Politics

Call my Bluff

This nation has its testicles in the hands of Franco Debono because our current government will not give up power readily and because the only alternative to government is Joseph Muscat of the hacking, the “controversial secret plans for the economy” and the directionless policies based on the sole maxim of “PN is bad”. Interesting times indeed.

No. I’m not calling my own bluff and I am still on a blogging break (well, sort of) but I’ve woken up mighty early this Sunday and thanks to the hour switch it becomes earlier still. I’m probably also suffering from article writing withdrawal symptoms so all in all I am entitled to a little post.

So whose bluff should we be calling? Well – the average backbencher’s of course. Right now it is the Honourable Franco Debono who is back in the limelight (incidentally we do hope his relative has a speedy recovery in hospital) for being the latest backbencher/government MP to hold the government at ransom. To put it more blandly, Franco has the government by the balls. (As the Latins would say “cuius testiculos habet, habeat cardeam et cerebellum”). As Labourites cheer and hardlines nationalists grind their teeth, Franco is holding his ground over the possibility of his abstaining in a crucial vote about an opposition motion regarding Minister Austin Gatt and the Arriva fiasco (a very good piece by James Debono here). Well good on Franco Debono I say.

Do you know why Franco Debono (now) and Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando (then) are behaving this way? Because THEY CAN. Oh yes they can. Remember the whole J’accuse rant about the way the electoral rules are phrased in order to be able to foist the “wasted vote” conundrum on the undecided voter? Do you remember how you are constantly reminded that EVERY VOTE COUNTS in order to get that much craved majority (even relative) to get to govern ALONE – without the need of coalitions? And when only two parties elect members to parliament but none of those parties have a clear majority above 50% of votes cast then we get the famous D’Hondt Relative Majority – and the party with RELATIVELY the most votes gets to play government by having its seats adjusted to equal OPPOSITION +1.

That +1 then becomes the noose around the government’s neck whenever a backbencher wants to make some noise. The opposition is obviously going to accomodate anybody wanting to stir the governmental ship and there you have it .. the plus one becomes the “testicle holder”. Q.E.D.

Is there a solution? Of course there is. In the interests of governance the Prime Minister could call an election. It’s been the elephant in the room for quite some time now. Call an election. Call the backbencher’s bluff. Get the people to decide on whether they want individual kingmakers or whether they would prefer a stable government with a wider majority. Why has this solution not been resorted to? Simples. You do not call an election that you cannot win.

This nation has its testicles in the hands of Franco Debono because our current government will not give up power readily and because the only alternative to government is Joseph Muscat of the hacking, the “controversial secret plans for the economy” and the directionless policies based on the sole maxim of “PN is bad”. Interesting times indeed.

Gilad and the 1,000

The images of fervent joy that accompanied the exchange of prisoners between Palestine’s Hamas and Netanyahu’s Israel have dominated the front pages of the news these past two days. I wish to bow my head to the Macchiavellian planners (though I doubt they would enjoy comparisons to Florence’s dastardly product) in Netanyahu’s entourage who must have convinced him to OK the exchange.

One man Gilad Shalit – a youth of 25 who has survived 5 years of prison “without seeing a human face” – was released in exchange of a 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. The exchanged occurred in Egypt and was purportedly the last chance Israel and Palestine had to make use of Egyptian mediation before the Muslim Brotherhood takes over the land of the Pharaohs. Netanyahu surprised many by accepting this exchange that seemed – on the face of it – hugely unbalanced in favour of the Palestinians. It was after all one man for one thousand. Wasn’t Israel short changed?

Not really no. Just following the news you will notice that this is a victory of sorts for Israel. Aside from the banale calculation that one French-Israeli is worth a thousand Palestinians there is a much more meaningful mediatic victory to ponder upon. Gilad Shalit. The man has a name. He has a story to tell. His five year ordeal of “not seeing a human face” has won precious airwave time reinforcing the image of a brutal imprisonment in the hands of the Hamas gaolers with faces covered. His emaciated look tells stories about the conditions of his hardship and much like the Chilean miners a few months back his personal, human story will hit home to many. And that story is the story of an Israeli conscript.

Contrast that with the busloads of Palestinian prisoners hanging out of the windows. This was a faceless herd. A rabble almost. Even the welcoming ceremony seemed to be improvised and there were few individual stories to be told.

Will we ever know their name? How many of us will be told that some of them have been hanging around Israeli prisons since 1993 and the Oslo Peace Accords? Yes. That’s 1993. Arafat and Rabin were alive and Bill Clinton was US President. It’s not 5 years ago. It’s more like 18. Sure. Some of them were imprisoned for committing heinous crimes and not abducted in an across the border raid. Not all of them though.

How many of us know that back in 2006 when Gilad Shalit was a fresh kidnapee, Israel refused to exchange all Palestinian women and children in prison for his release? What changed in the last five years?

One man for a thousand faceless prisoners. A bargain. Surely.

 

Picture source: BBC IMAGE

When your surname’s not Bonanno

Here’s the full text of a law report from the Times of Malta. I am not leaving anything out or selecting only parts of it so that you too can read it in its entirety (look no editing).

[box type=”shadow”]
Thursday, October 13, 2011, 14:27
Lawyer wants Arbitration Tribunal decision to be declared null

A lawyer representing a man who was involved in a traffic accident this morning called on a court to declare null a decision on the case taken by the Arbitration Centre.

Dr Jose’ Herrera said he was making his request after the Constitutional Court in September declared that forced arbitration, as was the case here, violated the right to a fair hearing.

Dr Herrera is representing Victor Micallef, who was found to have been 50% responsible for a car accident in 2006 and ordered to pay some €3,000. The decision was taken by the Arbitration Tribunal.[/box]

Can someone explain to me why in this country it is lawyers not plaintiffs who make requests to a court? It’s already bad enough when the report starts off with the anonymous “a lawyer” because technically speaking it’s not “a lawyer” but “the plaintiff” who is requesting the court to annul the Arbitration Tribunal decision. Sure, it’s a lawyer who has gone through the legal motions but it will always be the plaintiff’s request – the plaintiff as represented by a lawyer (taken as read).

Most of you will have read of the Premier League case that was decided by the august institution that I work for. Now, how many of you remember the names of the lawyers for the parties who were involved in the referred case? Name one. Just one. I dare you.

Admit it. You probably don’t even remember the name of the publican who was the “star” of the show. Well, we all know it was a lady and that she owned a pub. Fact is that the headlines in most of the papers the next day were not Lawyer So and So wins case before the Court of Justice of the European Union. Most headlines featured “Pub Lady”.

So back to Malta. Not only do we wrongly highlight the lawyer and not the party. It gets better. “The lawyer” is “outed” (surprise, surprise) as Dr Herrera – a potential justice minister in a future Labour government – and “his” case is actually challenging the constitution of a particular tribunal under our laws because its set up might violate the right to a fair hearing.

Somehow I get the feeling that the hacks at the Times received a convenient summary of the case and threw it straight into their Court section. How they do not feel “manipulated” in a Matt Bonanno sort of way just because the “feed” comes straight from a politician is uncanny. How they participate in this blurring of lines between lawyer-client relationship and political advertising without any qualms is unnerving.

People like Franco Debono would do well to have a word or two with the likes of Dr Herrera when it comes to “advertising” particular cases. This kind of “publication” tends to undermine further the faith we have in all four institutions – government, judiciary, parliament and the fourth estate. It does so much faster than an unaccountable Minister or a biased news programme.

Think Different (1955-2011)

Is it hyperbolic of me to describe the death of Steve Jobs as something on the similar scale as living in the time of Galileo Galilei and being told of his death? Much will be written by many in acknowledgement of the greatness of this man and his impact on the globe. Us willing Apple Slaves feel like we have lost a part of us and still cannot get over the feeling that the world is not the same after Steve Jobs. But this is the man who told us : “Those people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are those that actually do.”

I found this old-ish video of Jobs speaking about values and marketing. Here  is how he launches the campaign “Think Different” – a value that J’accuse espoused from the start as a blog and will keep upholding for as long as this blog lives.

Thank you Steve.

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. – Apple Inc.

 

and the birth of Macintosh’s magic in 1984

 

Dio é morto

Mi han detto
che questa mia generazione ormai non crede
in ciò che spesso han mascherato con la fede,
nei miti eterni della patria o dell’ eroe
perchè è venuto ormai il momento di negare
tutto ciò che è falsità, le fedi fatte di abitudine e paura,
una politica che è solo far carriera,
il perbenismo interessato, la dignità fatta di vuoto,
l’ ipocrisia di chi sta sempre con la ragione e mai col torto
e un dio che è morto,
nei campi di sterminio dio è morto,
coi miti della razza dio è morto
con gli odi di partito dio è morto…

f. guccini

 

The Libyan Patients

You take an unplanned break from blogging and when you come back you find out that nothing much has changed. Last time we were blogging regularly (seems like ages but it’s only a week ago) we commented on the farce that was the MUMN’s badly managed PR about the stress caused to the Maltese health system by 16 Libyan patients (one has since passed away).

In the interim, Dr Gozi has declared the ITU closed for business in a very pre-Arriva bus-driver style declaration of “Full Up”. The MUMN, eager to stay ahead in the national foot-in-mouth championships couldn’t resist another jibe at the country’s manager’s political priorities. Apparently crassly insinuating that Libyans should not be treated before every last Maltese national gets his taxes worth is not enough. MUMN ups the ante and engages in further stereotypification. And what better “class” of citizens to use than the “Gozitans”?

Apparently, as a badly drafted Times of Malta headline goes: “Gozitan patients lacking same political commitment given to Libyan patients“. Which either means that the patients from Gozo are not as sufficiently politically committed as the Libyan counterparts (Not dying for the patria are we?) or – as the “given” in the title seems to insinuate – there is not sufficient priority being given to the needs of Gozitan persons coming to Malta for treatment.

Forgetting this grammatical cul-de-sac for a minute, it is absolutely ridiculous of the MUMN to actually bring this particular card out of their twisted set of lobbying instruments. The “Gozitan” cause is usually useful to either politicians who want to specialise in a “minority” niche (if it’s not South then it’s Gozo or Sliema or Siggiewi) and turn it into something really really special. It is also useful to particular columnists who tend to thrive on a bit of Gozitan beating every now and then – spuriously linking localised examples of very Maltese ignorance to one particular geographic corner- as though what happens in Gozo never happened in Bisazza Street, Rabat or Cospicua.

I know. I’m biased. But what should that change? Are we stupid enough to erect barriers in the spittle of an isle that we call home? What next? Siggiewi patients deserve more attention in Maternity Ward? And where the fuck are the ethical principles that should be the foundation for a caring profession? For heaven’s sake – doctor, nurse, scrub, whatever – if you are in a caring profession then I’d expect you in the very least to be seeing each and every patient as just that: a patient. It’s not an ID Card that you have to cure, it’s a burn, a bullet wound or a severe case of toxoplasmosis.

Gozitans, Libyans, Siggiewi people, Xewkija people – that’s not the language for nurses or their representative association. It’s the dangerous language of politicians who are prepared to go down the route of “great minds” before them… a geezer named Adolf comes to mind.

Don’t worry though. They’ve found another dog close to death in a skip. All this fuss about dying Libyans and underprivileged Gozitans will soon be sidelined to favour the plight of Malta’s latest animal hero.

I wonder if the Centru San Frangisk has a policy about particular breeds. “What? A boxer? No siree…. we’re politically committed to Chihuahuas, Spaniels and Whippets…. “