for the negotiators of the contract. Sure, until you realise that this will (probably) not be the last time the government (and yes, it’s useless pointing fingers at separate ministries) will decide to restructure the urban landscape. The timing of THIS pedestrianisation is not as much to blame as the clause that allows for compensation for rerouting in certain circumstances.

 

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Micro-akkuza

J’accuse will be performing some changes over the next coming days in view of the “summer” (and may I add pre-wedding) blogging period. Don’t worry there will not be any stories about purchase of tails and rental of halls. It’s just that we will be experimenting with the concept of “microblogging” and seeing whether it integrates well with the idea of shorter, concise thoughts for this blog. You’ll get a chance to tell me what you think. In the meantime look out for a re-vu-like switch for the next few days as we work on the micro-blogging idea.

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J'accuse : Wasted

It’s honoraria now. You cannot blame Labour for enthusiastically fanning the flames of disgruntlement with Gonzi’s government. Muscat has just gotten away with convincing a huge chunk of the population that the Yes to Divorce was a victory achieved by Labour. It was not, and I am not being petty. Labour’s foot shuffling and dilly-dallying was neither here nor there. While you read last Sunday’s J’accuse, Muscat was busy performing logical acrobatics claiming that the PN could do nothing else but vote YES after the referendum while contemporaneously repeating his spineless line that Labour’s position on divorce was a “free vote”.

Right now Muscat and Labour could very well tell most of the population that they were the inventors behind sliced bread, electricity and nuclear fission − and many would believe them. That is how our politics works. The wave of change is once again there for Labour to miss. The sad, sad thing is that the very modalities of the divorce debate that we are fast forgetting should have been proof enough that a change for Labour will only be the trademark “same, same but different”.

Empty vessels

They may be using the honoraria business as the latest excuse to expose the rifts between factions within the Nationalist government. If the reports I am reading are correct, Muscat has managed to make this sound as a vote of choice between “the Prime Minister and the Maltese people”.

Funny how he gets to dictate what this vote really means. True, the honoraria business is a PR catastrophe of gargantuan proportions and the government deserves a huge beating for it. On the other hand I am angry at the wonderful opportunity this has given both parties to bury the gaping lacunae that were exposed by the divorce debate. Luckily, we still have a whole Bill to go through so we might have a few reminders coming up.

The biggest lacuna is the most important of them all − one that each and every voter would do well to remember from here to the next election. It can come across as a boring point but there is a practical, pragmatic side to it that might even appeal to the most cynical among us. If only we let loose our presumed allegiances and grooming that is. It has all to do with a simple question: Why do you vote for a particular party in national elections?

The representative

Sure, we vote for MPs in order of preference. Why do we choose them? Presumably because they represent the best bet we have (a) for governing the country and (b) for endorsing particular policies. More importantly, we vote for MPs backed by political parties (specifically the two parties who have the odds stacked in their favour for being elected to Parliament). And why do we choose one party over another (forgetting for one minute the tesserati)?

We choose a party because of the principles it represents. Or so we thought. Recently we were presented with another reason to vote for one party and not the other. Put briefly, that reason was “the lesser evil”. Our parties could go on wearing their ideological and principle mask of preference while posing in multi-faceted dresses as Umbrella Liquorice Allsorts Parties. In truth, voting for PN or PL stopped meaning something different quite some time ago. I performed a little exercise on J’accuse yesterday. I called it “The Wasted Vote”. Here it is…

The Wasted Vote

So you voted PN last election? You got Lawrence Gonzi and Austin Gatt. You got David Agius and Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando. You got Edwin Vassallo and Tonio Fenech. You got Tonio Borg and Karl Gouder. You got the party that is anti-divorce on paper but can wake up one morning and spring a Private Members’ Bill surprise. You’ve also got Joe Saliba to thank for those sleepless nights conferring title after title on Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando − from dentist to farmer to press card bearing journalist. Don’t worry though… if you’ve got a liberal streak in you there’s always Cyrus Engerer and Frank Psaila’s plan for a “social liberal” face to save the day.

So you voted PL last election? Well, actually you voted for Alfred Sant’s MLP but we know where that one went. After the tears subsided what did you get? You got Joseph Muscat and Adrian Vassallo. You got Owen Bonnici and Marie Louise Coleiro Preca. You got Marlene Pullicino and Gino Cauchi. You got a party that wants to be liberal and progressive but fails to take a simple stand on divorce. You got the inventor of the “free vote” that means that whatever the flying flip you wanted to elect to Parliament has no point anyway − because the individuals’ conscience is paramount. So was it pro-divorce Muscat that you were thinking of or was it anti-divorce Vassallo?

Have you really ever sat down and wondered what your vote translates to once the noise of the last carcade subsides, once the last billboard of empty propaganda is removed and once the last article of the spinners of hate is condemned to the bottom of your dustbin?

Funny. Last I heard, NOT voting PL or PN would turn out to be a “wasted vote”.

Vote for nobody

It’s funny how a vote that could be “wasted” on “unelectable” Alternattiva Demokratika last time round could have elected the only party in Parliament to have a clear, unequivocal position on divorce. It’s not just divorce. There will be other future issues in which the two behemoths will shuffle their feet. Already we are seeing the mediatic reinvention of PN − with calls for a “social liberal” heart (the token push) or calls for more “pragmatism” (another way of saying yes we disagree with divorce but hey votes are votes).

There is no guarantee about what you can get with the 34+ candidates elected to Parliament on the ticket of either of the PLPN parties. Will it be a renegade PLPN politician promoting abortion? Will it be another one proposing a Private Member’s Bill banning crucifixes from classes? Can we ever know? The parties are more intent on throwing their nets as wide as possible than on seeing that they represent a clear set of commitments.

Might as well elect NOBODY in an Odyssean twist. Because NOBODY will keep election promises, NOBODY will listen to your concerns, NOBODY will have a clear policy to enact (without fear of losing votes), NOBODY cares. Maybe, if NOBODY is elected then things could get better for everyone (after all Belgium has got by for a year without a government).

Or you could do better than NOBODY. You could do the intelligent thing and ignore the idiots who are still smarting from their slip the last time round. Vote for a party that is clear on its ideals and selects candidates because they share a common goal and ideas − not for the sake of catching the vote of the LBGT/singles/hunters/economists/labourers/faux-progressives… oh you know what I mean.

I’m off to Strasbourg for the Pentecost ponte in Luxembourg. We have another (Holy) holiday on Monday. Must enjoy them for as long as they last. The Luxembourg Greens have tabled a motion in Parliament asking for the institution of a national holiday that is secular and not religious. They expressly asked for “a holiday without the Te Deum”. I wonder what our MPs’ conscience would say on that one.

 

www.akkuza.com Find out more about the Church, State and Luxembourg on our site. Happy Father’s day to all dads, in particular the Chelski maniac at home and the tennis champ.

 

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