As I plough through all the action in hand by the Nationalist Party in government (PN) and promises made by both it and the Labour Party (PL), I am more and more convinced that we need an election every three instead of five years and I shall explain why.
But before I get into that, I want to get something off my chest, which has been troubling me. I am all for equality in all areas – gender, race and religion, by no means an exclusive list but those are what I want to refer to here because of what I see as a conflict mainly between gender equality and religion.
The Imam Mohammed Elsadi, taking advantage of election fever, has called for a government directive on workers wearing the hijab in the public and private sector. Jumping on another bandwagon, he is claiming that more Muslim women would join the workforce if the government issued a directive clarifying that the hijab headscarf can be worn at work.
I believe that the hijab is yet another symbol of female oppression, but I wanted to hear what the counter arguments were. So I Googled “hijab and female oppression”. The articles that came up claimed that, contrary to what many think, the hijab is not a symbol of oppression and the Muslim women who wear it choose to do so.
Preetam Kaushik, a freelance journalist blogging in HuffPost Lifestyle UK, further informed me that the hijab applies to men as well as women. “Before addressing women, this is what the Quran has to say concerning the hijab and men: ‘Say to the believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty: that will make for greater purity for them...’” Basically, a one-liner and no detail of how men should guard their modesty.
Kaushik continued: “The following verse then addresses women in slightly more detail.” (Three paragraphs as opposed to a one-liner). This is because, he tells us, “women are more vulnerable, the advice is practical not oppressive and is given with the intention to safeguard Muslim women not denigrate them.”
As well as the same instruction to men to lower their gaze and guard their modesty, “they (women) should not display their beauty and ornaments except what (must ordinarily) appear thereof; that they should draw veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands, their fathers, their husband’s father, their sons...” he stops there and goes on to the “fairness or the unfairness of the 2011 hijab ban in France”.
Halima Ahmed, a female Muslim blogger, also arguing in the same vein, carried on to what comes after Kaushik’s dots... “their husband’s sons, their brothers, or their brothers’ sons or their sisters’ sons, or their women or the servants whom their right hands possess, or male servants free of physical needs, or small children who have no sense of the shame of sex...” (Quran 24:31).
So there you have it. It is “the shame of sex”, which is what this is all about and it is down to the women to control that shame. They are the ones that need to cover up. The men will then not need to lower their gaze and that is half the one-liner hijab for men gone.
I shall now move on to why I think we need to have shorter spans for a party in government. The main reason we are given for a five-year term is that a party in government needs at least that amount of time to fulfil its manifesto. But there is nothing like election fever to give politicians a good kick up the backside and get things moving.
Thank heaven, things seem to have veered slightly away from the gas saga, and how we shall pay less for our utilities, whoever wins – although the PN now has an oil corruption scandal to contend with. But let’s take a look at some of the things the PN in government is achieving in the last few weeks and what the LP is promising it will achieve in the short term.
The environment should be as important in this election as it was in the last. The weather on Friday could not have been more apt for the PM to tell us that the €56 million flood relief project that is aimed at eliminating flooding in low-lying areas such as Birkirkara and Msida is well underway. The project will include the building of a reservoir in Attard and is expected to be completed in 18 months’ time. A network of underground water tunnels will be completed by July next year.
“This is the biggest infrastructural project this country has seen in a while,” said Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi. Of course work had started a while before, but isn’t it amazing how things speed up at election time? Birkirkara, Msida, Balzan, Attard, Iklin, Gzira, Zabbar, Marsascala, Zebbug, Qormi and Marsa are the towns and villages that stand to benefit most from the project. So that’s quite a stroke for the PN vote.
On the other hand, Labour party leader Joseph Muscat is promising to rehabilitate the Marsa power station site and convert it into a recreational and commercial zone. In Cospicua, on Friday, he promised the Dock One project will be “one of the first” to be concluded by a Labour government in the “shortest timeframe”. The PM, also in Cospicua, said the project would be finished by March.
A Labour government will allocate money for a pedestrian crossing at the Mrieħel bypass in the next Budget, said JM. Safety for pedestrians is certainly an item which needs attention and it is not only on the Mrieħel bypass. But will all these promises to better our lives be fulfilled? Remember the promises we were given on Mepa reforms before the last election, yet what we have seen in the last year alone was the rampant destruction of trees from our urban areas; no curbs on over development in already congested areas and noise pollution increasing daily.
Environmental NGOs have long been insisting that the environment needs to be separated from Mepa, but at election time we are only getting a small gesture. “Plans are afoot to create a specialised nature agency”. On 9 January we were told that talks are underway for the creation of an agency to manage Malta’s Natura 2000 sites. The agency will be separate from the Malta Environment and Planning Authority “to ensure the environmental regulator’s transparency”.
What we need is transparency on all environmental issues, not just on 13 per cent of the land area of the Maltese Islands. What is required is a complete separation of “Environment” – taking the “e” away from Mepa with an Environment Authority with enough clout to oppose planning decisions from an MPA that are contrary to environmental sustainability and our quality of life.
An Environment Authority should have a team of enforcement officers to also ensure other areas such as noise and air pollution are kept in check. Maybe I missed it, but has anything happened to the White Paper on noise that was meant to move after public consultation in May? What about the proposed 24/7 hotline, which, we were told, will receive and redirect complaints with the help of a tracking system, to ensure accountability and enable callers to follow up their complaints?
I am not going into all the PN and PL election programme pledges here because it would take more than the space I am allocated. The point I am trying to make is that, considering how people are not only listened to but are promised so much in so little time, we would be so much better off if elections happened more often.
Besides, we could also change the administration sooner if it failed to deliver, keeping the politicians constantly on their toes for fear of losing power.
Published in the Malta Independent on Sunday 27/01/2013
But before I get into that, I want to get something off my chest, which has been troubling me. I am all for equality in all areas – gender, race and religion, by no means an exclusive list but those are what I want to refer to here because of what I see as a conflict mainly between gender equality and religion.
The Imam Mohammed Elsadi, taking advantage of election fever, has called for a government directive on workers wearing the hijab in the public and private sector. Jumping on another bandwagon, he is claiming that more Muslim women would join the workforce if the government issued a directive clarifying that the hijab headscarf can be worn at work.
I believe that the hijab is yet another symbol of female oppression, but I wanted to hear what the counter arguments were. So I Googled “hijab and female oppression”. The articles that came up claimed that, contrary to what many think, the hijab is not a symbol of oppression and the Muslim women who wear it choose to do so.
Preetam Kaushik, a freelance journalist blogging in HuffPost Lifestyle UK, further informed me that the hijab applies to men as well as women. “Before addressing women, this is what the Quran has to say concerning the hijab and men: ‘Say to the believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty: that will make for greater purity for them...’” Basically, a one-liner and no detail of how men should guard their modesty.
Kaushik continued: “The following verse then addresses women in slightly more detail.” (Three paragraphs as opposed to a one-liner). This is because, he tells us, “women are more vulnerable, the advice is practical not oppressive and is given with the intention to safeguard Muslim women not denigrate them.”
As well as the same instruction to men to lower their gaze and guard their modesty, “they (women) should not display their beauty and ornaments except what (must ordinarily) appear thereof; that they should draw veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands, their fathers, their husband’s father, their sons...” he stops there and goes on to the “fairness or the unfairness of the 2011 hijab ban in France”.
Halima Ahmed, a female Muslim blogger, also arguing in the same vein, carried on to what comes after Kaushik’s dots... “their husband’s sons, their brothers, or their brothers’ sons or their sisters’ sons, or their women or the servants whom their right hands possess, or male servants free of physical needs, or small children who have no sense of the shame of sex...” (Quran 24:31).
So there you have it. It is “the shame of sex”, which is what this is all about and it is down to the women to control that shame. They are the ones that need to cover up. The men will then not need to lower their gaze and that is half the one-liner hijab for men gone.
I shall now move on to why I think we need to have shorter spans for a party in government. The main reason we are given for a five-year term is that a party in government needs at least that amount of time to fulfil its manifesto. But there is nothing like election fever to give politicians a good kick up the backside and get things moving.
Thank heaven, things seem to have veered slightly away from the gas saga, and how we shall pay less for our utilities, whoever wins – although the PN now has an oil corruption scandal to contend with. But let’s take a look at some of the things the PN in government is achieving in the last few weeks and what the LP is promising it will achieve in the short term.
The environment should be as important in this election as it was in the last. The weather on Friday could not have been more apt for the PM to tell us that the €56 million flood relief project that is aimed at eliminating flooding in low-lying areas such as Birkirkara and Msida is well underway. The project will include the building of a reservoir in Attard and is expected to be completed in 18 months’ time. A network of underground water tunnels will be completed by July next year.
“This is the biggest infrastructural project this country has seen in a while,” said Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi. Of course work had started a while before, but isn’t it amazing how things speed up at election time? Birkirkara, Msida, Balzan, Attard, Iklin, Gzira, Zabbar, Marsascala, Zebbug, Qormi and Marsa are the towns and villages that stand to benefit most from the project. So that’s quite a stroke for the PN vote.
On the other hand, Labour party leader Joseph Muscat is promising to rehabilitate the Marsa power station site and convert it into a recreational and commercial zone. In Cospicua, on Friday, he promised the Dock One project will be “one of the first” to be concluded by a Labour government in the “shortest timeframe”. The PM, also in Cospicua, said the project would be finished by March.
A Labour government will allocate money for a pedestrian crossing at the Mrieħel bypass in the next Budget, said JM. Safety for pedestrians is certainly an item which needs attention and it is not only on the Mrieħel bypass. But will all these promises to better our lives be fulfilled? Remember the promises we were given on Mepa reforms before the last election, yet what we have seen in the last year alone was the rampant destruction of trees from our urban areas; no curbs on over development in already congested areas and noise pollution increasing daily.
Environmental NGOs have long been insisting that the environment needs to be separated from Mepa, but at election time we are only getting a small gesture. “Plans are afoot to create a specialised nature agency”. On 9 January we were told that talks are underway for the creation of an agency to manage Malta’s Natura 2000 sites. The agency will be separate from the Malta Environment and Planning Authority “to ensure the environmental regulator’s transparency”.
What we need is transparency on all environmental issues, not just on 13 per cent of the land area of the Maltese Islands. What is required is a complete separation of “Environment” – taking the “e” away from Mepa with an Environment Authority with enough clout to oppose planning decisions from an MPA that are contrary to environmental sustainability and our quality of life.
An Environment Authority should have a team of enforcement officers to also ensure other areas such as noise and air pollution are kept in check. Maybe I missed it, but has anything happened to the White Paper on noise that was meant to move after public consultation in May? What about the proposed 24/7 hotline, which, we were told, will receive and redirect complaints with the help of a tracking system, to ensure accountability and enable callers to follow up their complaints?
I am not going into all the PN and PL election programme pledges here because it would take more than the space I am allocated. The point I am trying to make is that, considering how people are not only listened to but are promised so much in so little time, we would be so much better off if elections happened more often.
Besides, we could also change the administration sooner if it failed to deliver, keeping the politicians constantly on their toes for fear of losing power.
Published in the Malta Independent on Sunday 27/01/2013