Who will wield power in 2013?

OMG so much drama on the local scene this year. The judiciary are once again tainted by corruption and unethical behaviour and once again one wonders whether the members of the Commission for the Administration of Justice are actually living on this planet and what on earth the Commission is there for.

It was amusing to see the contretemps that arose between the Ombudsman Joseph Said Pullicino, a former Chief Justice and the Commission. The latter took umbrage that the Ombudsman called on the President and the Chief Justice to relieve judge and Maltese Olympic Committee president Lino Farrugia Sacco of his judicial duties.

 It said the Ombudsman’s Act did not apply to the judiciary and the Commission, so the Ombudsman did not have jurisdiction on the functions, duties and conduct of judges and the Commission and he did not have the power to give an opinion on this. This was solely within the functions of the Commission.

The Ombudsman’s call obviously indicated that the Commission was slumbering, hence it’s reaction. Don’t step on our toes, cause we are solely responsible for the conduct of judges, said the CAJ, which is made up of judges and former ones, magistrates and prominent lawyers.

It is about time that this particular closed shop opens up if it is to regain credibility in its function. Without going into the ins and outs of the Ombudsman’s opinion that caused this squabble, I found it incredulous that the Commission said “he (Said Pullicino) did not have the power to give an opinion on this.” Does one need to have power to give an opinion?

Moving on, we had the Dalligate saga, which is still unravelling, but it will be difficult for John Dalli to recover from this last blow, and the government having to step down after failing to get the budget through parliament, thanks to one if its own, as had happened when Dom Mintoff brought Alfred Sant down.

Mintoff that maverick of Maltese politics passed away and it was refreshing to see former PM and President Eddie Fenech Adami say that Dom’s

positive contribution to the nation outweighed the negative.

The Nationalist Party (PN) has had a stormy year what with the Arriva grand fiasco, with Boris Johnson telling his party conference, in the UK, that thankfully they had got rid of the dinosaurs that are now clogging the streets of Malta, and the serious discontent on the backbenches.

The latter resulted in Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando finally leaving the party and that rottweiler Franco Debono being told he was no longer wanted after his constant nipping. He of course got his revenge by bringing the government down.

Now both parties are pulling out all the stops in the race to head a new government. First, we saw Simon Busuttil (MEP) called in to perform a rescue operation for the PN and now the Labour Party has also called on Louis Grech, another MEP and former chairman and CEO of Airmalta, to help them accrue more credibility, in Joseph Muscat’s words “a value-added for the party and the country”.

I have admired the work and sophistication of both Louis Grech and Simon Busuttil in Brussels and it was refreshing to see how well the two worked together. But after Simon’s call (echoing Churchill’s in the last world war) to his party’s faithful to fight them at the grocers (instead of the beaches, it is winter after all), I am full of misgivings.

I know that the PN are desperate, but I would have thought that Simon would have retained the elegance and cool he displayed so well in Brussels. Unfortunately, he got sucked in to the local panic and lost it. But, I have no doubt that he will regain some of the ground for his party.

I understand that both MEPs have responded to “your party needs you” and maybe they are looking for more fame, glamour and glory in the pond. They also might have felt that after Dalligate their undoubted positive influence in Europe would lose its effectiveness until that whole shebang was sorted out.

We shall still have to see whether Louis, who has laid emphasis on change, which will lead to the strengthening of accountability and transparency, will retain his urbanity on the campaign trail.

Of course there are some politicians on both sides who hold themselves above the fray, but it is so embarrassing to see the infantile and bullying tactics some get up to. It will be great to see a new breed of politician on the local scene, so I hope that Simon will regain his equilibrium and Louis will maintain it.

Published in The Malta Independent on Sunday  30/12/2012

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Why women do not vote for women

I cannot remember how, in an RTK discussion about accountability, transparency and whistle blowing on Thursday evening, the topic turned to gender issues. It certainly was not started by me.

I suppose, I was expected to say that women would be more transparent and accountable. My view is that there are women who can be just as secretive and capable of passing the buck as men.

Having said that, I think that women are just as competent to hold leading positions as men, given half the chance. Ethics and values depend on personalities, not gender.
Roger Degiorgio, another panellist, went further and said that women work harder and shoulder more responsibility.

Of course, he has direct experience having Julia Farrugia editing Illum.
He also surprised me by agreeing that quotas was not the anathema it is made out to be and that he agrees they should be introduced. All this merit baloney from the detractors on quotas, including women, really gets my goat.As if many men who hold leading positions have got there on merit!

It was quite something to read that the Minister of Justice, Dialogue and the Family Chris Said told the Employment and Social Policy Council in Brussels that the development of gender mainstreaming in all policy areas is critical to ensuring gender balance as well as generating economic growth.

Adding that safeguarding equal treatment between men and women in economic and political decision-making positions is fundamental towards ensuring equality of opportunities for both genders.

However, I was surprised to read that he also stated: “Malta has always supported measures that promote and sustain gender balance in society.” I wondered whether he expanded on how Malta had done this and what results have been achieved on gender balance? Was that just not reported? Or is the European Employment and Social Policy Council just another talking shop?

Back to the RTK programme, I was asked the perennial question: “Why do women not vote for women?” It would take a whole programme to answer such a question. But, I made some attempt at giving at least some of the reasons. I spoke about the lack of role models and the deficiency of serious visibility of women in the media, television in particular.

I did not go into further detail on the programme, because that was not the topic of debate. However, I can now elaborate. This is not just a local problem; the latest study from the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media strengthens my argument with regards to women and girls on screen. Overall, the study found that women and girls are not only largely absent on screen, but they are also stereotyped and sexualised.

There are far fewer speaking characters that are females in family films (28.3 per cent), prime-time programmes (38.9 per cent), and children’s shows (30.8 per cent). A large percentage of stories are “extremely” male centric, casting boys/men in 74 per cent or more of speaking roles on television. Children’s programmes and comedy series are the most imbalanced genres in prime time, with less than a third of all on screen speaking characters coded as girls or women.

With regard to women and girls as “eye candy” on screen: females are far more likely than males to be depicted wearing sexy attire and showing exposed skin. Females are far more likely to be referenced by another character as physically attractive. Females are far more likely to appear thin on screen.

The sad thing is that women who can make the grade feel they have to pander to the “eye candy” syndrome. It was good to see a woman prospective candidate for election interviewed in The Independent, but her photo was typically sugary. It is certainly an asset for an ambitious woman to be well groomed, and good looks are great, but being over ‘made up’ to look good enough to eat is not what breaking through the glass ceiling is about.

Back to the Geena Davis study: in family films and prime-time shows, only two women are shown in the executive office of major corporations (i.e. CEOs, CFOs, Presidents, VPs, and GMs). In family films and prime-time shows, not one female character is depicted at the top of the financial sector, legal arena or journalism.
Not one speaking character plays a powerful American female political figure across 5,839 speaking characters in 129 family films. Males are almost four times as likely as females to be shown on screen in STEM (science, technology, engineering, maths) careers.

A higher percentage of male characters than female character are shown working in family films and prime-time shows. Women only hold 20.3 per cent of the total on screen occupations in family films, 34.4 per cent of all jobs in prime-time programmes, and represent 25.3 per cent of those employed in children’s shows.

Girls and young women watch television every day. What is presented is a substantial reason for why women do not vote for women. The Geena Davis Institute is the only research-based organisation working within the media and entertainment industry to engage, educate and influence the need for gender balance, reducing stereotyping and creating a wide variety of female characters for entertainment targeting children aged 11 and under.

Hopefully, programme producers will give attention to this study and work towards adjusting the gross gender imbalance on our screens. It is clear that girls need more aspirational role models on screen to show them that women can succeed in leadership positions.

The importance of education generally was also discussed on the RTK programme, especially with regard to future generations of leaders taking responsibility seriously. A lot was said about tribalism and the confrontational attitudes it provokes, which I suppose had some relevance to why accountability and transparency were lacking, i.e. that ethical and sound judgement can be sacrificed for partisan loyalties.

One must also consider that the old boys’ network is an integral part of the tribes, which also forms part of the set-up that keeps women safely in the background.

Published in the Malta Independent on Sunday 9/12/2012

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How on earth are we going to get a woman PM

 

So the Maltese are ready for a woman to lead the country and were actually more disposed towards this idea than their European counterparts. Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.

According to a Eurobarometer survey with 500 people, carried out by Misco last June, 84 per cent of Maltese respondents would feel comfortable with a female prime minister and they were actually more disposed towards this idea than their European counterparts, reported Ivan Camilleri in The Times on Friday.

What amused me was the unwitting use of words in the article that demonstrated the underlying thinking on gender equality, “Sweden (97 per cent), a famously liberal country, is the most tolerant.”

So accepting women as leaders is a liberal notion as it is a question of tolerance! Would one even consider men in power as a liberal concept? Or that a country that accepts men as leaders is the “most tolerant”?

We are not even ready to ‘tolerate’ to elect women to Parliament, or to even accept that the only way to get them there is through quotas, so how on earth are we going to get a woman prime minister?

The political parties may pay much lip service to power sharing with women, but we have yet to see any tangible proof that they are willing to do anything about it.
Tonio Borg (PN), our new Commissioner in Europe, was given a hard time on Women Rights before being accepted, which upset George Vella, our Opposition’s foreign affairs spokesman.

“I was angry with Dr Borg for stooping to ‘quench their (MEPs’) thirst’ when he wrote he would fully support women’s rights,” he told Parliament on Wednesday. I thought I had seen the quote in the Times report on Wednesday and posted the comment. “Is this the Labour Party stance? I think we women need to know where the PL stands on women's rights.”

But neither were there when I went back to check. But I found the quote again on Thursday in a shorter report of the same story by Joanne Cocks. I reposted my comment to which Francis Saliba MD replied: “‘Women’s rights’ is a vague term that is being given different meanings according to personal agendas. Not every right claimed by this or that pressure group is a genuine universal fundamental human right.”

Of course by that argument one could say that “Human Rights” can be just as vague. To which Dr Saliba responded, “That is why I (he) never use such deliberate ambiguous terms. I refer to specific universal fundamental human rights as recognised in a United Nations or similar charters.”

Now anyone reading that last comment might not only have wondered why Human Rights and Women’s Rights should be seen as “deliberate ambiguous terms”, but also got the wrong idea about the UN’s stance on women’s rights.

UN support for the rights of women began with the organisation's founding Charter. Among the purposes of the UN declared in Article 1 of its Charter is “To achieve international co-operation … in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.”

Within the UN’s first year, the Economic and Social Council established its Commission on the Status of Women, as the principal global policy-making body dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women.  Among its earliest accomplishments was ensuring gender-neutral language in the draft Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Now we all know how far “ensuring gender neutral language” has got us here. The amount of palaver we had just over the simplest term “chairperson” is just one minute example. I even had a woman, who was then the chairperson of our national television station, attempting to change my stance on that gender-neutral term. She was obviously content with being referred to as chairman.

Now, when we have the very few women who occupy leading positions with little notion of the underlying, seemingly harmless words that keep us in our place, we have little hope.

The survey also dealt with discrimination, as the article titled “Maltese ready for a woman to lead the country” tells us, “The majority of Maltese respondents agreed that discrimination is still widespread on the island, even though the reasons may be many.”
But here the survey’s scope went beyond women, or I should say heterosexual women.

“Less acceptable seems to be a gay or lesbian prime minister in Malta, although even in this case there are signs of change. Some 55 per cent of Maltese respondents said they would accept a gay prime minister while many of the rest said this would be totally unacceptable.”

Another subtle pointer of the way women are perceived to be treated with indulgence is the way (no disrespect to homosexual people) women are put in the same category as gay and lesbian people. Gay people are men, so if anything they should be categorised with men. But of course men do not need surveys to tell us how easy it is for them to lead.

Published in the Malta Independent on Sunday 25/11/2012

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Life is cheap, fireworks make money

Will we ever learn? How many more lives need be sacrificed before the government takes action on fireworks factories? How many more tragedies before the situation is taken in hand? The authorities need to bite the bullet and sort this problem out once and for all. I wrote that in November 2007, in my then MaltaToday column “Playing with fire”.

The previous June five men had been killed in a similar explosion and then Home Affairs Minister Tonio Borg had said that he would have recommendations for reforms to the manufacture of fireworks drawn up by September of that year. Yet, here we are five years on with another fatal accident involving a fireworks factory and with no legislation yet in hand.

In 2004, the Explosives Committee (the regulatory body) had already provided recommendations in a report that was not made public. A Pyrotechnics Committee was then set up to make fresh recommendations. But this report was again not made public. Does this ring any bells?

In September 2010, after yet another tragedy at the Farrugia Brothers factory in Gharb that killed six people, including a pregnant woman, there was talk of a moratorium. A former committee head, Col Albert Camilleri, an explosive expert with 45 years experience, had said that a moratorium would work but “a date had to be set by when every factory had depleted its stock”, which had suggested that a stockpile exists. Initial investigations had indicated that the factory was packed with more explosives than allowed by law, I commented in my column “Culture control” in this paper on 12 September 2010.

As well as the six people who had died on 5 September, a man died on 13 August in an explosion at the fireworks factory in Dwejra, another died in May at St Catherine’s Fireworks Factory in Marsaxlokk and two men lost their lives in February, at the St Sebastian Fireworks Factory in Qormi, in that year.

On a One TV, Joe Grima, programme at the beginning of the firework season that year, I had challenged the rest of the panel − all, excepting one neutral member, defending their safety record − on insurance and asked them: Who takes care of the families left behind after a tragedy?

Later, after the tragedy in September, I read, “No claims for insurance money can be made in connection with Sunday’s fireworks factory explosion in Gharb, which killed six people”. KDM Insurance Brokers general manager Alberto Bisazza explained, “The Malta Pyrotechnics Association has a block insurance policy in place covering the firework licensees but this is a third party liability policy specifically designed to cover the period when fireworks are being let off and while the fireworks are transported from the fireworks factory to the site/s. Therefore, nothing relating to this unfortunate accident can be recovered under this policy,” he had told The Times. I am not sure whether there have been any changes since in this regard.

Now after the latest tragedy, I learn from a Times article by Mark Micallef on Thursday, that the Office of the Prime Minister has now taken over the responsibility for fireworks. This is not the first time that the OPM has taken over a failing portfolio, not that we have seen much change in the process.

A spokesperson told him: “The government will await the policy and legislative proposals forthcoming from the Explosives Committee before moving on to the implementation stage.” According to Mark, he was referring to the implementation of recommendations by the Commission following the September 2010 explosion.

But hang on a minute, the Explosives Committee had already provided recommendations eight years ago, and what about Minister Tonio Borg’s assurance that recommendations for reforms to the manufacture of fireworks were to be drawn up by September of 2007. Why is there so much going over the same process again and again? Sounds like procrastination.

Recommendations to improve safety were made again, not for the first time, last December by the Commission chaired by chemistry professor Alfred Vella. Its report found that dangerous chemical mixtures, banned abroad because they were too volatile, were still in use here.

Rather than action being taken immediately on such a straightforward recommendation in the report, a task force was set up two months later to “oversee a consultation process with stakeholders” on the report’s recommendations. The task force’s proposed measures were then referred to the Explosives Committee in March, which was then asked to draw up proposals for legislation to implement the main recommendations. And it seems that is where it is stuck.

Professor Vella and Professor Victor Axiaq, a commission member (I believe representing the Curia), are now yet again calling for certain key recommendations, particularly the ban of such dangerous mixtures, to be urgently implemented. I don’t know whether the Explosives Committee members are still the same people as eight years ago. But if they are, no wonder they are in no hurry, they probably think it will only be shelved yet again, especially with the parties already gearing up for the next election.

“We are willing to agree with any possible means which renders the art of pyrotechnics safer, including the restriction of certain chemical mixtures,” a spokesperson for The Labour Party told The Times. It was averse to the idea of a moratorium and outright bans. “Moratoriums and outright bans might be popular but would only lead to illegal manufacturing. Strict surveillance and tight regulations should be in place,” the spokesman said. The PL called for an urgent conference that would debate and “decide” on the recommendations of the Vella report. More procrastination. Come on.

Don’t for a moment think that we shall get any further on this if Labour wins the next election. The fireworks lobby is not only strong and has sponsors on both sides of the House, but it also has the vital ingredient – money, lots of it.
The cherry on the cake is that we also hear from Mark Micallef that Labour Party leader Joseph Muscat’s father is an enthusiast and imports chemicals used for fireworks. Scanning through the comments to that article, this gem seems to have bypassed all the usual online commentators.

Published in the Malta Independent on Sunday on 11/11/12

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Who will unwrap the brown paper

 

For a government that has been harping on about transparency, we have seen little of it in Malta.  The EU anti-fraud agency OLAF report, dealing with the details, leading to EC Commissioner John Dalli's resignation remains under wraps. It has been passed on to the Malta Police by the Attorney General with his recommendations. Local media attention has now turned to the Maltese lawyer to whom the snus manufacturer Swedish Match is alleging the bribe was made.

Meanwhile, going way back to early in the year, in a debate between Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and Oppostion leader Joseph Muscat in February, one of the  points the PM put forward, to be seen as a plus for his government, was that a Brazilian company was about to invest in Malta.

Since I was present at that debate, I really should have asked the PM to expand on this future investment, but frankly the whole 'debate' was so uninspired that my adrenalin level was beyond any kind of motivation.

The Brazilian company reared its head again, at a televised debate on Friday, when in answer to a jibe, by Muscat that this was yet another unfulfilled government achievement, Gonzi said the company had in fact started operating a while ago and was already employing people.

I did not watch this debate so am unaware if the presenter of the programme delved deeper on this point. For example, when exactly was a "while ago" and what the name of company was? However, it does not seem likely since the Malta Sunday Timeshas been asking the questions and reported today that the Office of the Prime Minister was being economical with details about the company.

“The company is a Brazilian international company. In the wake of Libya’s unrest, the company decided to relocate its offices to Malta. The company co-ordinates major construction projects in North Africa,” an OPM spokesperson told the paper.

It also reported that it was informed (one can speculate on whether this information came from the Opposition, from rebel MP's who have left or been ousted by the PN, or from within the PN itself)  that the PM failed to answer two parliamentary questions made months ago by Labour MPs Gino Cauchi and Carmelo Abela on the same subject.

So why the secrecy? I am beginning to think that there might be a John Dalli connection.

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PM Gonzi's Office failed to name Brazilian company he mentioned as one of his Government’s many achievements during a TV debate .

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We want the whole truth

So much drama recently, it’s better than anything on the telly. The case of the young woman with a drug abuse problem who, although about to have a baby, ended up in jail after repeatedly using her pregnancy to get away from it – jail not drugs – was more intriguing than anything on Eastenders.

We had the three buses crashing at Porte de Bombes, which with two Arriva drivers and 22 passengers injured, seven of them seriously (according to the police report), was straight out of Casualty.

Then, as quirky as anything in Castle, we heard about the demise of 480 cocks, 280 chickens, 17 rabbits and three pigs, because a farmer in custody on cocaine trafficking charges was not allowed by the prison authorities to go and feed them.

But by far the most dramatic was John Dalli’s abrupt “forced” (as he puts it) resignation as Commissioner responsible for Health just before the much-awaited EU’s revised Tobacco Products Directive.

Since substantial new restrictions on tobacco companies’ promotion of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco, including banning e-cigarettes, were expected, this must have been a relief for the strong tobacco lobby. It had been disturbed enough by “rumours” on the report that contact had been made, or re-established, with Silvio Zammit, according to a published email, asking how much it would cost for a meeting to be arranged.

Tobacco has been controversial for a long time now. Despite warnings that smoking can more likely kill you than not, governments still allow its sale. Otherwise, some tell us, it would be the action of a Nanny State. So what governments do is put warnings, on cigarette packets that they can kill!

The tobacco lobby spends a lot of money to ensure tobacco, including any by-product not just cigarettes, stays on the market.
The sophisticated burglary at the offices of anti-tobacco campaigners in Brussels in which laptops and documents were stolen, but other valuables left untouched, two days after Dalli’s resignation and the conspiracy theories reminded me of John Grisham’s The Runaway Jury. Besides, the title is so apt for this case, since so many have elected themselves jurors through the media.

“Anti-tobacco campaigners are convinced that they are looking at a dirty tricks campaign designed to strangle the new directive (TPD) at birth. But nobody beyond Barroso and a few others know the strength of the evidence because the report has not been published”, said the Guardian’s health editor Sarah Boseley, on October 19.

“What we are witnessing is the biggest tobacco industry interference in public health policy at the European level. The backdrop to the burglary at our office is the political scene. We believe that is no coincidence,” said Florence Berteletti Kemp, director of the European Smoke Free Partnership, an alliance of the prominent health organisations Cancer Research UK, the European Respiratory Society and the European Heart Network, whose computer was stolen in the burglary.
 “The new directive was intended to try to reduce the temptation for younger people – and particularly women – to start smoking,” she said in the Guardian article.

Gresham’s novel is about the shady shenanigans both the lawyers for the smoking and anti-smoking lobby get up to. Their end objective is always cash, lots of it. So it is not surprising that a young Maltese lawyer is being described as a central witness to the Dalli case.

According to Swedish Match, who tipped off OLAF, she was the person to whom the bribe request was made at the 10 February meeting. Dalli’s version, at a press conference, was that this lawyer did not seem to know much about Snus, was asking questions about it and he assumed that she might have somehow wanted to get involved with the lobbying.

Swedish Match is involved in a joint venture with tobacco giant Philip Morris to commercialise Snus and other smoke-free tobacco products outside Scandinavia and the US. It had hoped to persuade the European Commission that Snus is healthier than cigarettes because it is not inhaled.

I do not intend to be part of that ‘runaway jury’; what I am presenting are quotes in the press that seemed important and posing questions. It is up to the readers to reach their own conclusions. Of course until the full report is available one’s perception is limited. At the moment it is a matter of he said and he refuted. On Friday, 18, OLAF regretted that only “partial evidence” was provided to the media.

Meanwhile, MEPs wanted access to the contents of the OLAF report as presented to Mr Barroso. Due to the sensitivity of this report, MEPs will agree to have access to the report in a closed room and after signing a confidentiality declaration.

According to the Malta Times’ Ivan Camilleri, yesterday. “Hard evidence exists to prove that former European Commissioner John Dalli was aware that Silvio Zammit was asking for money in his name. Awareness was not a crime but a clear breach of ethics and misconduct”, the chief of the EU anti-fraud agency told a restricted closed-doors meeting with group coordinators of the European Parliament’s Budgetary Control Committee.

Now, if this was a restricted closed doors meeting, how come we know about it?
According to the source of the restricted closed-doors meeting, Mr Kessler gave more details of OLAF’s investigations following the tip-off by the Swedish tobacco company Swedish Match.

If there was “hard evidence” why had OLAF reiterated publicly “its investigation found no conclusive evidence of the direct participation of Commissioner Dalli in the operation for requesting money”? We are all dying to know what the “hard evidence” is? It must be about “the number of unambiguous circumstantial pieces of evidence indicating that Mr Dalli was aware of the activities of the entrepreneur and of the fact that his name and position were being used for financial gain”.

“Mr Dalli was aware of what was going on and was well aware that his old friend (Silvio Zammit) was asking for money and setting up meetings on his behalf”, said Mr Kessler, stressing “Mr Dalli vehemently denied this with us but we have hard evidence showing this.”

“Mr Dalli had acted against the spirit of the Commissioners’ Code of Conduct and the Framework Convention of Tobacco Control, which Mr Dalli was well aware of. According to this convention, public servants cannot have contacts with the tobacco industry unless they declare it. Mr Dalli met them several times and did not declare it. This is a breach of the convention,” Mr Kessler, chief of the EU anti-fraud agency, said at the meeting.

He said his office had no evidence that the former Maltese minister had done anything illegal, or that he had pocketed money. “It is now up to the Maltese authorities to conduct their own investigations and see if Mr Dalli was involved directly.
Why is the report so sensitive? Who else is implicated? Closed doors seem to have their leaks anyway. So why can’t we all see the full picture?

We are told that it is up to the Maltese Authorities to make the report public.
Our AG has now read the report and passed his recommendations on to the Police. I am assuming that should mean that there are grounds for criminal proceedings, otherwise why pass it on?

John Dalli has been fiercely denying any wrongdoing and has held several press conferences answering questions on the case. This has annoyed Barroso to the point that he has threatened Dalli with a formal sacking, which would mean the loss of lucrative transition allowances and a pension.

Article published in the Malta Independent on Sunday, 28 October 2012 

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Beached whales indeed

Are the bendy-buses driving you round the bend? If you drive around the island of Malta the answer is most probably “yes”. Even the non-bendy ones are too wide for our roads. They are impossible to overtake, hence the congestion but the bendies are by far the worst.

And what a political hot potato they have become. There is no doubt that the latest Labour Party statement (which attracted 449 Comments - (Malta) Times online, mostly agreeing) will have got the Nationalists (Party in government) wondering where the hell they can go next with this one.

The latter have a belly full to deal with right now. What with Franco Debono, who is like one of those pesky little dogs who yap non stop and fail to bite, the other rebel backbenchers and Frank Portelli’s hospital.

But back to the buses. The LP has stated it will follow Tory, London mayor Boris Johnson and rid us of what he called “the diplodocuses that jack knife over the yellow box junctions like beached whales.”

The only thing I did not like about Boris’s speech was his addendum “I am delighted to say” to “they are now clogging up the streets of Malta.” Why should he be delighted? He should be commiserating with us that we got lumbered with his rejects.

I have been following comments on the many articles related to all Arriva buses, not just the bendy ones, ever since they started operating here. I also listen to people relating their experiences on the beach and other public places and have seen a fair number of broken down buses while driving and those were not involved in accidents.

“Arriva route buses were involved in 1,294 accidents between the beginning of July last year and the end of April this year”, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi told Noel Farrugia (PL) in reply to a parliamentary question on Tuesday.

There is no doubt that there is wide dissatisfaction with the new transport system, which does not mean that the old one did not need to go. But replacing a bad system with one that is slightly better for commuters and hell for road users was certainly not the right solution.

What most complain about is that we have changed one kind of dinosaur for another. There also seems to be more discontent among road users since as a spokesman for Labour leader Joseph Muscat rightly put it, “they are evidently not good for Maltese roads”.

Though I must say, I can’t see why Joseph Muscat needs a spokesman for such a statement. Is this delusions of grandeur? I am probably hammering yet another nail in my coffin by criticising both parties. If only Franco was not such a puffed up, spoilt brat with no idea of team work, who can’t get his act together, we could perhaps see an Independent Party flourish here. It is sorely needed.

Unfortunately, I can only dream on. If the European Parliament is any kind of yardstick, Independents having any influence is unlikely. But I digress again. Back to the buses, the Transport Ministry’s response, “Their capacity means they can carry several busloads of passengers in one go”, to Boris’s comments, just further impressed me that what this government wants to do is herd us like cattle into boxes. Of course Ministers shall still be chauffeured in their limos.

How can anyone who travels on Maltese roads come up with the statement, "By our mathematics that is considerably less congestion, rather than more”? Obviously, the Transport Ministry can’t do maths. The congestion caused by the buses is consistent and widespread, which further strengthens my theory that the idea is to push us off the roads.

We are to live in monstrous, overcrowded boxes that look like chicken coops and travel in articulated buses that carry up to four buses worth of passengers, the latter according to the Transport Ministry spokesperson, who added, “Maltese passengers appreciate the comfort and sheer capacity of articulated buses”.

Is it possible that the Transport Ministry does not keep tabs on public opinion? The question of “comfort” on the second hand buses is disputed by many commuters. Some complain that the air conditioning is set at too cold a temperature and if it does not work one cannot open a window to let in some air. “The smell of sweat is overwhelming” was what one commuter told me. As for the bendy-buses they are not for those susceptible to motion sickness.

It is also interesting to note that the predecessor to the Transport Authority had recommended that we needed smaller rather than larger buses and that bendy-buses were not suitable for our roads.

Londoners managed to get rid of the bendy buses by their vociferous complaints. As someone who lived in London for a large chunk of my adult life I know that Londoners, unlike us, do not shrug their shoulders and say “m’hemmx xtagħmel” (can’t be helped). It is up to us now to say “hemm x’tagħmel, let’s get rid of them.

Article published in the Malta Independent on Sunday on 14 October 2012

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Call for ban of bird hunting and trapping in Malta Petition | GoPetition

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Badly done indeed

 

Shocking that it took the management of a home for orphaned and destitute young women more than 12 months to establish that (alleged) inappropriate disciplinary measures were being administered to the children in their care. And that it took a Cabinet Minister who just got that portfolio back to take the bull by the horns.

That is, of course, if it was proven that the girls were being handcuffed, which is what, I presume, Minister Cristina will be presenting in her appeal to the judgement. But why did this allegation not surface before? Or did it? Was the full report kept under wraps?

It was interesting that she did not mention handcuffs on the Times video interview. But she did in the accompanying report. It seems that this case was badly mismanaged from day one. Sadly ‘déjà vu’ springs to mind. It was reported that the woman in question was engaged in 2009 and asked to leave two years later on direct orders from Dolores Cristina, who had just retaken the Social Policy Ministry.

However, the woman was suspended on full pay for nearly two years, pending the outcome of an inquiry, not sacked outright, according to the Home’s new chairman’s testimony.

According to press reports on Wednesday and Thursday, no details were given at the tribunal by the ministry as to why the experts (who are they) had recommended the post of coordinator be declared redundant. Why redundant?

Badly done indeed. The inquiry was not about the post no longer being necessary, but about the allegation that it was being inappropriately managed.

And was she a coordinator, or did she “Head the residential home” as reported by The Times’Kurt Sansone in his interview with Minister Cristina on Friday. If she did indeed head the home and that post was made redundant, does that mean the home is headless?

Minister Cristina only referred to the woman by name and did not mention the post on camera. It is a rarity for a Minister to be found guilty of unfairly dismissing an employee. The Industrial Tribunal awarded the former policewoman €3,900 compensation and ruled that reinstatement would not be practical. Well, if the post was declared redundant, it means it no longer exists.

According to the minister, following serious allegations by the residents and staff against Mrs Bartolo (described as the home programme co-ordinator at the home in previous reports) she had advised the then chairman Richard Manchè (now deceased) that a board of inquiry was to be set-up to establish whether the allegations were substantiated.

"Mrs Marisa Bartolo's training and extensive experience in the police force have formed her and conditioned her behaviour to date. More than 12 months of direction from the home’s director, role modelling and feedback from the other members of staff have not yielded the desired changes. Her position with the Conservatorio (home) set-up is, therefore, considered untenable", was the excerpt of the boards’ inquiry presented to the tribunal and no details were cited, according to the reports.

No mention of redundancy here, or handcuffs. And, again according to press reports, that was the content of the letter sent to Mrs Bartolo telling her she lost her job.

So who were the experts citing redundancy mentioned at the tribunal? And why did the question of handcuffs not surface at the tribunal? Now if the home director (who I assume is the home head) had given direction and other staff feed back to Mrs Bartolo for more than 12 months and it had not yielded results, why did it have to be the minister to take action? Surely it was up to the management to deal with the problem.

And are the same people who did not deal with the problem until the minister’s intervention still managing the home? I know the Board has a new chairman, but what about the other members? Were they around in the 12 months when Mrs Barolo behaviour was being questioned and no action was taken? Were they appointed for their relevant expertise or Party connections?

If the allegations were substantiated in the inquiry’s report, which is what Minister Cristina said in the interview, why was the report not fully divulged at the Tribunal? The case was instituted against her because she personally got involved in the case soon after her re-appointment as Social Policy Minister.

The published excerpts of the report in the press on Wednesday and Thursday, made no mention of handcuffs and there was no mention of details on what behaviour (implicitly negative) formed and conditioned by her police training and experience affected her post. Nor did it specify what changes were required after direction and feedback given by the home’s director and other members of staff.

Yet, in her Times interview on Friday, the minister said that serious inappropriate behaviour was substantiated in the Board report. “She was violating their (the adolescents in her care) privacy and resorting to restraining measures, including the use of handcuffs, against all the philosophy of the programmes the young women were following,” she said.

The board wrote in its report that the use of handcuffs was “completely inappropriate”, she added. Does it need a board of inquiry to establish that using handcuffs on children is inappropriate? But it looks like those vital details were not presented to the Tribunal, or were they?

In the light of the report and its recommendations, Mrs Cristina said she wrote to the chairman of the Conservatorio Bugeja Home, the late Richard Manché, Ms Bartolo’s direct employer, to terminate her employment.

Now seriously, should not the negative implications of dealing with discipline been noted at the interview stage. I would have thought that that would have been an important question for a former police officer applying for a job dealing with vulnerable young women.

Mrs Bartolo told the tribunal that she had overreached the one-year probation period and was even told by the late Richard Manchè, that she was doing well. The latter of course cannot now be substantiated, unless he did so in writing.

However, her claim that she had been suspended and then dismissed without being given the chance to defend herself over the allegations and that there had been no disciplinary hearing has merit. And was she really not told the specifics on why she had lost her job?

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Local leaders should get used to being lampooned

Oh please, how I wish many of my country folk would grow up and muster a degree of sophistication. I cannot believe the palaver, fuss and non-sequitur comments online following a photomontage of Prime Minister Laurence Gonzi in Gaddafi’s uniform on a Facebook page.

Mind you, it also got wide coverage in The Times online, topping “In Discussion”. Someone recognised what the people want, what they really, really want. I am not repeating myself; I have just lifted the lines from (if I remember correctly) a Spice Girls record.

The much more serious articles about the resignation of Professor Stephen Brincat, the head of Mater Dei Hospital’s oncology department and its aftermath got less than half the number of comments overall. But more on that later; back to satire.

The Nationalist Party used to have the edge on sophistication. I am afraid they have been regressing and have lost it completely with their statement claiming the photomontage was “shameful, personal, rude and vulgar”.

Now, of course it was personal. It was meant to lampoon the Prime Minister. How can you send up the Prime Minister if not personally? It was silly of Rachel Tua, the woman whose page it appeared on, to say, “I don’t see why they should take it so personally.”
Really? Does she believe that depicting someone in a way that derides him is not personal? It was political satire and was not shameful, rude or vulgar is what Ms Tua should have told reporters and she would have been right.

How can a poster of the Prime Minister in a uniform (albeit Gaddafi’s) be shameful, rude or vulgar? Do many of the 322 Times online commentators really believe that Gonzi in a Gaddafi uniform meant he was as awful as Muammar? Are they really so simple minded? It was a send-up, a parody, not to be taken literally.

Politicians and other leaders all over the globe are wide open to that kind of gibe and they accept and ignore it, except in countries run by tyrants. Why the PN thinks its leader should be any different to the rest of the democratic world leaders says a lot about how unworldly it is.

Most of the online comments were by partisans, which is the norm here. They either expressed shock that the Prime Minister could be lampooned (PN), or responded with “What is good for the goose...”(PL). Others claimed that really rude, shameful and vulgar blogs had not been commented on by the PN, getting the response from other commentators that Ms Tua was part of the PL, therefore she should desist from such activity.

Yes, the woman whose Facebook page it appeared on is a Labour councillor who switched political allegiances even though former PN leader Eddie Fenech Adami was her great uncle. She obviously has a political agenda. So what?

The PN is not exactly coy when it comes to ridiculing members of the Opposition. It is all part of the political, puerile fun and games. So what is all this about the PL showing its “true face”? Which is what the PN statement said. Of course this is mud-slinging time as both parties are gearing themselves up for a general election. But as mud-slinging goes, let’s face it; the photomontage in question is hardly heavy handed.

And another thing, besides the politicians and their hangers-on who obviously have a partisan agenda, this national, blinkered view that anyone who dares criticise or disagree must have a political (in the partisan sense) agenda is truly pathetic. Talk about thinking outside the box. We need to take a step back as a nation and start to engage our brains, at least those of us who have one.

Take Stephen Brincat’s resignation, since his sister is married to the Speaker of the House, he would hardly have been keen on upsetting the apple cart. He must have been really pushed to the limit to spill the beans. He said that the government repeatedly ignored his advice on various important issues, making his position untenable.

 “The duties of a clinical chairman of a hospital department are not just to lead the service provision of that department but also to advise the government on matters pertaining to that speciality, cancer in this case... decisions were taken that wasted hundreds of thousands or euro”, he told The Times.

He gave a long detailed list of how the money was wasted. On the move of the oncology department, “Without the slightest bit of planning we were ordered to go to Zammit Clapp. After three years of useless planning we were then told we’d be going to Mater Dei.” Which is where Professor Brincat had agreed they should have gone in the first place. When he was asked whether he thought it was best to move oncology from Boffa to Mater Dei seven years ago, his answer was “a clear, though reluctant one, in favour of Mater Dei to join the other specialities,” he said.

“Apart from the hundreds of thousands of euro wasted, we wasted three precious years during which the life span of our single old linear accelerator (a machine) for treating cancer patients was fast running out.” Eventually, after the machine broke down several times, a new wing was built at Boffa to house a machine that had to eventually be moved to Mater Dei at great expense. “As always, no one is accountable,” he said.

Yet, how many people are worried about this lack of accountability? With all his faults, such a shame about his egocentricity and political naivety, Franco Debono was making waves on the answerability and responsibility of government.

Professor Brincat had warned the Health Department about the danger to the service, “but I was told that the political decision had been taken and that I should therefore shut up”.
Now, that latter statement does reek of a dictatorial style of governance.

Although Prof. Brincat made these sentiments public, many medical professionals are still not prepared to publicly back him on similar allegations despite “the policy to deliberately keep the National Cancer Plan a secret from the professionals that were meant to execute it until the day it was published”, which Professor Brincat disagreed with.

In an interview I had with another medical professional some years ago, this ‘secrecy’ factor, i.e. keeping the professionals in the dark right up to publication date of new plans, did come up. So it is nothing new. That begs the question, what are the professionals scared of? Why are they all keeping mum?


Article published in the Malta Independent on Sunday on 09 September 2012 

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Cancer chief resigns after advice ‘repeatedly ignored’ - timesofmalta.com

Cancer chief resigns after advice ‘repeatedly ignored’ - timesofmalta.com

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Formidable upsetter of many apple carts

Love him or hate him, Dom Mintoff, Il-perit, was the most colourful and powerful politician we in Malta have ever had. The long obits in the upmarket international media are a testimony to that.  Besides, his demise has unleashed an amazing, unprecedented, national, unbridled wave of emotion demonstrating grief from clapping and cheering thousands who gathered in the streets to bid him farewell, but also a number of comments online expressing bitterness and hatred towards him. One of my first memories of the man was when at around 12 years of age I accompanied my dad to visit a family in Zabbar. As now, Dom Mintoff, who was upsetting various apple carts then, was the main topic of conversation and my dad happened to mention that his (Mintoff’s) niece was his secretary. Although a Nationalist, my father, a very gregarious man, did not let partisan politics influence his behaviour. Anyway, as soon as the man of the house realised that my dad was not an ‘enemy’ despite his politics, he led us to his bedroom, reached under the bed and took out a portrait of Dom to show to us. I never quite worked out whether Dom had been hidden under the bed because of our visit, or because he was being labelled a communist. The next thing I remember a few years later was my broadminded parent’s shock at Archbishop Gonzi’s declaration that anyone voting for Labour in the 1962 election would be committing a sin. Mintoff had wanted to curb the influence of the Church in politics and education since day one and relations between him and Archbishop Gonzi got progressively worse throughout his tenure. After living in London for a few years in the late Sixties, one of the first things I noticed on a visit back home in the 1970s was that class distinctions were breaking down. The social changes Mintoff had brought about were tangible. He was a true Labour politician and he improved the lives of the working classes who saw him as their saviour, as opposed to many upper middle class people who hated his guts for upsetting the social order of the time. The eccentric maverick did nothing by halves, and although he did a great deal to better the lot of working class people by improving health provision, education, better work conditions, housing and pensions, he also fomented class hatred in his fiery speeches, which led to violence. As the Telegraph obituary put it he was “The irascible gadfly of Maltese politics. A fiery orator given to exacerbating social divisions at home, when pursuing his political objectives in London he alternated between civilised charm and hysterical abuse.” However, his sometimes temperamental, lengthy negotiations, over Malta being underpaid for its use as a base by the UK and Nato, did pay off. In March 1972, he finally got Malta a good deal. A new seven-year defence agreement got us £14 million a year from Nato, of which £5 million was provided by Britain, with additional money for development and economic projects. He created Air Malta and Sea Malta, which were vital to our economic development. However, whether his action to bring broadcasting under state control was right is debatable. Although it probably was a vehicle for British propaganda at the time, it became and still is, subtle or not, a vehicle of propaganda for whoever is in government. The downside of Mintoff’s premiership was that he was a rabble-rouser and violence increased during the campaigning and after the 1976 general election, when he was reconfirmed to lead the country, the rule of law seemed to break down and human rights were violated. The Nationalist (Opposition) party clubs were wrecked and violence also broke out at Opposition campaign meetings. A year later, again maybe because of Mintoff’s uncompromising style of implementing change, the medical profession went on strike. Then, in 1979, the offices of The Times were burnt and Eddie Fenech Adami’s (then Opposition leader) residence was ransacked, and his wife and family terrorised. However, violence breeds violence and a prominent doctor’s young daughter was blown up by a bomb meant for her father who was not taking part in the then prolonged doctor’s strike. The perpetrators were never found. Mintoff’s premiership ended in 1984, but he stayed on the backbenches, still appearing with his trademark big belt and buckle, causing mayhem to Alfred Sant’s career well over a decade later in 1998 when he voted against his own party and basically lost Labour the election. Later in his dotage, he sometimes put himself in embarrassing situations, not perceived by him. In 2002, I wrote in my then Malta Sunday Times column: “I was embarrassed to see not only an ex-prime minister, but also one who has left an indelible mark on Malta’s history, being reduced to ‘standing up’ to a comedian on national television.  "Despite Dom Mintoff’s non-endearing qualities, he did change the class system on the island and put Malta on the international map. I doubt that Mr Mintoff, a scourge to the Maltese upper classes and Salvatur to the then working classes, takes advice from anyone. Which is a shame, because he would have been well advised to stay away from Xarabank. “He was used in the same context as the bearded lady, or the dancing bear at the fair. That is the kind of show it is.” I did not like seeing him pilloried. Mr Mintoff’s main gist (in the few minutes I watched the programme) was that the then Prime Minister, Dr Fenech Adami, was breaching our Constitution by taking Malta into Europe. He missed the irony that he wanted to integrate Malta with Britain in the Fifties. Despite the people who had and are still trying to undermine the man, his legacy involving a lot of good despite quite a bit of bad cannot be undone. The images of his state funeral, most notably in The Times, (Malta) are proof enough. Article published In the Malta Independent on Sunday on 26 August 2012

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Is insurance as colourful as painting?

Many people regard the insurance business as staid and unexciting, so when I found out that David Curmi, the chief executive officer of MSV Life plc, was also an artist, I was curious to find out whether his paintings, which are abstract and very colourful, were his release from his sober work environment. 

“Despite misconceptions our business is not boring at all, I love it. It is a complex business that is constantly changing. It can be as dynamic and challenging as painting and keeps us on our toes,” he told me.

“My father had recommended I go for the insurance business. I finished school in the late seventies when there were problems at university and my dad suggested I should opt for something fairly new, which insurance was at that time,” he told me. He obviously took to it like a duck to water, since he has not only been in the business for 33 years but is also one of its leading lights.

David grew up in Birkirkara because that was where he went to school. His parents moved there to be near St Aloysius College. “I was lucky in that I never needed transport to get me to school and back.”

The eldest of four boys David has very happy memories of his school days. “We bonded as a group and we still meet up every year,” he says about his classmates. He also still has ties with Birkirkara, in particular the football club, which he says is a great fan of his company. MSV Life sponsors facilities at the club. Besides, the company has also provided a turf football pitch in every village.

I asked David what other community related projects MSV Life is involved in. “One particular long standing programme that MSV is very proud of, for which, incidentally, my predecessors deserve credit not me, is an arrangement with Inspire, formerly the Eden Foundation, whereby we employ over 15 young people who would otherwise have difficulty finding jobs. The posts are quasi full time and there are two facilitators on the premises to help with training and so on,” he told me.

Getting to the nitty-gritty of the business, things have not been easy worldwide. How has the global financial slow down affected your company? I asked him.
“It has certainly left its mark and affected our revenues. Europe and the IMF will put Malta under pressure, uncertainty creates a negative sentiment and our business is very prone to sentiment.

“We are currently experiencing a lower demand for our products. Lower investment returns were and are still affected due to the eurozone problems.
“But things are not as bad as in 2008 and 2011. The life insurance market in Malta, like other international companies, had shrunk in those two years. However, that was only two dips over a span of 16 years. The current eurozone crisis will be resolved. It will be painful, but it will be resolved.”

So what is your current investment strategy? I ask him.
“We are sometimes said to be too conservative, but I am confidant that we are doing it very well. Our guiding principle is never taking unnecessary risks. We will never do anything we don’t fully understand, if we don’t understand it, our clients will not either.
“Our decision process is based on the tennis court analogy. We play centre stage, never on the edge.

“Perhaps one of our most important and fundamental responsibilities is constantly collecting and administering people’s money. We therefore adopt a very prudent and conservative stance in order to preserve the value of capital provided by our shareholders and customers.

“On the local front there are opportunities in retirement planning. Since we are the leading company in that and investment, we are looking forward with a degree of optimism that opportunities will arise in this area.”

So does his optimism extend to his painting too?

“I was 18 when I had my first exhibition, but my career restricted my painting, although I still painted at home whenever I found the time. I was lucky in that the President found out about my painting and offered me to have a recent exhibition at San Anton. That gave my work exposure and was so successful that I am now working on a second exhibition,” he said.

But art is not David’s only passion. He shares his love of music with his wife Mariella; they have just been to Milan for a Bruce Springsteen concert. Their taste in music is eclectic, ranging from rock to folk music from Africa, Asia and South America. He is a great Bob Dylan fan and not only followed his footsteps in New York, but also saw him in concert in Rome, Zurich and Sicily.

“I always have music on when I paint,” he told me.
Eclectic music taste and abstract art seem unlikely bedfellows with insurance management, yet David Curmi seems to have got them to gel for him.

Article published in the Malta Independent on Sunday 19 August 2012

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Is Malta rubbish on waste management or not?

Malta is nearly at the bottom of an EU scoreboard assessing the management of municipal waste, ranking 25th out of 27. Just pipping Bulgaria and Greece to the post, I read in a report from Brussels published in The Times (Malta).

It “has still not implemented a waste prevention programme, it had very high levels of land filling, low recycling levels and was yet to reach targets on biodegradable waste,” according to the EU study.

It failed in 13 of the study’s 18 criteria. It is still land filling 86.3 per cent of its total municipal waste and recycling only seven per cent, we were told. And “although efforts to improve were recognised, particularly compared to the situation before joining the European Union in 2004, it was being slow to meet EU standards”.

“Not so,” came the rebound from Malta's Resources Ministry. “The EU scoreboard which gave Malta low marks on waste management is two years old and does not reflect the current situation. Whereas up to 2010 some 85 per cent of waste was dumped in the landfill and 15 per cent was recycled, at present, some 57 per cent of waste went to landfill and 43 per cent was recycled,” it claimed.

So has Malta been updating its data with the EU? Is the Commission going to base its “roadmaps for the 10 worst-performing member states, including Malta,” on an outdated study?

“We are noticing many improvements in Malta and many projects are currently ongoing in order to dispose of municipal waste better. But despite this progress Malta is still way behind our average standards. Land filling was its biggest waste problem, even though the amount going into landfills was being reduced every year. Disposing of waste in landfills was the worst possible way of dealing with it,” The Times article quoted an EU official saying on Tuesday,

The Ministry had nothing to say about the waste prevention programme in its response. Now the first thing that springs to mind is: how on earth can one “prevent waste”? However, reducing it can certainly be done.

Malta has stopped plastic bags being given out at supermarkets, which has forced me to be creative on how to dispose of my domestic waste. But, since I am not au fait with what exactly waste prevention involves, I visited the EU’s environment page and discovered that it is “A key factor in any waste management strategy” and that it is all about reduction.

Basically, it is about reducing the amount of waste generated at source and reducing the hazardous content of that waste, which automatically simplifies its disposal. That indicated to me that it is the manufacturers of products, which could do something about packaging.

Since many products that we consume come from abroad, it is up to the EU to instigate legislation ensuring manufacturers toe the line all over Europe. That does not, however, absolve our country from ensuring our producers of packaged goods are reducing packaging and that any hazardous content is eliminated.

Yet, it is not only Malta that has made limited progress. “According to the Strategy, although waste prevention has been the paramount objective of both national and EU waste management policies for many years, limited progress has been made in transforming this objective into practical action.

“Neither the Community nor the national targets set in the past have been satisfactorily met. As a result, the Strategy concludes that prevention can only be achieved by influencing practical decisions taken at various stages of the life cycle: how a product is designed, manufactured, made available to the consumer and finally used,” said the EU Environment page on waste.

However, we in Malta can take heart that we shall top the table on waste management in the future. “Its work in the field will take it to the top of the EU league,” the Resources Ministry promised on Wednesday. But is that yet another pre electoral promise?

Article published in The Malta Independent on Sunday on 12 August 2012

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The guillotine has finally fallen on MEPA’s auditor

What disgraceful behaviour. Joe Falzon, the man who has been auditing Malta Environment and Planning Authority (MEPA) so diligently, refusing to allow that authority to ride roughshod over us for eight years, has been summarily dismissed. To add insult to injury, he is now being used as a political football.

Of course the blade has been hanging over his head since 2007 and his contract has only been renewed on a three monthly basis since 2010. But he still carried on working regardless and he certainly deserved better treatment than a sudden guillotine.

He was called to a meeting with the Ombudsman on Wednesday and the first thing he was told was, “I don’t know if they told you but the audit office will stop functioning next week.” The government, through the Environment Ministry, quickly reacted to that news item by issuing a statement, placing the onus of responsibility, keeping Mr Falzon informed on the situation, on the Ombudsman, “Government has received no notification from the Office of the Ombudsman on the appointment of a Commissioner for the Environment. Consequently, it was not in a position to advise Mr Falzon on an appointment, which is to be effected not by government but by the Office of the Ombudsman.

“The Ombudsman was informed some time back that the discussions between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition were not conclusive and that the decision according to law now fell within his responsibility.”

Oh dear, we are back to passing the buck. It also looks like the Ombudsman is being used as a screen to detract any criticism away from the government. But that is nothing new.
People complain to the Ombudsman, the investigation takes time and when a report finally emerges it only offers recommendations and no concrete action, since it has no such authority. So the heat was off the government and nothing is really done.

“Changes in the Ombudsman Act which envisaged the removal of the Office of the Auditor within Mepa and the appointment of a Commissioner for the Environment within the Office of the Ombudsman were made with the unanimous consent of Parliament,” the Environment Ministry said.

So obviously, both parties would prefer to have an Environment Commissioner within the Office of the Ombudsman (i.e. toothless) than an auditor, who did not mince his words in his, sometimes scathing, reports on MEPA’s workings.

“These changes were designed to strengthen the scrutiny of work done by the Malta Environment and Planning Authority given that the Office of the Ombudsman and its commissioners were not answerable to government or Mepa, but to Parliament, ” said the Ministry’s statement. What a load of baloney.

Joe Falzon was doing an excellent job at scrutinising MEPA’s workings. On the other hand, we have seen case after case getting nowhere after being investigated by the Ombudsman, because it has no teeth. Oh yes, the complainant is given justification many a time, but all s/he gets is grand paroli.

The Office of the Ombudsman might not be answerable to government or MEPA, but it weighs its words very carefully in its reports to avoid offending anyone. The changes will weaken not strengthen scrutiny. You just gotta break some eggs if you want a positive result when conducting investigations.

Since, according to the Environment Ministry statement there was “unanimous consent” in Parliament about the changes to the Ombudsman Act, “which envisaged the removal of the Office of the Auditor within MEPA and the appointment of a Commissioner for the Environment within the Office of the Ombudsman”, why is the Labour Party (PL) “insisting it should be consulted about changes within the Office of the Ombudsman to ensure there was the necessary scrutiny on the Malta Environment and Planning Authority.”
Was there unanimous consent in Parliament on the issue or not?

The PL is complaining, “Action now seemed to be taken quickly, so much so that Mr Falzon was not notified that his post was being removed.” The statement said that “the government kept everything under wraps for the past year and a half” and now “the government’s manoeuvres behind the people’s back were out in the open”.

The move to get rid of Mr Falzon and his audit office started rolling five years ago, ironically, when he was asked to investigate a case by the Ombudsman. The issue was covered in my column in The (Malta) Sunday Times (end of April 2007) entitled “Is public consultation a sham backed by the law?”

The residents of Mellieha Santa Maria Estate had written to the Office of the Ombudsman for redress and requested the Ombudsman to investigate the issue of building permits by MEPA to developers of adjoining sites, which involved the changing of development zoning to allow the construction of multi-storey underground garages and overlying high rise buildings.

The residents complained that no public consultation at all took place about the zoning changes; that the public was not advised by MEPA of these major changes and that they were not given the opportunity to submit their representations. They also claimed that other irregularities of a technical nature took place in the processing of the application that in their view severely prejudiced their rights.

Mr Falzon’s investigation led him to conclude that “MEPA failed to consult, with the public, on the substantial amendments and additions that were carried out to the draft Local Plan after the original drafts were issued for public consultation”. Adding, “MEPA justified its actions by stating that it acted on legal advice.”

The auditor said that in his view “MEPA is obliged to consult the public on the preparation of a Local Plan (vide Section 27 of the Development Planning Act) on a substantially wider scale than that applied by MEPA.”

It was the Ombudsman who proposed that the Audit Office should fall under his wing administratively, claiming the move “should give more autonomy to the audit office,” in July of 2007. This had followed a stalemate between MEPA and its auditor over the former's resistance to the latter's investigator Carmel Cacopardo being reinstated, which Mr Falzon claimed was “part of a ploy to render his office innocuous”.

Nearly a year later, after he criticised MEPA over the Mistra outline permit, a decision made by Mr Falzon in 1994, when he chaired a DCC board, surfaced to undermine him. Unlike the MEPA responses to criticism, there was no mystifying verbiage and patronising arrogance, no faffing about or excuses. His reasons were as clear-cut as his reports.

“I think, honestly, even if I was on a DCC board and had to take a similar decision now, I would take the same decision, though now the legal situation has changed as a result of the Habitats Directive and there are more legal constraints,” he had told The (Malta) Times’ Mark Micallef.

“It does not bode well, in an effort to divert the heat away from the promised reforms at our Environment and Planning Authority the tide has turned to discrediting the auditor who has repeatedly brought to our and the authorities’ attention the wrongs at MEPA. It seems to me that the powerful development lobby has got at someone and there is a move to get Joe Falzon chopped, hung and quartered, since attempts to having his wings clipped did not work”, I wrote in my  Malta Today column (April 2008) “Red herrings and Greeks bearing gifts.”

Article published in the Independent on Sunday on 29 July 2012 

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Who is aiming to be top dog at the PN?

Browsing the Internet, I saw that despite the awful heat, people are still very interested in the current spate of political shenanigans. On 24 June, I commented that I shall have to reach out for a bucket if I see yet another photo of Franco Debono. Now it is Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s turn to turn my stomach over. Although it must be said, JPO is better looking. But as they say, looks are not everything. JPO might do well in that department, but when it comes to credibility he loses out to Franco. Despite his blundering, the latter has not yet quite reached JPO’s level of amateur dramatics. We have not seen any crocodile tears from Franco, yet. His calls for reforms were genuine and needed. He just handled the political manoeuvring rather badly, demonstrating incredible naivety coupled with an inflated ego. He must be panicking now, since, I believe, his thinking was that people disenchanted with the current administration, but who do not favour Labour, would vote for him as the PN saviour and he would have reached his objective. The PN executive has scuppered that. The latter had a tough decision to make, particularly with regard to two of the barred from standing under the PN banner at the next election, since they can cause havoc in this legislature. JPO is creating confusion over Richard Cachia Caruana and will no doubt not stop there (although he had announced he would not be standing at the next election, the executive obviously did not believe him. Besides, he has been sleeping with the enemy − his partner is a Labour activist) and FD is claiming he did not know what he would do in Parliament, although it would be difficult to support the government, a step further. Meanwhile, as much as JPO lost all credibility with me since the Mistra saga and I am sceptical about his current allegations, it is disgraceful and unacceptable that his family is being threatened. “We have four children in our household and this is not an easy time for us. Nothing can justify what we are being put through,” he said. He is right in saying that if people wanted him expelled from the party for exercising his democratic right in Parliament; they should do so without resorting to vile, bullying tactics. It is ironic that it is the Labour Party that is providing the family of a Nationalist MP with round-the-clock private security and that one of the claims he is making against RCC is that pressure was applied on a new Labour administration to continue providing him with police protection after he was nearly killed in a murder attempt. It is the allegations that RCC “tried to exert, via a high-ranking member of the 1996-1998 Labour administration, pressure on Hon. Mizzi, then Minister of the Interior, to replace the head of the Security Services for personal reasons”. And that “Mr Mizzi has implicated Mr Cachia Caruana in alleged interference with the course of justice in relation to a cocaine party organised by individuals who were close to Mr Cachia Caruana,” that need to be substantiated. Now for the gist of my heading, seeing as Franco Debono’s hopes have been dashed. The list of the new candidates who will be seeking election under the PN banner held few surprises. So far only three women’s names have appeared − Dolores Christina, Therese Comodini Cachia and Caroline Galea. I am sure that Giovanna will be back, but until the PN decide to apply gender quotas, women will still be under represented in that camp at least. As for the men, the rising PN stars are Chris Said, Beppe Fenech Adami and David Agius. Carm Mifsud Bonnici will be back, but I doubt that Alexiei Dingli will get there. As Valletta mayor he has failed the residents, especially the elderly, badly putting commercial and his party ambitions first. As for Manuel Delia, if his Arriva grand fiasco does not hold him back, the electorate truly deserve any bad decisions a government will dish out. It will be interesting to see if old stalwarts Francis Zammit Dimech and Censu Galea get back in and if cardiac surgeon Prof. Albert Fenech makes any leeway in politics. Now for a different kind of current climate and real dogs. The weather is kind of hot and beaches and even more the sea are both places we humans need in a heat wave. We are lucky to have clean seas and so far, at least where I swim, no jellyfish. But recently people started arriving with their dogs and although I don’t mind dogs, I don’t like swimming with them. I also don’t like being sprayed by a dog shaking itself dry or having my clothes sprayed, and that could also be a smelly kind of water. Now, the least dog owners can do is ensure that their dog is on a lead and that they station themselves at a reasonable distance from other people’s towels and clothes. But of course some are completely oblivious that their beloved pets are not accepted as a family member by everyone on the beach. It is not a relaxing swim when one has to keep an eye on a roaming dog on the beach to see that it does not decide to pee on your towel. I remember reading about a new law on dogs and beaches and I also recall the outcry by many dog owners, but by no means all. There was also a warning about the health risks posed by dog faeces by the Minister of Health no less, which landed him with some prize comments, some appropriate, especially those referring to pigeons and horse dung in Valletta (the road to Marsamxetto, Triq L-Assedju L-Kbir, should be renamed “Horse Shit Street”). However, whatever his failings, he was right about dogs on beaches so he should take action and ensure the law is being enforced. Published in the Malta Independent on Sunday July 15, 2012

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Where tinkling away at toy pianos can lead

At six years of age, Tricia Dawn Williams was, as she puts it, “tinkling away on four toy pianos − three blue and one black”. Today, at 38, she is one of Malta’s most accomplished pianists, specialising in modern/contemporary music.

I first heard Dawn (she told me she gave up on Tricia since too many people were mispronouncing it) play at an Equinox Trio concert at the American Embassy a few years ago and have been following her career ever since. Equinox held a concert at St James Cavalier sponsored by the Australian High Commission just a few months ago.

She told me that her constant “tinkling” at home got the message across and her dad found her a piano teacher. From the age of seven right up to Grade Eight, she always came first in her piano exams under the tutelage of Rita Micallef. She also got a bronze medal at 12 and a silver at 14 (competitors were from four different countries) from Trinity College of Music in London. She took her ‘O’ levels while working for her eight grade exam and her ‘A’ levels while studying for her piano diploma, Dawn tells me proudly.

“I suppose I was a bit of a nerd, at least that’s what my friends used to say I was, ” she adds. “As soon as I got home from school I would head straight to the piano and start practising, I never stopped to eat, or for anything else, until my mum would start shouting at me to get on with my homework, which I usually got done by 11pm. There were no weekend outings, except to play the organ in church,” she said.

The organ playing came about when the parish priest visited their home to bless it. “Whenever people came home, my father would ask me to play the piano for them. I remember hating it and trying to avoid it, or just being stubborn and refusing to do it. I just hated someone trying to show me off.”

However, she did play something for the priest and he asked her whether she would like to start playing the organ at the 6pm Mass during the week. “I honestly don’t remember agreeing to this, but the next day my father came home with a brand new copy of the hymn book Innijiet with all the music. It looked very easy to play and boring, I’m afraid to say.

“When the day came I arrived three quarters of an hour earlier, because I had to be shown the ropes. I had never seen an organ in my life. So many buttons, and the pedals. My first experience was that whatever music was put in front of me I had to forget the time signature, all I had to do was play the notes and let everyone sing.

“At first this was very frustrating, but then I decided to look at it from a different angle and thought it would be a good exercise for me to play in a different way. I also started improvising because I thought that if they can do what they want then so can I. Strangely enough, improvising always came naturally to me on the organ, but I shy away when I’m asked to do it on the piano, something that has always baffled me!”

Dawn’s organ playing got noticed and people started commenting positively. “It was then, at age 13, that I started going for organ lessons with Patri Bert Borg, who sadly passed away this year, and learnt how to play the organ properly, using the pedals too. I had an organ lesson once a week and piano lessons twice a week,” she said.

“So I suppose boyfriends were out of the question,” I remarked. “I was also 13 when I met my first boyfriend,” she told me. When I asked how on earth she had found the time, she said had met him in church of course. “I used to practise on the pipe organ in church every Saturday morning. In no time I was playing at all the major ceremonies at my parish church in Senglea. But after I did my Grade 8 exam, I had to take a decision.

Practising once or twice a week wasn’t enough and Patri Bert suggested I buy my own organ. But I was more interested in playing the piano, so my organ studies fell by the wayside,” she said. Dawn was 16 when she had her first serious relationship, which ended up in marriage at 19 followed by the birth of her first daughter, Sehrazat, now 19, and her second daughter Seda, now 18, a year later.

“That drastic change in my lifestyle put a stop to my piano playing. Looking after two small girls left me no time, let alone energy, for anything else. In retrospect I should have concentrated on my music and not got married so early. Except that of course I adore my girls. I was separated at 22 and I felt that I had crammed a lifetime in those three years, ” she said.

Having neglected the piano for four to five years, Dawn’s first break came in her mid twenties through a chance meeting with violinist James Grech. “I was in partnership with my ex husband in a chain of Turkish food outlets at the time, and one evening, James, wearing his tails, came in to one of them after a concert.

“We got chatting. He was telling me about his career and I told him, ‘I used to play the piano’. He got very interested and surprised me by saying, ‘why don’t we play a concert together’. I was really taken aback, I had almost forgotten I used to play the piano until we started chatting, so was rather nervous about such an undertaking,” she told me.

However, James persuaded her to start practising with him “just for fun”. That went so well that they were booked for their first recital of classical and romantic music for piano and violin at the Manoel’s Sala Isouard, six months later.

“On the morning of the concert I got so scared that I phoned James at 6am and told him I wanted to cry off. He was rightly furious and there was no way he would agree to cancel. So I had to perform. I was very tense and I certainly did not enjoy it, but I was back to some serious piano playing.”

Dawn played regularly with James for a couple of years. In 1999 she met the composer Rueben Zahra, who had just returned to Malta after four years in Rome. “Until I met him, my music knowledge was restricted to classical and romantic composers like Chopin and Rachmaninoff. He gave me a Bartok piano concerto CD as a birthday present to introduce me to modern music. I immediately fell in love with Bartok and Rueben suggested that I start taking lessons in modern music.

“That was when I started studying Bartok with Pawlu Grech, who introduced me to other modern composers like Ligeti, Cage, Saygun and Adams.”
Later that year Dawn gave her first performance of contemporary music with the original Etnika, which had been set up by Ruben Zahra and Andrew Alamango, featuring works by Rueben. “Since then I have only played modern and contemporary music,” she told me.

In the early 2000s, Dawn played a lot with Etnika in several concerts around Malta. After a couple of years, Etnika started playing different music. Eventually, the initial instrumental formation changed to a more flexible one, which did not include a piano. However, she continued doing duo recitals with different people, “but nothing major,” she said.

“In 2007, Ruben wanted to record Mouse in the Machine for clarinet and piano. Lino Pirotta was to play the clarinet. Lino was also very interested in modern and contemporary music so we clicked immediately and after recording Ruben’s piece we started to plan a recital of our own. We played at St James Cavalier, private events and during Notte Bianca. That was when we decided on the name – Equinox.

In 2009, Karl Fiorini asked the duo to play his music at a recital, but it needed a violinist. They asked Tatiana Kirkop whether she was interested in joining them. She was and Equinox grew from a duo to a trio.

That year, the group played in Paris at Les Invalides, at a recital at the President’s Palace and took part in Evenings on Campus. Equinox has also often taken part in recitals organised by embassies and has been invited to festivals by composers, who wanted them to play their work.

In 2011, the Equinox Trio were invited to play at the Contemporary Sounds Festival organised by the Malta Association for Contemporary Music; Evenings on Campus; the International Festival of the Arts, and Karl Fiorini’s Spring Festival. Besides her work with the Equinox trio, Dawn is also part of Rueben Zahra’s ‘Crossbreed’, an open contemporary ensemble.

Its name derives from the fact that the instruments change according to the project in hand. Crossbreed, with Dawn on piano, Kevin Abela on trumpet and Daniel Cauchi on percussion, was in Torino last November to open a festival of contemporary music Musiche in Mostra, with Rueben Zahra’s Diversity, which they were all very excited about. Maltese audiences, me included, got the opportunity to hear this dynamic and eclectic piece, including both drama and fun, at Sala Isouard, during Karl Fiorini’s Spring Festival this year.

Then of course Dawn has ongoing projects with her solo work, one of which involves piano and storytelling of folktales, myths and legends. She is working with a Maltese narrator, Joseph Galea, and last November she was invited by the Associazione Culturale Etnea to perform in Sicily with Italian actress Biancamaria Stanzani Ghedini. She has performed this work locally several times as part of Notte Bianca, Evenings on Campus and at St James Cavalier for school projects.

“One of my favourites is Henry Cowell’s Three Irish Legends, which can be performed with a narrator, or just on the piano. Besides the fact that the pieces of contemporary music that I choose are dynamic and powerful, what I find so exciting is discovering new composers, discussing their music with them and bringing it all alive. On top of all that, the cherry on the cake is when one of those composers asks me whether I would like him or her to write a piece for me. This has happened with two composers, one Scot and the other American.”

Dawn’s hectic lifestyle has not really changed that much since her girls have grown up, she just plays more music and looks after two pet degus − Walter and Peter. But she does stick to a healthy regime. She is up at six and makes up a breakfast of fresh vegetable juices. She loves gadgets and waxed lyrical about her wonderful juicer, which she bought abroad. Then off to work at 7.30 until 5 pm. (She has a full time job with General Soft Drinks as PA to the general manager).

“Music is my life, but I have to put food on the table. Having said that, I have a wonderful boss and am lucky to have a great work environment,” she tells me. After work she practices on the piano from six to nine with a dinner break and is in bed by 10. Thursdays are the exception because she goes to a Pilates class. The weekends are for household chores and shopping and of course five hours of piano practice. I almost didn’t dare ask about socialising. “Well, I do go to concerts, especially when friends are performing,” she said.

So what are Dawn’s plans for the future? “On Tuesday I shall be playing with Nafra, a traditional folk ensemble with a contemporary edge (also a Ruben Zahra enterprise) at the Institute of Art & Design Annual Exhibition and on 4 August in Sicily, also with Nafra.
In 2013, a recital is planned with Macedonian musician Gyorgyi Ciencievski on double bass, featuring new work composed specifically for Dawn and Gyorgyi by Maltese, Chinese, Australian, American and Macedonian composers.

“I shall also be working with a French composer, Denis Levaillant, who has just finished writing 20 piano études. He is selecting pianists from all over the globe and organising a worldwide premier tour. I was lucky that he came across some of my live performances on YouTube and asked me whether I would be interested in being one of them, which of course I was delighted to accept.”

You can watch Dawn playing on this link – www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzBFzaT0me8

Article published in the Independent on Sunday on 01 July 2012 

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