Category: Constitutional Development

Categories
Constitutional Development

Crossing the threshold of faith

believe_akkuzaCriticising the workings of a government or an opposition is what this blog has done with consistent regularity. No matter who was in “power” the line taken from these pages has always been consistent. Also, very consistently, this blog has always managed to ruffle some feathers in some quarters. More often than not it would be the partisans of a faction that is being criticised who would vociferously disapproved of the contents of J’accuse’s latest missive. More often than not it would be the messenger and not the message that would be shot at.

In these halcyon Tagħna Lkoll days I often find myself in a quandary as to how often I could put finger to keyboard and criticise yet another mind-boggling move by the people who purport to manage this country. The fear (or self-censorship) is really unjustified. The worry is that repetitive ‘assaults’ on the same tribe gets you quickly labelled as a member of the “other”. Having said that what really gets at me is the way Joe Public is prepared to gloss over the inconsistencies of the PL brigade much quicker than when the Gonzi team was in government.

No matter how shallow, how inconsistent and how potentially corrupt the Labour programme is seeming to turn out, Joe Public is still thinking in terms of the perceived evil that was. I particularly liked a comment on facebook by the man who goes by the moniker “Ze Heckler” – not for reasons that he would appreciate. Here’s his status update:

Min bi Snowden, min bil-Pussy Riot, min b’Grillo, min b’Wikileaks u ahna b’Daphne. You get the rebel you deserve, too.

Admittedly the class of “rebels” is not exactly your average Che Guevara, nor is it your Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi. Heckler’s list is a list of non-conformists (Grillo might be verging on the breakdown though) but I am not here to create a scale of “rebelliousness”. I just found it weird that Daphne would fall in the rebel category. Is it the anti-government streak? The brazen nature of her posts that openly target the above-mentioned inconsistencies? Does that a “rebel” make?

The way I see it, to be a “rebel” in Malta you cannot operate within the system’s parameters. Daphne, like anybody else operating in the system is guilty of accepting the general wider parameters and rules by which our system is run. Throughout the Gonzi years the “rebelliousness” was nowhere to be found. On the contrary, much like the prominent “journalists” of the time (now either retired, MEP candidates or playing to the Labour fiddle) Caruana Galizia would selectively pick out the “interesting news” in order to help preserve the status quo. That kind of blogs must have been grateful for the fact that Malta was kept in election mode for long periods thanks to the antics of that other fake rebel – Franco Debono.

The (quite predictable and understandable) position of Caruana Galizia’s blog is not among rebels but among anti-Labour blogs whose aim is to simply get Labour back out of the driving seat. Nothing wrong there. What is missing is the realisation that the framework within which the alternation takes place is only destined to produce the same. Or worse. “Rebels” are those who are pushing for a paradigm shift that moves the whole framework into a new dimension. A real second republic if you like (not the marketing one that Muscat smartly nabbed).

A failure to acknowledge that the system (the framework if you like) is faulty and will produce more and more of the same means that you are a willing participant in the system. That’s not rebelling. That is opposition. Thankfully, there are signs of early realisation, even in the quarters such as Caruana Galizia’s blog, that much more must be done than simply playing along. Whether such elements would be willing participants in a discussion about (let alone action) the possibilities of a paradigm shift is another question. Old habits die hard – and more messengers will be shot.

As things stand we are moving further and further into a system built of two parallel worlds in which the value scales are very very different. Which is why all Labour’s moves will continue to be accepted by a large chunk of the Maltese population. Their value scale is different from that of those who might have shared a value scale with the PN in the near past. The same applies vice-versa. The dynamics of democratic representation should have allowances for such possibilities. In our case though, the inertia caused by the PLPN system is gradually moving the very tenets of representative democracy towards a breaking point. This too is what is meant by the race to the bottom.

Our parties have created two faith systems within which it will become less obvious why and how people will cross the threshold to the other side. A re-calibration of the value scales of one party might serve to trigger the beginning of a change.

* One final note. This blog post is not meant as some kind of competition in comparing the size of “light sabers”. Consider it an observation – as we always have done – of the current situation on the ground. The interesting thing of inhabiting a system with multiple value scales is that suddenly there is not one “right or wrong” but a multiplicity. Take the following simple example: “Selling citizenship without residency requirements rakes in millions”. Value scale one cannot agree more – Malta gains. Value scale two is appalled – Malta is sold cheap. Value scale three examines a European dimension. On each of their scales they are “right”. Not the “it’s my opinion so it is true” kind of right (which is irritating) but right in the sense that in each case the policy position is feasible – the consequences are different.

 

 

Categories
Constitutional Development Politics

Europeanism: the birth of an ideology

Comical-European-geopolitical-map

In the beginning was the Rome Treaty. 60 odd years down the line the visions that helped forge together that agreement need some new PR. The first steps of European integration were built on the idea that if the main strategic resources were pooled together (coal, steel, atomic energy) and if a situation of mutually beneficial economic interdependence could be created, then nations that had been at each others’ throats for centuries would have a strong incentive to be at peace. The carrot for such peaceful coexistence was economic prosperity and strength. The European Community was born.

60 years have seen the Community transform to a Union and expand exponentially to include 29 member states. The original driving force of the groups of states has long stopped to be simply of an economic character. The exclusive club of states has not only expanded numerically but also has gone through a bumpy phase of deeper integration that extended into the social and political spheres. In the late nineties one of the standard tensions that was closely observed in the community was that between intergovernmental and federalist forces. The reference was structural, the effect strongly political. The negotiation and the project – whatever shape it took – remained firmly anchored among nation states. The demos was still absent – in the late nineties it was still a matter of sovereign states notwithstanding the European legal order having made huge inroads into the national systems. The “give and take” and the legitimacy question was still firmly rooted at national government level.

Yet, even the early case law that shaped the European Union we now know contained references to the role of the demos in what would eventually be seen as a constitutional construct:

The Community constitutes a new legal order of international law for the benefit of which the states have limited their sovereign rights, albeit within limited fields and the subjects of which comprise not only member states but also their nationals. Independently of the legislation of member states, community law therefore not only imposes obligations on individuals but is also intended to confer upon them rights which become part of their legal heritage. These rights arise not only where they are expressly granted by the treaty, but also by reason of obligations which the treaty imposes in a clearly defined way upon individuals as well as upon the member states and upon the institutions of the community.

—Judgment of the Court of 5 February 1963 (Van Gend en Loos)
Scholars have very often focused on the first part of the above quote – intent on highlighting the dynamics between the member states and the Community/Union. Van Gend, perhaps prophetically, also highlighted the role of “individuals” (still not citizens in the jargon of the court – a concept that would only arrive in the Maastricht Treaty a good 30 years later). Already in 1963, the legal branch of the Community was recognizing the concept of a patrimony of rights being bestowed on individuals – describing it as becoming part of their “legal heritage”. For a long time this legal heritage was strictly tied to what could be termed as “economic rights”. The raison d’être of the Community still being forged around economic prosperity.

 

In 2003 two of Europe’s foremost philosophers – Jacques Derrida and Jurgen Habermas – co-signed an important article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (31 May 2003). The authors took their inspiration from a series of public demonstrations against the attack on Iraq (by the US backed by a number of EU states). Mass demonstrations were held in the main capitals and Derrida and Habermas stated that “The simultaneity of these overwhelming demonstrations – the largest since the end of the Second World War – may well, in hindsight, go down in history as a sign of the birth of a European public sphere”. In their analysis of this newborn phenomenon, the authors also examine the question of a “European identity”:

 

Until now, the functional imperatives for the construction of a common market and the Euro-zone have driven reforms. These driving forces are now exhausted. A transformative politics, which would demand that member states not just overcome obstacles for competitiveness but form a common will, must take recourse to the motives and attitudes of the citizens themselves. Majority decisions on highly consequential foreign policies can only expect acceptance assuming the solidarity of outnumbered minorities. But this presupposes a feeling of common political belonging on both sides. The population must so to speak “build up” their national identities and add to them a European dimension. What is already a fairly abstract form of civil solidarity, still confined to members of nation-states, must be extended to include the European citizens of other nations as well. (Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, ‘February 15, or What Binds Europe Together: Plea for a Common Foreign Policy, Beginning in Core Europe’, in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 31 May 2003.)

 

Fast-forward by ten years, past the Global Economic Crisis that managed to shake Europe at its core foundation. The people are back on the streets. Nationalism is on the rise and is an easy refuge for stirrers within the nation states. The demos in the states are less appreciative of the “add on” to their national dimension and are much the flames of self-preserving nationalism are much easier fanned. When battle lines are drawn – from London to Valletta – the talk is still the same: “Us vs Them”. National identity is not seen as a core of a much wider and wealthier “European Identity Heritage” but rather as an endangered species about to be engulfed by some European monster.

 

This is where Europeanism becomes an ideology present on multiple fronts. Those that are prepared to take up the baton of Europeanism are those that believe in a common political fate that is beneficial to each and every individual singled out by the court in Van Gend en Loos 50 years ago. The current debate on the sale of citizenship goes straight to the core of this new battlefield. Those who are prepared to defend and strengthen the concept of European citizenship fall on the Europeanist side of the battle lines. There is no space for traditional ideological demarcation lines – it has really become an issue of Europeanist vs non-Europeanist (with the core of the latter being the resurgence of the old nationalistic lines).

 

Europeanists face a daunting task. Theirs is the duty to convince that the time has come for the European demos to be treated as such. It is not simply a commitment to joining the club and then sitting back and reaping as many benefits without any worry about obligations. It is a commitment to develop a common European identity that can serve as a basis for improvement of the common wealth of all the Union’s citizens.

 

This raises the question of “European identity”. Only the consciousness of a shared political fate, and the prospect of a common future, can halt outvoted majorities from the obstruction of a majority will. The citizens of one nation must regard the citizens of another nation as fundamentally “one of us”. This desideratum leads to the question that so many skeptics have called attention to: are there historical experiences, traditions, and achievements offering European citizens the consciousness of a political fate that has been shared together, and that can be shaped together? An attractive, indeed an infectious “vision” for a future Europe will not emerge from thin air. At present it can arise only from the disquieting perception of perplexity. But it well can emerge from the difficulties of a situation into which we Europeans have been cast. And it must articulate itself not from out of the wild cacophony of a multi-vocal public sphere. If this theme has so far not even gotten on to the agenda, it is we intellectuals who have failed. (Habermas & Derrida, vide supra)

 

Derrida and Habermas were writing 10 years ago. The citizenship issue has been the elephant in the room for quite some time now. As has the issue of a defined and empowered “European Demos” beyond the nation (but part of) the nation state. Will this citizenship debate become the “difficult situation into which we Europeans have been cast”? Will it be the first domino that finally obliges the EU to take up a transformative politics that develops a common will empowered by citizens?

 

It is time for Europeanists to gain momentum. The call has been made and the moment must be grasped.

 

O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!
Sondern lasst uns angenehmere anstimmen,
und freudenvollere.
Freude!
Categories
Citizenship Constitutional Development Mediawatch

BBC World Update on IIP

BBC’s World Update will be discussing Malta’s planned (?) IIP scheme. A post on Facebook announcing the programme has already attracted quite a long string on comments (see post here – Facebook account required). Aside from the ridiculous Labour party accusations that the whole international press attention is some kind of Opposition un-nationalistic concerted attack, this kind of debate just goes to show how global the topic of “selling citizenship” is. Unfortunately this debate will take place in a context where the final result of the IIP negotiations between government and opposition is not known. Notwithstanding the PN assurances that they will insist that “citizenship is not for sale” we have already seen some clues in the press that point to a system where the initial idea of an outright sale will be propped up with some investment criteria to make the idea “more palatable”.

Have Malta’s citizens been sufficiently consulted on this crucial issue? Should the fact that the two behemoths are “consulting” suffice – given how the issue was completely absent from their respective political manifestos? What mandate do Joseph Muscat and Simon Busuttil have from the citizens of Malta? These too are questions that need to be asked. I’m not comforted simply because Muscat or Busuttil tells me that it is OK.

worldupdate

Categories
Citizenship Constitutional Development Politics

The Hunter outside the Palace

When we decided to change the logo of SDM (the Christian Democrat Student organisation) in the mid-1990s we had decided to include a motto within a design that was meant to portray citizen participation and inclusion. The slogan, taken from Caldera’s tome describing the Christian Democrat principles translated as such “the ideal democratic palace is made up of the whole people”. We were very much into the notion of participatory democracy at the time and it was an interesting formative period of my  life.

One crucial question I have been asking myself recently, particularly after the discussions at the Vilnius closing conference of the European Year of Citizens, is “how far do citizens really want to participate”? Is not an ideal democracy one where citizens are duly represented and where such representatives go about with the business of managing the demos as entrusted unto them? Should a citizen be “active” on a daily basis or should his interventions be limited to the two instances of (1) electing those to be entrusted with the res publica and (2) intervening in moments of crises (taking to the streets)/extraordinary intervention by referendum.

The referendum – a method of public consultation is by now a familiar concept in Maltese politics. European Union membership and divorce have served to speed up the learning curve in this field and we know have a petition for a new referendum this time in the hope of abolishing Spring Hunting for good. It would seem that the representatives of our hunting community are suddenly alarmed that this petition for a referendum might be successful and they have kicked off a counter move – this time the move is a petition by the hunters to amend the very act that gives rise to Referenda. In the hunters’ opinion, such an act should never be used to stifle minorities.

It would seem therefore that the learning curve has hit a huge obstacle. The hunters’ move betrays a lack of understanding of the basic tenets of democratic action and participation. An act such as the referendum act is written in such a way so as to ensure that it does not become a tool for minorities to be ‘stifled’. Given the size of our population, it is already a gargantuan task to obtain a number of signatures that is sufficient to get a referendum going. Then, once the referendum does take place, one should also remember that it requires a majority vote – very much like a national election where similar issues are (supposedly) put on the plate in the form of electoral manifestos. That is why this blog (and a few others) have often insisted for more clarity from political parties during election time as to their commitments for their period in government.

hunter

That is also why the vague propositions found in manifestos are often more of an affront to representative democracy than the very clear aims of a referendum proposition. One should also not forget that a law that is a direct result of a referendum could also be challenged in the courts of law – especially if a citizen could claim that his fundamental rights are being infringed. I seriously doubt that a hunter’s right to shoot at will in Spring  time falls within the ambit of the fundamental rights of humankind and I only mention this check in order to paint a clear picture that goes beyond the PR-oriented assessment of rule of law and politics that is very much encouraged by our political classes today.

As it stands, the hunters are firmly entrenched outside the palace. They are not alone. Our political class have diluted all forms of accountability that would normally allow a democratic system based on rule of law, separation of powers, and checks and balances to work. When you have a government that first enacts a law, then rethinks it, then admits it was wrong, then admits it failed to consult stakeholders, then also remembers that there was no mention of this law in its political manifesto – and all the while such a government acts as though this was the most natural way of things and actually tries to get brownie points from its whole u-turn by claiming that it is “listening”… well then, something is rotten in Malta’s democratic palace.

“We are accounted poor citizens, the patricians good.
What authority surfeits on would relieve us: if they
would yield us but the superfluity, while it were
wholesome, we might guess they relieved us humanely;
but they think we are too dear: the leanness that
afflicts us, the object of our misery, is as an
inventory to particularise their abundance; our
sufferance is a gain to them Let us revenge this with
our pikes, ere we become rakes: for the gods know I
speak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge.”

(from Coriolanus, William Shakespeare).

 

Categories
Constitutional Development Mediawatch

Crash, Boom, Bang.

The appointment of the legal consultant of the Malta Pyrotechnics Association to the chair of a working group tasked to devise a new policy on fireworks factories is the last in a long string of “inappropriate” appointments being made under the current Labour government. The philosophy of the Tagħna Lkoll government seems to favour appeasement over and above regulation. If we were to impute goodwill to most of the moves made by this government within the ambit of appointments to official and semi-official posts the most glaring danger is not, as many would think, the “iced bun” distribution itself.

Granted, the very concept of the “iced bun” is an ugly wart that already blemishes substantially any remaining credibility that this government might have had in the field of meritocracy but there could be a scientific explanation to what may be termed as a wide retweaking of the power system that had prevailed over the last twenty years. What J’accuse calls a result of “same, same but different” – the product of weak alternation that produces a race to mediocrity is fed by what Fukuyama calls “patrimonialism or the natural human propensity to favour family and friends”.

According to Fukuyama this natural propensity “constantly reasserts itself in the absence of strong countervailing incentives. Organized groups – most of the rich and powerful – entrench themselves over time and begin demanding privileges from the state.” Better still here is Fukuyama’s extended explanation on the development of this kind of propensity over time:

In its early stages, human political organization is similar to the band-level society observed in higher primates like chimpanzees. This may be regarded as a default form of social organization. The tendency to favour family and friends may be overridden by new rules and incentives that mandate, for example, hiring a qualified individual, rather than a family member. But the higher-level institutions are in some sense quite unnatural, and when they break down, humans revert to an earlier form of sociability. This is the basis for what I label patrimonialism.” (Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order).

I find that the key words in this quote are “break down” – referring to the break down of higher-level institutions. The utopic state of perfect meritocracy is in fact a sophisticated form of democracy that is achieved gradually through the build up of “rules and incentives” and the acknowledgement thereof. In its complex form democratic society combines respect for institutions and the rules (rule of law, separation of powers) with levels of specialisation.

The previous nationalist government segued in and out of this form of higher-level institutional development without however managing to completely detach itself from the primary level of patrimonialism. Much of our political system – what J’accuse insists on calling “The PLPN Philosophy” is  deeply entrenched in a primitive form of patrimonial politics. There is no incentive to improve, just the type of incentive that Orwell describes as “power as an end”. There is no politics of service but politics that aims to please an ever wider circle of “interest groups” that can be roped in for the  votes then appeased with Quangos once the heads are counted.

So what is worse than the iced buns? It is the erosion of the institutions. The complete lack of awareness that the very fabric of democratic society that keeps us together is being gradually broken down in the name of Taghna Lkoll madness. Ironically this government does not stop reminding us that it wants to embark on a monumental reappraisal of our Constitution – at this stage it would be like giving a three year old kid the task of renovating the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

“There is in fact a curious blindness to the importance of political institutions that has affected many people over the years…”

 

Categories
Constitutional Development Mediawatch Politics

Zombie democracy revisited

One of the Economist’s leaders this week is entitled “Zombie democracy” and essentially discusses the concept of majoritarianism. Modern democratic governments are elected by popular suffrage and are formed on the basis of majority rule (cue the discussion on representation, majority government and coalitions). Once an election is over it is assumed that the party obtaining the majority of support will govern. Of course the essence of liberal democracy does not stop there. There are in place numerous institutional and systemic checks and balances to ensure that the government does not get too drunk with power. At least in theory this should work.

In Malta we have recently segued from a government that enjoyed a relative majority to one that enjoys a gulf of majority – at least poll wise. the first hundred days of Muscat’s government have betrayed an arrogant confidence that is cushioned by the implied thought that the massive majority cannot be wrong. Can it?

When last Thursday I voiced my agreement with what Caruana Galizia had to say on Simon Busuttil’s statement that “36,000 people cannot be wrong” I provoked quite a discussion on facebook. For the record here is the clip from Caruana Galizia’s article on the Indy:

Simon Busuttil said a few days ago at a party event that “36,000 people can’t be wrong”. Of course they can. A hundred thousand people can be wrong; a hundred million can be wrong. Rightness and wrongness do not derive from popularity of belief or opinion. To correlate whether people are right or wrong to how many people did or think the same way is a logical fallacy. Some of them already know they were wrong. They are able to see it, some even to admit it.

Do elections really give you an idea of what is wrong or right? Of who is wrong or right? Votes are won (or “bought“) for many different reasons and more often than not being right has little or nothing to do with it. A campaign such as the Taghna Lkoll campaign can act as an opiate for a large number of people and once it is combined with the accumulation of disgruntlement at the incumbent it is a sure formula for success at the polls. Alas it has little to do with that formula being a formula for success at good democratic government.

The success at the polls projected TaghnaLkoll to the dizzy heights of power and within the first hundred days we have a clear picture that the hopes of the voters were not to be matched. The latest dismal move is the dismantlement of a diplomatic set-up in order to make way for lackeys, travel consultants and comperes to be the face of Malta abroad. Also the earliest cabinet reshuffle in history was the result of Labour not having stuck to its original position (separate ministries for justice and home affairs). The musical chairs in cabinet is all about keeping friends close and enemies closer. It’s obvious. Power broking for the sake of power broking is what is going on with no place left for the national interest. Add to that the not too transparent dealings with the Chinese government and what you get is a Joseph Muscat government bulldozering over any semblance of liberal democrat checks and balances.

Here’s the Economist on how this happens:

“BUT I’ve won three elections!” Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s embattled prime minister, growls at his critics. On the face of it, his case is compelling: surely, many people in Turkey and beyond would agree, popularly elected leaders can govern as they please? That’s what democracy means. Well, no. Majoritarianism—the credo of an expanding group of elected but autocratic rulers around the world, which holds that electoral might always makes you right—is not true democracy, even if, on the face of it, the two things look alike. It is worth explaining why.

The solution is in the mind of the politicians themselves. Gonzi’s government did cause much damage to the already flawed concept of democracy that existed in the popular mindset. The clinging to the seat of power was not an educational step forward and sowed the seeds for the abuse of democracy by Muscat and the TaghnaLkoll crowd. As his government became weaker and weaker Gonzi clung to the relative majority in parliament and played the actors sufficiently to last the whole legislature. At times it takes a conscious step in the mind of leaders themselves to recognise the limits that are accorded to majoritarian power – again the Economist:

Beyond documents and institutions, the difference between crass majoritarianism and democracy resides in the heads of the mighty. Democrats have a bedrock understanding that the minority (or often majority) who did not vote for them are as much citizens of their country as those who did, and are entitled to a respectful hearing; and that a leader’s job is to deliberate and act in the national interests, not just those of his supporters.

This leader could have been written for Muscat. Instead the Economist is probably still not alerted to the goings on in the European Union’s smallest member so it uses Erdogan, Lukashenko and Hungary’s Orban as examples. The adaptation of these leaders to democracy has been simply to ensure that come election time they get that crucial bulk of votes that puts them into the driving seat for the next legislature. Practices to obtain such votes may be illegal (vote-buying, vote-rigging) or borderline legal (jobs, amnesties promised). In time we have seen how even parties in the more classical of democracies have morphed into election winning machines that have no clue how to make use of power democratically once elected. They groom the zombies to vote them into power… then stick to it with no regard for the wider community. The Economist concludes:

The basic idea of a democracy is that the voters should pick a government, which rules as it chooses until they see fit to chuck it out. But although voting is an important democratic right, it is not the only one. And winning an election does not entitle a leader to disregard all checks on his power. The majoritarian world view espoused by Mr Erdogan and leaders of his ilk is a kind of zombie democracy. It has the outward shape of the real thing, but it lacks the heart.