Propaganda Pay-As-You-Please

Just imagine. The tax collector comes round and you tell him “Dude, I’m experiencing cashflow problems, mind if I pay you later?” No need to get that extreme. Just imagine checking out at the till of your supermarket and when the uber-bored guy at the till robotically announces the amount (and points to the five million packs of free water that you have just “won”) you tell him “Righto, I’ll pack the water but I’ll pay you next month… if I find the cash”.

It’s not done is it? You rent a place to run a restaurant or a strip joint, whatever, and you are expected to cough up the rent. Pronto. No rent and you are evicted. You don’t pay your water and electricity bills and you find yourself showering at the neighbours (if they can tolerate the mess you leave behind).

Except of course if you’re a political party. Ever since the PLPN decreed that “pluralism” (whatever happened to that word that used to be uttered like some magic mantra) would be showered on the expectant peoples, and ever since the likes of 101, SuperOne, Net TV and OneTV were unleashed on us the parties have had the lion’s share of broadcasting on the islands.

It is no secret that quality wise this increase in “competition” has been of no benefit whatsoever to the consumer. Given the talent gene pool limitations it would be hardly surprising should this island sustain one good quality TV structure (broadcasting corporation) branching out into specialised channels. Instead we have the two political channels lording it out and churning out Malta’s worst – thankfully in a language that is only intelligible to the island’s converted insiders.

Now we have the Malta Broadcasting Authority openly admitting that: “over the years, the Authority has taken cognisance of the fact that most national broadcasting stations face cash flow problems – from time to time situations have arisen on certain occasions where stations have fallen behind in their payments.”. Which is quite a polite way of saying that more often than not the public secret ends up being the factual truth: our political parties couldn’t give a flying armadillo whether or not they afford to pay the €15,000 or so needed annually for a broadcasting licence.

Why should they? Who will have the guts to shut them and their operations down? This is a country that constitutionally takes the existence of a bi-party system for granted. It encourages the obvious inefficiencies of an inexistent competition – and this battle for the mediocre ground spreads from values, to business, to ideas and creativity to markets.

As I said in a previous post – and I think this will be J’accuse’s seasonal motto:

In this country we do not solve problems. We nurture them.

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Taxi Taxi

How many more times will we see taxis speed through the streets of Paceville as though their life depended on rounding the next corner like a crazy Le Mans driver? I  went out for dinner with the family in our home urban conglomerate yesterday and walking back home past Burger King in the direction of Wembley (Saint George’s Road) at least three white taxis sped past us without any concern for pedestrians.

In every case, without fail, the taxi driver would have one hand on the wheel and another on his phone – deeply engaged in conversation. Hands free? Why? All the talk about the PN’s strong fist with all things transport and yet the Taxi Drivers Inc (the white taxis) still rule the land in Paceville. The area opposite Burger King is their territory. Double, triple, parking and the walls of the former Enemalta building used as a latrine.

Cowboys of the road and harassers of tourists. That is all they are. Will someone -administration, police or whatever – be strong enough to get some order with these energumens? I doubt it. Venture in any city abroad and taxis stick to their designated places. If you need a taxi, you walk to the taxi stand. The taxi does not plonk itself in the middle of the most vibrant part of the area only to zoom away at turbo speed in what should be a maximum 15 km/h zone.

Hope? My guess is that the taxi drivers are probably mostly part time canvassers for some politician or other. Given the trend in that department it would hardly be surprising.

In this country we don’t solve problems. We nurture them.

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Academic?

It’s unbelievable. Joseph Muscat has gone on record stating that AST’s article was “an academic exercise”. What exactly is that supposed to mean? Is it to be ignored because “academia” is just an exercise in mental masturbation? Is Anton Refalo’s article in today’s Independent academic too? Should academia be dismissed in favour of the more “erudite” rantings of Joseph and his clan?

Let’s face it Joseph. At the end of the day the political chessboard has spoken. The PN is fully aware of the fact that it cannot rely on the votes of some of its MPs for much longer. That is why it “survived” the pre-estival votes and parliament is now in recess. This recess has delivered the obvious reality that the country is in full election mode: just look at the recent Billboard War. This recess will end with a few attempts at legislating that will inevitably culminate in a vote of confidence sooner rather than later.

What does that mean in real terms? It means that the PN is very aware that the present legislature and government has its days counted. What the PN does not do is erode at the legitimacy of the rule of law and the foundations of democratic government by constantly farting spurious arguments about “undemocratic government” that betray a clear will to ignore the rules of the game. Labour on the other hand is lost repeating the mantra of the obvious – clearly more comfortable in the “non-academic” field of conjecture so long as that means staying away from presenting its plan for government should it get elected.

Now Joseph has no qualms in belittling the importance of “academic” arguments  so long as he can gain more brownie points in the land of spin, conjecture and away from the tangible battles that should be the real battleground in the run-up to an election.

Incidentally Joseph, if Sciberras Trigona’s exercise was an academic exercise in, say, constitutional law, he’d be sitting in his little study sweating out over his notes prepping up for the September resit. Yes, Joseph, even his academic piece was an abject failure.

From the Times:

Labour leader Joseph Muscat has sidestepped the implications of an article penned by his international secretary, Alex Sceberras Trigona, saying the piece claiming the government had lost its “constitutional legality” was an academic exercise.

Asked if Dr Sceberras Trigona’s analysis reflected his position, Dr Muscat said he would rather focus on the political implications of the current “unsustainable” scenario and added that it was up to the Prime Minister to make the necessary decisions.

Dr Sceberras Trigona’s was “a good academic exercise”, Dr Muscat said.

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Anton Refalo & the law

Writing in the Malta Independent Today, Daphne Caruana Galizia takes another (well deserved) dig at Alex Sciberras Trigona and rightly points out the blatant incongruence of AST’s “democratic” arguments. It’s not just that AST has the barefaced cheek of calling the present situation undemocratic but also that he has got the basic constitutional principles wrong – as J’accuse has explained time and again, this government is legitimate so long as it does not lose a confidence vote in parliament. Daphne mentions the efforts of the Labour party to “rewrite history” and a quick look at the J’accuse archives points to how this effort at propagandist revisionism was predictable some time back (see The J’accuse 2011 Tag Cloud under “History Manipulation”).

The trouble (or one of the troubles) with Labour is that in their effort to counter the PN “30-years Back” propaganda they are coming up with the most brazenly offensive bits of propaganda with regard to the present government in an effort to picture its tenure as some dictatorial, non-law abiding clique in the style of an Army Coup in some tin pot democracy. Labour’s propaganda technique is simple: repeat a lie so many times that it begins to sound like the truth. We are not talking of legal nitpicking on some moot point that could go both ways but about a simple constitutional principle that yells in your face. A government is a government so long as it does not lose its support in parliament. The only way to gauge that support is by votes in parliament – not by declarations in MaltaToday or interpretations in MaltaStar or status updates on facebook. Simple.

Or it should be simple. Right beneath Daphne’s article (on the Indy Online) lies an article by Labour’s spokesman for Gozo Anton Refalo. The man’s reputation among legal circles is of an efficient lawyer – efficient does not translate to good and believe you me in this case good is very far from efficient. You see the laws of the land also include procedural elements and ethical components with regard to the functioning of a lawyer in assisting his clients. By abiding by these laws and procedures, lawyers form part of a wider system that does its best to mete out justice for all: blindly, impartially and equally. The rules of representation and chinese walls between lawyer and client in particular are very important for this functioning. I harbour strong doubts whether Anton Refalo, Gozo’s aspiring Minister even has a clue about how these should really work.

He gave us an example of his grasp of constitutional politics in today’s article. The bottom line is simple… the laws are just there for your aesthetic convenience. Follow the “social contract” (which one Anton? Should we have an Alfred Sant-like stunt every election with the Dear Leader signing some “social contract” for the fun of the people complete with Notary in attendance?) and forget the law.

The GonziPN can twist and spin the story beyond reasonable boundaries but the bottom line remains the same: That is, that the PN has lost the working majority in the House. Even if the Constitution still gives the PN the legal rights to remain in power, morally and politically it might not. There is no other way but to put an end to this situation by giving the people the right to express their view.

By refusing to take this step, the Prime Minister is putting himself in a situation where his legitimacy is being eroded. The Prime Minister must realise that ultimately any democratically-elected sovereign derives his legitimacy more from an unwritten social contract than from the written laws.

Well Anton. A democratically elected sovereign will go to the polls once it is clear that he has lost the working majority of the house. He does so when a vote of confidence is called in the house (as has been done over the past year) and when that vote of confidence is lost (as has not happened yet). In the meantime all the talk about legitimacy and undemocratic regimes is just a load of hot air, talk and bravado. It may work elsewhere Anton, but so long as the law is to be abided and so long as we have a modicum of decency in the application of that law then you’ll have to wait for the inevitable vote of confidence that will crop up in the last semester of this year.

The law Anton, we are all servants of the law so that we may be free.

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The queue as a political symbol

The queue has taken centre stage in what has been dubbed the “Battle of the Billboards”. This summertime kerfuffle is a mere taster of pleasures yet to come since the electoral campaign promises to be a concentration of superficial messages orchestrated in physical tweets plastered across the illegal billboards across the land. Writing in his Sunday column Mark Anthony Falzon repeated one of the mantras of this blog: that the two party system suffers when one (or worse, both) of the parties lowers its standards. We tend to call it the race to mediocrity and there is now ample proof that the political parties abdicate the reasoned approach to convincing voters in favour of the marketing-driven propagandist approach.

So while the Nationalist party is lost in its fixation with Dr Who-like time-travelling reminding us that New Labour is old hat, the Labour party revels in the comfort zone of tit-for-tat. It is a comfort zone that is devoid of propositions and mainly constructed around the eternal grudges of real or perceived faults. Which is where the queue comes in handy. The PN marketing team was surely on a tea break when they came up with the cut and past job of a poster 30 years young. There was the obvious omission of the “conservative” part but that was a minor issue when compared to the humungous gaffe of bringing “the queue” to the fore of the current political discourse.

One reason why the Saatchi & Saatchi poster worked back in 1979 was surely the fact that it focused on the anger that people had for the incumbent Labour government. The queue is a potent symbol of dissatisfaction. People queueing for unemployment benefits were a strong reminder of things that were not working. It was tangible. The queues were there for all to see. By contrast the nationalist billboard falls into a double trap. First of all the proof of Labour not working can only come with a Labour party in government. Is the nationalist party’s word still strong enough for the voter to believe it? Which brings me to the second part of the trap. It was child’s play for Labour to appropriate itself of the queue symbol and use it to strengthen its Mantra for the Disgruntled.

We got the queues for operations, for jobs, for education. You name it, Labour cloned it. Did it matter that most of the counter-billboards were factually incorrect? Not much. Labour was given a free ride to do what it does best – repeat the lie enough times to make it sound true. Or trueish. The counter-counter-spin cried Not Fair! But the damage had been done. The PN had introduced a demon that would be hard to get rid of. It was now forced into a corner of comparing PN 2012’s achievements to those of Labour circa 1984. Let’s face it… it is a comparison that does not hold water.

The PN would have done better trying to force the hand of Joseph Muscat to come down from his castle in the sky non-committal mode and try to focus its billboards on exposing the emptiness of New Labour – whoever is in the present line up. The fixation on the Karmenu Vellas and Alex Sciberras Trigonas of this world is beginning to turn stale. There seems to be no end of it though and the PN stables seem to be lost in the taste-driven marketing ploys that only just tipped the scales in 2008 (and let’s not forget the JPO factor in that particular round of elections).

Speaking of JPO, do not underestimate the effect of the uninvited return of Jason Micallef as an election candidate. Muscat risks having his own JPO within his stables – another cohabitation in the making – and Labour do have a habit of making such internecine squabbles turn ugly. We can expect various phases of this new relationship. First the very public reconciliation and the “all’s well that ends well” approach. Then the early post election phase we can call the “there’s daggers in men’s eyes” phase. Finally there will be the inevitable eruption when a possible PM  Muscat realises – as Gonzi did much to his chagrin – that you cannot keep everybody happy all the time.

What then? Then we can party like it’s 1979.

 

ADDENDUM:

Remember this from the late 80’s? The queue – a potent political symbol indeed. Music by Brown Rice for the legendary satirical programme “Aħn’aħna jew m’aħniex”…

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The IVF conundrum

I have been meaning to blog about the controversy that is the new IVF bill and reactions thereto. Setting aside the position taken by the church – a position to which it is entitled but which should obviously not be taken as the universal truth in a secular society – there is also the position of the LGBT lobby that begs consideration.

The premise of the LGBT lobby’s assertion is that IVF should be accessible to same-sex couples and single parents. I have serious problems getting my head around this one for the reason that I see IVF as a scientific aid to couples who are finding trouble having children. IVF in that context assists these couples. What the new bill is proposing to do is to regulate the matter in such a way that such couples no longer find themselves in an illegal situation when having recourse to the benefits of scientific advances.

I find that the qualms expressed by Andrew Borg Cardona in today’s column are very much the ones that I have – in particular with regard to the fish and bicycle argument. It is hard to envisage a fundamental right for LGBT couples to IVF though, like Andrew I would not be one to set up barricades should such a law eventually come to pass. The incongruence is between the idea of what is accepted in current society (and what has been transformed into law) and the possibility of a fundamental change in that very level of mores.

Without entering into the issue of whether same-sex couples having offspring (obviously with donors involved) is moral or immoral – I do feel confident in asserting that this kind of development would warrant a wider platform than a back-door entry via an enabling clause in a bill in parliament.

Here is the relevant part from Borg Cardona’s article (by the way Andrew … convoluted moi?)

The question is: Is it really the case that same-sex couples have a fundamental right to raise a family, a right that shouldn’t be denied by the law itself?

Speaking for myself, and a philosopher or ethicist I ain’t, I have this nagging doubt worrying my logical bone like a slightly lethargic puppy. It’s not something that exercises me to the max, far from it, and if the law were to be changed to accommodate same-sex couples, I’m not about to take to the barricades. In the case of two males, obviously, legislation concerning IVF is pretty much a fish and bicycle proposition, while, equally obviously, for two females, it is very relevant that the law is limiting the facility to male-female couple. Thankfully, no one has tried to square the circle that would be a lesbian and gay couple, who would appear to have no bar to getting married or resorting to IVF, somewhat paradoxically.

The real question to be getting back to is, then, can you extend the definition of a fundamental right to embrace people who don’t have the wherewithal to achieve what they’re trying to achieve? I really don’t know but my perhaps less liberal side tends towards the “not really” side of the argument.

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