Wednesday 30 January 2008

Cultural Diplomacy


I was in Edinburgh for just over 24 hours with just enough time to walk down a street or two, have a taste of haggis and experience the biting January cold for myself. The trip was gift from the British Council Scotland which invited me and two other delegates from Malta, Giovanni Buttigieg and Carmen Sammut to discuss “Scotland’s place in the world” in a one day seminar attended by guests from a multitude of small countries.

Devolution in Scotland has meant more than a realization of a national identity. That was always there. The Scots want to develop their relationship with the rest of the world, with the community of nations. They also want to get beyond the stereotypes of kilts, scotch, shortbread and Highland games. There is much more to Scotland.

Certainly it is no mean thing that the first note from a bagpipe anywhere in the world instantly recalls everything Scottish to millions with a Scottish connection and otherwise. Still there is so much more which Scotland can make available to the rest of us in science and engineering, in the arts and in business.

The outreach to Armenians, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs as well as to Maltese may itself be a measure of the Scottish willingness to explore other realities, to learn from them and build new bonds. It was all about cultural diplomacy, about going beyond interdependency to interconnectedness. All small countries have a lot to learn.

I came home turning over all I had heard and discussed in my head. It was stimulating to apply it to Malta’s case, to explore all the potential as yet untapped. Who will begin to do so? How? There is no Maltese cultural institute to interface with the British Council, the Alliance Française or the Goethe Institut. Perhaps there should be. Our potential as a venue for cultural debate and developing interconnectedness in our region is out of all proportion to our size. It is all there for the taking.

Wednesday 16 January 2008

NO Greens, NO Governance


Most people have never forked out a cent to any political party and would not dream of doing so. They may feel that they get it all for free and wish that they did not get it at all. In fact they pay through their noses and never get a receipt.

Interviewed in 2003 Joe Saliba PN Secretary General, estimated that his party had spent around Lm480,000 on the general election campaign. Thousands must have thought that it was a glorious waste of money and guesstimated that the MLP had spent a similar fortune. A mass meeting five years ago would put the PN back by Lm10,000. The MLP must be forking out similar amounts in such events.

To most innocent bystanders it does not mean much at first glance. Who cares? Perhaps we should. Election campaign expenses are only the tip of the iceberg. The expenses between elections are no joke either. Where does it all come from? Time and again we are told that party businesses, subscription fees and the generous donations in the pre-Christmas TV extravaganzas cover it all.

If it had all been clear and above board as Joe Saliba has insisted, why has Lawrence Gonzi promised a law regulating the financing of political parties, to take effect maybe, sometime in the next legislature? And why not before the election?

Politics as a whole has nosedived in the popularity polls and donations from eager partisans must be getting ever more scarce leaving the parties exposed to donors who expect something in return for the hefty amounts they advance.

While Malta remains one of very few countries with a claim to democratic institutions that still does not regulate the financing of political parties, the major donors remain shy about their generosity. While other countries have had scandals of all sorts exposed, Malta does not even have a law to be broken. And still the donors do not boast of their openhandedness.

Some people are irritated when they receive mail from Ministers in government envelopes which are little more than state subsidized canvassing. Others realize that several state advertising campaigns costing tens of thousands are a free ride taken by the party in government at taxpayers’ expense. Did we really need to advertise the new state hospital to such an extent? Was there any danger of it losing our business? All this is just small potatoes.

When a road is not finished in a reasonable time, if the cost overruns are systematic and huge, it must be awkward for a government minister to come down like a ton of bricks on a generous donor to his party. How about planning permits? The choice of plant and equipment? Which policies are influenced by whom? Which reforms are delayed in order not to cause discomfort to which loyal enterprise? We may never know. We can never be sure either way.

However, as long as it remains within the legitimate options of anybody with deep pockets to buy out a political party, we would be unwise and indeed naïve not to suspect the worst. Such suspicions are strengthened by the poor quality of our urban environment and the constant threat under which what remains of our rural environment survives. The cost of cost-free politics is, very probably, simply hideous.

No matter which political party assumes power as a one-party government following the 2008 election, unless the system is radically changed, we will continue to pay through our noses. We will continue to be annoyed by all the systems that do not work as they should and not even begin to guess why not. Nobody will ever begin to assess the cost of this dominant, covert anti-system.

My guess is that if donations and loans to political parties above a certain amount were to be made public, very many things would change. Above all many of the numerous spanners in the works would be pulled out. The taxpayer would make a huge bargain.

In all likelihood we would then have our first party financing scandal some time in the future. While we may poke fun at Italians for their tangentopoli and mani pulite sandals, at the Germans and French for the Kohl-Mitterand debacle or at the British for their cash-for-ermine comedy, we are being robbed blind. The availability of all government systems to ordinary citizens is significantly reduced. We can never achieve our full potential relying on a mechanism which is necessarily warped.

Alternattiva Demokratika – The Green Party has demanded a law on the financing of political parties at least since 1992. Until very recently the only result was an increase in the expenditure allowed to election candidates making their returns of expenditure following every election less of an insolent joke. Following previous elections AD candidates refused to file a return in protest at the blatant falsehood of sworn returns passively accepted by the Electoral Commission. We were duly prosecuted.

On the eve of the 2008 election Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi has promised us all a law on the financing of political parties if he is elected to the post he holds and when he is moved to keep his word. What exactly he proposes is not clear. Going on previous reforms in the field he may legitimate the present system and claim that it has been regulated.

The big question is why has he chosen to adopt a crucial reform proposal made by the Greens almost two decades ago, only now? Why not six months ago? Why not on his taking office to inaugurate a new era in Maltese politics? Would it be embarrassing to have to divulge all the obligations his party may have taken on in view of the next round of elections? For at least the next five years the effect of such obligations will continue to take their toll whether or not an effective regulation of party financing sees the light of day.

This election will produce a government under the influence of the present system just as the one before it and the one before that and so on in unbroken sequence. The undocumented but harrowing cost will continue. Regardless of all the fanfare and the mass enthusiasm, the rousing speeches and the fun filled events, ordinary citizens will continue to be robbed of the full effect of their tax money, and our governments, of whichever hue they happen to be, will continue to fall short of their full potential. That much is a certainty.

What remains in doubt is whether the PN adoption of the Green proposal to come clean on party financing will ever take effective shape. How likely is it that a government under the influence can legislate effectively to rid itself of the shackles it is now begging for? How likely is it that the matter will even be raised in parliament without the full force of Green prodding?

Our campaign on the joint issues of rent reform and property prices including the ongoing referendum campaign has been effectively resisted by government. Not being able to stonewall completely as it is did prior to 2003, the government promised a White Paper which is now 2 years past its due-by date. Without Greens in government making such reforms necessarily part of a government programme agreed in coalition talks, we will have waffle and promises on good governance as we have had on rent reform. With Greens in government, we will find out what the cost has been and finally put an end to it.

Saturday 12 January 2008

The Self-Propelled Sitting Room


You poison my children and I do not seem to mind. I poison your children and you do not seem to mind. Thanks to me your aged mother runs a greater risk of dying of respiratory failure at the next heat wave but that's alright because, thanks to you, my mother runs the same risk. You breathe the air which has been run through the air cleaner in my car and I breathe the air carefully mixed with petrol or diesel in yours. We both breathe each other's exhaust fumes and we find that perfectly convenient.

Neither of us thinks much of the expense. Not really. The claims of injustice regarding exorbitant car registration taxes are mostly an expression of our wish to spend more, our chaffing at the fact that the tax burden prevents us having a bigger, shinier beast.

It is rarely the careful computation of those who resent the fact that such a vast segment of their income is devoted to their means of transport. Turning the key for the first time in your brand new pride-and-joy loses you around 10 per cent of what you pay to buy it.

In those few seconds, before you have moved a millimetre, in a car worth a mere €20,000, you have enjoyed €2,000 worth of undiluted pleasure. Never having had the experience myself, I am consumed by the curiosity of the innocent.

And it does not stop there. Whether your treasure is paid in cash or bought by hire purchase (and there is a huge difference), the total is subtly hiked up by the rate of income tax you pay.

Do you garage the precious thing? How much does that cost you per day? What fraction of the cost of your home is attributed to your garage? Did you buy or do you rent the place? It appreciates in value does it? Except that you will never realise your gains until you decide to get rid of your car.

There are also the annual tolls of insurance and road tax, a ticket or two, servicing and fuel, occasionally, parking fees. Meanwhile, the process which started when you first fired up the engine has carried on inexorably eating away at the value of your latter-day coach and horses.

Summed up by an expert friend of mine, it was all estimated to run up to €15 per day on a €20,000 car.

If, like me, you are a driving addict, you may be tempted to put the pleasure of driving into the scales. Unfortunately, there seems to be hardly anywhere left to put even the most modest of our darlings through its paces. I reckon that average driving speed has dropped far below 40kph, increasing the risk of accident by dropping off at the wheel through sheer boredom.

It must be torture for those who never liked driving in the first place. My heart also goes out to the owners of those over-engineered, mobile monuments to ostentatious imbecility who sit in air-conditioned embarrassment in traffic jam after traffic jam fully air-bagged and protected against high-speed impact which is never likely to happen unless they attempt suicide at some unique moment when the road is clear.

When justification by satisfaction fails, we turn to necessity. How would we get to work without our cars? How would we do the shopping? And how would we be able to ferry the kids from school, to private lessons or pick them up when they go out? What about those five-errand journeys altogether impossible by any other means? How would we go for a picnic otherwise? Poisoning one another at huge expense is an absolute necessity, isn't it?

Only because we have no other real choice at present. Only because we have designed our lives around car ownership allowing our destinations to spread far and wide. Only because we do not imagine putting our resources together to provide ourselves with alternatives. Only because nobody in authority has the stomach to broach the subject.

There exists an astounding array of alternatives to private car ownership, tried and tested elsewhere, which have never crossed the mind of anybody in Malta with the political power to reach out and make one possible. Malta is 24 kilometres long at its longest axis, Gozo about eight kilometres. The idea that we are left almost without any option other than the private car is simply mind-boggling.

Malta needs a mass transit system but we have not begun to talk about it yet. It could be by tram, overhead mono-rail or underground railway. It is still decades away because we were too busy to think for the last several decades.

The existing public transport network could be enormously improved by being decentralised and by developing circular routes linking regional localities.

There are several options in private mobility: from car pooling to timesharing vehicles, from pay-per-use vehicles linked to our mobile phones to chauffeur-driven luxury. All of which are miles cheaper than owning a car and just as flexible. Malta could very easily become the only country in the EU in which cars become almost exclusively weekend or pastime items but only if its 400,000 inhabitants decided that it would be a good idea.

Of course, there are an almost infinite number of challenges, systems to adjust and practices to change. How will wholesalers distribute their goods?

What about heavy vehicle traffic? How will sales assistants get around? Doctors doing their rounds? Were any traffic reduction measure ever to succeed, would that not ease pressure and restore our appetite for more cars?

Addressing them all will not address our rapid cultural mutation into a people expressing itself through its motor vehicle. It would take massive investment in a public education campaign to get us to shed our need to stun the neighbours by our extravagance, our exquisite taste in pollution source and our ability to customise the mass produced.

What else could stand a chance against the millions of euros spent each year indoctrinating the masses through car advertising, half-naked women sprawled over the bonnet of one of our ancient buses?

Is it not amusing that it is illegal to advertise cigarettes but perfectly legal to pitch the internal combustion engine?

It would be too much to expect any political party with 50 per cent plus electoral ambitions to even begin to hint at anything rational. In Malta, where it should be the easiest task of all, it is said to be risky even for the Greens to be so futuristic as to talk of reducing traffic significantly. If we get too far ahead of the field, our adversaries would have too easy a time making us out to be eccentric, far out and extremist.

Still, this is precisely our function: to point out the obvious facts that few people are willing to acknowledge; to point out the very long-term policy options; to have a vision which is not a regurgitation of the past; to propose today what our adversaries will make their own only decades in the future. We have more or less done away with the habit of buying our cars second hand. How about getting our politics first hand for a change?

Thursday 3 January 2008

Pure Evil



The sudden illness of the leader of the opposition has called for a truce in an election campaign in all but name which has been ratcheting up since September. Everybody has wished him a speedy recovery. Nobody wants to be seen to be hacking away at Alfred Sant, the public persona, while the physical Alfred Sant is laid low by ill health. It is not so much the merit of the political class which sets itself a limit but that of a population which would not stomach political business as usual in such circumstances.

It does seem hypocritical to be humane to an adversary whose plans and ambitions one has opposed and thwarted by every possible means for years on end. His worst political enemies have no choice: better to be suspected of hypocrisy (nothing new) than to become a self-confessed monster of inhumanity.

Most people are genuinely affected. Those who can never be classed among his sympathizers or supporters are also showing and feeling sympathy for him. Cast as the principal focus of their political apprehension, he is suddenly revealed to be only human, very human indeed. Their natural instinct for compassion is provoked, to a very great extent dissipating the effect of months and years of demonisation.

It is a disaster for the PN spindoctors: all geared up to raise the tempo in the final run up to a first quarter election in 2008, they are obliged to pull back, regroup and rethink their strategies. An early election would be seen to be bad PR by not giving Dr Sant sufficient time to recover and return to the fray. The blizzard of ridicule and invective has to be stopped.

This may have significant consequences on the cohort of new voters who seem to be the only element that is consistently responsible for changes in government. Hammering away at Dr Sant’s image and keeping him a figure of contempt may have been expected to deprive him of the degree of coolness necessary to secure a segment of young neutrals more than likely to vote for change by default.

We need only wait a little while. The PN spin factory will certainly find a way around its difficulties and surprise us all with its creativity. It is endowed with real talent for creating virtual reality and blessed with an attentive, all-forgiving audience: the range of possibilities is almost infinite.

Timing the election remains a dilemma. Anything after the end of March brings in the effect of price hikes over a wide range of consumer goods as well as the debacle over hunting in April. Anything from here to end March could seem like a desperate measure to steal a march on Dr Sant as he valiantly struggles to get back into stride.

Dr Sant himself may be of assistance. His entourage will encourage him to climb back into the saddle as soon as possible, not only to do battle with the ancestral foe but also to discourage any discussion of a political succession on the eve of an election. This is an MLP dilemma: allowing any hint of leadership vacuum to be created is dangerous, a return to business as usual too early could be just as dangerous by allowing the PN to return to their customary tone and even to consider a return to their original strategies on the timing of the election.

Whatever happens, Dr Sant can no longer be tagged pure evil in spin and slander. Still, his faults and defects will not be glossed over and his own past actions or failures will not be erased from memory but the mounting demonisation we had every reason to expect in the coming months will have to give way to something else.

It suits me fine. Perhaps we can become as grown up as children who read Roald Dahl instructions on the identification of witches. Sticking to stereotypes may be a dangerous self-deception. Our list of suspects must be expanded to include those who cast themselves as “sweet and nice” in order to gain our trust to do us harm. The concept of a good looking witch is a valuable acquisition for any child. Why not for grown ups too?

With Dr Sant demoted by fate from the invidious title of pure evil, we stand a better chance of realising that there is no such thing at all. It is never really that easy. If our greatest menace sported horns and a long tail, we would all be fine. Of course we can have no further use at this point for Roald Dahl’s tips: no politician should be eliminated simply for wearing pointy shoes, for having an itchy head nor for having a strangely coloured tongue, even if it does happen to be blue.

In my book, colour has nothing to do with it but there are some acid tests. First of all, for people who stand as candidates in an election, rather than attempting to become dictators by force of arms, democratic credentials must be up to scratch. It rapidly eliminates at least two thirds of those presently in parliament who approved the change to the constitution which creates two tiers of citizens: those whose votes will be weighed with utmost care to produce perfect proportionality and those whose votes will not be fully weighed in, no matter what happens.

Pure evil takes on a different meaning at this point. It becomes evil posing as pure. Of course strict proportionality is an excellent democratic quality. It becomes less than pure when it is applied to some and not to all. Those who palm it off as a universal salve to our electoral ills are not without taint. None of them. Did any MP vote against or abstain? Not even the sweetest and the nicest?

With that criterion alone, many would be reduced to voting those in their favourite political party who were not asked to vote on constitutional changes, the new faces. There will be dozens of them in the next election and not without good reason. Their function is to sponge up No 1 votes from people who cannot bring themselves to vote for established candidates who have disappointed them bitterly. The new candidates will seem very sweet and very nice especially when compared to their colleagues who have been wheeling and dealing, U-turning and S-bending all over the place. That is the very reason that they will swell the lists.

They seem pure but they whitewash every evil great and small. By standing as candidates, they endorse all that has been done. They perpetuate the status quo. They lend themselves to a process which gives the status quo a new lease on life. At least the battle weary candidates stand before us showing all the signs of their passage. The new faces invite us to believe that they have nothing to do with all that has aroused our ire. They lull our resentment, they bewitch us far more than those who have offended us.

The question is do we want a change and I do not mean do we want to flip the omelette? Going from a Blue one-party government to a Red one-party government brings a change of the guard, a change of the clique at the helm without even a major change in the mix of financiers of the one party in government. The names and faces may change but the system will be precisely the same.

A mere 2,500 of us voting Green in any one of the thirteen electoral districts can bring about a change far more profound than can be hoped for by the hundreds of thousands who will put their vote elsewhere. It will no longer require the serious illness of a principal political figure for us to be reminded of our humanity. We can hope to begin to forget the serial demonisation of whoever leads the other side. We will begin to develop our critical faculties to higher levels driving the whole political class to compete more on substance and to rely far less on stereotypes devised by their backroom boys and girls. Only ordinary voters can bring about such a change. Politicians are their product: every combination of pure and evil performing at the highest or at the lowest levels of decency, honesty, consistency and democracy according to their fateful choice.