Mediawatch

“So long as” and other impasses (UPDATED)

Euro(im)passe

At 10 a.m. the German Constitutional Court is expected to take a final decision on whether or not German President Gauck can sign the European Stability Mechanism and the European fiscal pact. German participation in the ESM has been described as crucial to the plans to “save” the euro and participating member states. Both agreements under court scrutiny had been approved by the German Parliament at the end of July (two-thirds majority in both cases). Still, the buck now rests with a court that has not shied away from putting its foot down previously. Notably, the Karlsruhe court spelt out its position very clearly in two human right related cases that have now become known as the Solange I and Solange II cases.

In both instances, while acknowledging the primacy of European law – as had been developed by EU jurisprudence – the court reserved the right to submit any laws and decisions to further review using the German standards of rights.  While the second Solange case was effectively a loosening of this “so long as it conforms with our national law” control there was still a postilla (as long as the European Communities, and in particular its Court, generally ensure an efficient protection of fundamental rights against the authorities of the Communities that is to be deemed equal in substance to the protection of fundamental rights inalienably required by the German Constitution).

In today’s judgement there could scarcely be space for any equivocation. The German government is expecting the green light to participate in both agreements (ESM & Fiscal pact) – anything else would be… well, let’s just not go there shall we? (UPDATED: We didn’t have to…)

THIS JUST IN

Electoral (Im)passe

It’s also time to look at the state of the nation insofar as elections are concerned. Franco Debono may have gone all trigger happy with his ever more popular blog (ah Alexa, sweet, sweet Alexa) but the question on many people’s lips is one: when shall Malta hold its next elections. Well, J’accuse has long gone on record that the beginning of the end of this legislature will be around the opening of the next parliament session. That’s earmarked for October. What laws (i.e. votes) could trigger the beginning of the end? Let’s see.

The Honourable Member from Ghaxaq has already prepared a motion relating to the use of certain types of fuel in Delimara. He intends to move that (or has moved it?) as a Private Members Bill.  He has filed the motion as a private member of parliament. The problem I see here is that this is a motion relating to expenditure and as far as I know (and I stand to be corrected by some Fausto, Franco or Erskine May himself at this rate) such votes cannot be moved by a private member so expect a ruling in this sense by Mr Speaker Frendo.

Franco has also been quite clear about his intention to move a motion of no confidence in Minister Joseph Cassar (nothing personal and all that). Now that is a motion that can be presented but that could also suffer the same ignoble treatment of hedging and agenda shifting that Mr Speaker is capable of if only to gain time.

Another bill that is on the frontburner is the doomed Cohabitation Bill. In this respect the pain in the government’s side is the Cohabitation Partner Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando (It’s Not a Coalition, Stupid). In this case an already botched attempt at drafting a common sense law leaves JPO with options wide open for him to be the one to bring the temple crushing down (and cock a snook at Franco). My guess (and this is a wild one) is that unless hugely reparative measures are made for the second draft following public consultation this bill will not make it in this legislature. Also, don’t forget the resistance that undoubtedly exists within PN circles against too much strengthening of same-sex couple rights. This is after all a party that is – on paper – against same-sex marriages.

Which leaves us with the budget. And I’ll leave you thinking about that one too…

Thou shalt not pass

What is all this criticism of Malta’s valiant 11 who battled the Iti’s? So bloody what if we gave them a taste of their own medicine and put down the chains across the harbour? Only a few days ago we celebrated Victory Day. 8th September 1565 – all through that Great Siege, the Grand Harbour was protected from incurring Saracen boats by a thick chain that crossed from fort to fort. This time the wall of intrepid defenders resisted most of the attacks from a formidable opponent – the Vice Champions of Europe nonetheless. That the goals came, when they came, from a quasi-offside and from a corner that never should have been given is a boon and boost for Pietro Ghedin’s side.

Catenaccio? Hello… this is not an Intercettati side claiming to be best in Europe or Chelski’s millionaires climbing the elimination stages with a defensive wall reminescent of Helenio Herrera’s worst. This was Hogg, Dimech, Borg, Schembri, and more…. standing tall among what are supposed to be the giants of football. Proud. Yep. Like Joseph Calleja, every one of those men on the pitch made us proud.

We also got the LOL moment when we finally realised that our neighbours don’t give so much of a fart about the tiny islands to the south. Unless of course we are sending on boatloads of refugees or immigrants then Malta is  “cavalieri”, “sole” and to some Paceville but nothing much more. What do you mean they don’t know we don’t give a damn about baseball? Hello Italia?

Giletti and other hoaxes

Finally spare a thought for the brains that came up with the wonderful Giletti hoax that had facebook buzzing a few hours before the match. I may have been guilty of spreading the link but I cannot claim to be the mastermind behind the actual creation. So a big round of applause goes to SL and RC for the technical side and content. And a little applause to the Times who did not bother with a denial this time round (unlike the time of the equally infamous “the pope is not coming” hoax).

If you have not seen the link here it is: Massimo Giletti claims Italy will thrash Maltese beggars . Read it, it’s hotter than a calabrian peperoni sauce.

(Don’t) Kill Bill

Mark Anthony Falzon penned a piece in today’s Times called “Kill the Cohabitation Bill” in which he argues that the best thing to do with the cohabitation bill is to dump it or kill it.  “The Bill proposes to give rights to people who don’t need and/or want them and deny them to those who do. It is quite simply an ass’s ass.” – Mark Mark’s words. I don’t agree with Mark. I don’t agree at all. The fundamental difference between what Mark is advocating and what I have been advocating from this little corner of the punditry universe is that Malta needs a Civil Partnerships Bill.

Thing is that what Malta also seems to be ready for is legislation allowing Same-Sex Marriage. There’s more to it. What happened in Malta is that we trod down the path towards a law regulating Civil Partnerships only as a result of a sort of compromise between the legislators and LGBT lobby groups. That is why we are hearing all this talk of “the Cohabitation Bill is not what we were led to believe that it would be”.

So yeah. Killing the Cohabitation Bill because it fails to take the same-sex marriage issue by the horns is a bit like wanting to shoot down a bill aimed at improving conditions for cyclists because such a bill discriminates against motorists. I’m not a big fan of the cohabitation nomenclature and would have much preferred a Civil Unions Bill or something similar. What’s in a name and all that? More crucially I believe that with some bona fide tweaking the bill that is currently on the table could become a valuable legal instrument that could be useful to quite a few citizens – by filling important lacunae that end up being uselessly discriminatory.

As for “intended” or “promised” bills relating to same-sex marriages. Well the enactment of a Civil Unions Bill should not in any way preclude serious work and progress in a parallel field of legislating same-sex marriages. Free of the contorted compromises and half-baked solutions, a draft bill with clear and concrete position on same-sex marriage and ancillary rights is not only the correct basis for proper decisions but also benefits all parties concerned.

Such a same-sex marriage bill would also oblige the shufflers and equivocators within the traditional party system to stop fence-sitting and get down to concrete action. Joseph Muscat will finally have to bear the decision making responsibility and stop faffing around with rainbow coloured flags while going nowhere. Same goes for any other politician who thought he could pull a smart one with the LGBT community by promising some half-baked bill (the legislative equivalent of promising with fingers crossed behind their back).

Meanwhile the serendipitous package of rights that is developing around what is currently called the Cohabitation Partnerships Bill deserves more respect from all parties. It does not need any killing or euthanasia attempts. It needs the right attention from the right parties.

Don’t Kill the bill.

The PM & the Black Knight

Appreciators of that fine vein of British humour that is the Monty Python collection will surely be familiar with the persona of the Black Knight that makes a fleeting (and diminishing) appearance in the movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail“.  For the unfortunate few who are sadly unaware of the existence of such sublime sketches let me just say that the ridiculous Black Knight appears in a short sketch (see video below) in which he duels with other knights in order to fulfil his destiny ensuring that “None shall pass”.  While battling the hero of this epic (Arthur) he ends up losing limb after limb but insists on continuing to fight (“’tis but a scratch). Hopping on one leg, armless he still manages to yell “I’m invincible” – a state of absolute comic denial as to the reality of his hopeless situation.

I was reminded of this sketch this weekend when I heard the PM insist that there was no problem of governability in one of his meetings with the people. Crisis? What crisis? The government has survived all assaults on its position (read: votes of confidence in parliament) and therefore after 4 and a half years it will not accept any talk of crisis. The government, you see, is invincible. Now a   great philosopher had once mentioned something about not being able to fool all of the people all of the time and this quote has been doing the rounds in some Labour quarters for quite some time.

PM Gonzi need not bother with the weekly maquillage any longer. If anything, last nights summary termination of all things Franco within the PN should have (as if it was necessary) given the game away to any doubters. The government lost its position of being able to horsetrade away any possibility of surviving votes of confidence towards the end of the last parliamentary session. At that point, Dr Gonzi and his staff knew full well that the business of government was to be punched in on borrowed time. Come October (if we are to wait till then) there will not be much stretching and pulling left – and no amount of distractions such as half-baked civil union bills, sudden illuminations on the censorship issue that never was or even IVF roundabouts will be able to pull off any reprieve of governance.

The difference between the situation today and the situation, say, in May, is that while it is true that for a long time the main trouble with the system of government was that “provoked” by backbenchers, the government had found a way of compromising with the troublemakers : right up to the entente pas trop cordiale reached in the Cohabitation Pact with JPO. Such compromises allowed Gonzi’s government to try to promote a business as usual attitude against all odds. That possibility has now all but waned away.

The inclement weather of the past few days allowed for more of the gemgem and placing of blame at the government’s doorstep. We even had the Msida mayor calling for more funds from government to maintain two resrvoirs at the end of valley road and to clear the tappieri. We wonder why the country gets flooded every year around the same time with uncanny regularity that Arriva can only dream of when the real culprit is the national mentality of “I’m alright so f-you Jack” that leads to clogged arteries and escape routes for the water that will still come down from the sky no matter who is in government.

Here is your check list before the election becomes the here and now: 8th September festivities with accompanying press releases and exchanges of witticisms. 21st September celebrations with similar exchanges followed by 22nd September mass meeting by Labour on Il-Fosos. A short session of “my mass meeting was bigger than yours” chivalric beatings followed by the results of (a) Labour’s Congress about the Future and (b) PN’s budget projections/electoral document.

Then Bob’s your uncle. We’ve gone on record stating that “In this country we don’t solve problems, we nurture them”.

Either that… or we deny they exist.

ADDENDUM :

I had only just posted this on J’accuse when I checked the latest news on the papers. Here is the Times reporting that “PN sources” seem to believe that Gonzi is still eyeing an early 2013 election (do note that it is not an official position – just “sources” – another way of putting out feelers?). Meanwhile MaltaToday tells us that Debono is toying with the idea of a motion of no confidence against health minister Joe Cassar. As we could put it so succinctly in the vernacular: aħdimha! (Work it out!).

 

Strasbourg on embryo screening

In what is set to be a landmark judgement, the Strasbourg based European Court of Human Rights held that an Italian ban that prevented a couple of healthy carriers of a genetic disease (cystic fibrosis) from screening embryos for in vitro fertilisation was in violation of their right to respect for their private and family life. (Costa and Pavan vs Italy, application 54270/10 – Judgement of 28th August 2012 not yet final).

The couple in question had already had one child. It was through this child that they found out that they were both healthy carriers of the disease cystic fibrosis .  Italian law prohibits “PID” (preimplantation diagnosis) and therefore the couple would be unable to go through a pregnancy without first ensuring that the new child would not suffer from the dangerous and fatal disease of cystic fibrosis.

From the ECHR press release:

Relying on Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life), the applicants complained that the only course open to them to have a baby that did not have cystic fibrosis was to start a pregnancy by natural means and medically terminate it every time the foetus tested positive for the disease. Under Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination), they claimed that they were victims of discrimination compared with sterile couples or those where the man had a sexually transmissible disease.

The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 20 September 2010. At the applicants’ request, on 4 May 2011 it was decided to give the case priority (Rule 41 of the Rules of Court).  The European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ), the “Movimento per la vita” association and 52 Italian MPs, as one third party intervener, and the “Luca Coscioni”, “Amica Cicogna Onlus”, “Cerco un bimbo” and “L’altra cicogna” associations, together with 60 Italian and European MPs, as another third party intervener, were authorised to submit  written observations (Article 36 § 2 of the Convention and Rule 44 § 3 of the Rules of
Court).

The Court considered that the applicants’ desire to resort to medically-assisted procreation and PID in order to have a baby that did not suffer from cystic fibrosis was a form of expression of their private and family life that fell within the scope of Article 8. The fact that the law did not allow them to proceed in this manner therefore amounted to an interference with their right to respect for their private and family life which was “in accordance with the law”5 and pursued the legitimate aims of protecting morals and the rights and freedoms of others.

The Italian Government justified this interference by the need to protect the health of the mother and child and the dignity and freedom of conscience of the medical professions, and to avoid the risk of eugenic abuses. The Court observed first of all that the notions of “embryo” and “child” must not be confused. It could not see how, in the event that the foetus proved to have the disease, a medically-assisted abortion could be reconciled with the Government’s justifications, considering, among other things, the consequences of such a procedure for both the foetus and the parents, particularly the mother.

The Court stressed the difference between this case, which concerned PID and homologous insemination, and that of S.H. v. Austria, which concerned access to donor insemination. Furthermore, although the question of access to PID raised delicate issues of a moral and ethical nature, the legislative choices made by Parliament in the matter did not elude the Court’s supervision. The Court noted that of the 32 Council of Europe member States whose legislation it examined, PID was only prohibited in Italy, Austria and Switzerland (regulated access to PID was currently being examined in Switzerland).

The Court observed that the inconsistency in Italian law – prohibiting the implantation of only those embryos which were healthy, but authorising the abortion of foetuses which showed symptoms of the disease – left the applicants only one choice, which brought anxiety and suffering: starting a pregnancy by natural means and terminating it if prenatal tests showed the foetus to have the disease. The Court accordingly considered that the interference with the applicants’ right to respect for their private and family life was disproportionate, in breach of Article 8.

Article 14
Discrimination, within the meaning of Article 14, meant treating persons in similar situations differently without an objective and reasonable justification. Here the Court noted that, where access to PID was concerned, couples in which the man was infected with a sexually transmissible disease were not treated differently to the applicants, as the prohibition applied to all categories of people. This part of the application was therefore rejected as being manifestly ill-founded.

Just satisfaction (Article 41)
The court held that Italy was to pay the applicants 15,000 euros (EUR) in respect of nonpecuniary
damage and EUR 2,500 in respect of costs and expenses.

Staring at the Sun

I have already written about the imagery surrounding Mintoff or rather the cult of Mintoff. From Saviour to Father of the Nation the persona is aggrandised as far as is superhumanly possible. Today’s Times includes an article by Joseph Vella Bonnici (My time under Dom Mintoff). Even if we dwell for a moment on the psychological implications of the title – “under” Mintoff – we find the implication of submission and subjugation. Our history books are replete with stories of Malta having been under the hold of this people or another- amazingly, no matter how independent, republican or free we may have become there are segments of the population who will speak of having lived “under” Mintoff. They reign, our leaders do you know.

Title psychology aside, Vella Bonnici’s article goes along very much in the vein of a militant Mintoffian – no harm there (I have been warned off picking on “mourners” as though questioning their historical revisionism is some form of disrespect). What really struck me is his concluding aphorism, straight off the mouth of an old friend of his:

A close friend of his once warned me that “Mintoff is like the sun. He is best seen from afar; if one gets too close there is a risk of getting burnt”.

Really? Mintoff is like the sun now? Comparisons to Le Roi Soleil and his famous “Etat c’est moi” would be facile – easy picking right? My reflection would be a little deeper – and is a direct consequence of the friend’s aphorism that fits so nicely with all that is being said and done about the Mintoff cult.

For you see Mr Vella Bonnici, it is a known fact that when you stare at the sun for too long  (no matter how near or far) there is only one consequence that is inevitable (oh the beautiful word)… you tend to go blind.

The blind followers of the sun king… now that’s a new one I hadn’t heard before.

 

Don’t try to hard to think, don’t think at all
I’m not the only one,
Staring at the sun.
Afraid of what you’d find
If you took a look inside
I’m not just deaf and dumb
Staring at the sun
Not the only one
Who’s happy to go blind

(U2 – staring at the sun)

 

The Council’s Shit

The Qawra dumping news has only just made the headlines. Some contractor had been asked to dredge a part of Qawra in order to clear an area close to the slipway, only that whoever gave the contractor the order omitted to tell him what to do with the sludge. The solution? The contractor dumps the sludge – not once, not twice, but thrice – in a bathing area. His excuse? “I have permission”.

The much maligned MEPA stepped in and stopped the ridiculous activity as soon as it found out. Council Mayor Paul Salerno was quick on the scene only to inform the press that the council was fully informed of the sledging part of the deal. It turns out that while the Council had contacted MEPA with regard to the sledging business it failed to inform MEPA of the full details of the operation.

What I see in this business is the botched operation by empowered local councils. It is well and good for the “inconveniences” to be summed up and put at the doorstep of whatever government there is on the day but on the other hand what we fail to see is that these examples of hapless management are aeons away from what happened when every fart required central permission. We will surely have more complaints of Gonzi this and Gonzi that with regard to this latest episode of environmental shame but in doing so we fail to recognise one fundamental factor: this time we cannot blame “the government”.

The local council experiment is almost 20 years old now and yet we continue to elect party approved apparatchiks  who settled into their seats of decentralised power and decided to lord it in their respective joint.Without wanting to denigrate a whole tranche of Maltese politics – I am sure that many a local councillor ended his term on full marks – we ended up having an exacerbation of incompetent power politics at a lower level.

The next time your council decides to dump shit in your bathing water remember that it has nothing to do with MEPA or the government – and a lot to do with who you chose to elect to manage your locality.