Emerging skeletons

There is no time like an election for airing the cupboards, bringing out the other party’s skeletons and dusting them off.  As a counter attack to the oil procurement scandal, which gets juicier by the day, what has been unearthed is that all is not well in the political party clubs.
Sometime between the end of 2009 and 2010, Tony Abela, one of the Labour party’s deputy leaders was told that a friend of the barman in the Labour Party (PL) Safi club was seen in the kitchen cutting up a white block of what we are not sure of, but some sort of drug. This was revealed to the public through a recording released last week.

The incident was not reported to the police at the time of the discovery. Defending his decision, Tony Abela told The Times that his “biggest duty was to see that the club is no longer occupied by people who could harm those who visit the centre”, that “the evidence had been disposed of” and to keep up the good name of the party”.

However, his actions proved to have had the opposite effect and have come back to haunt the PL at the worst possible time. Instead of keeping up “the good name of the party”, it has now popped up to damage the PL. Besides, his argument that he was protecting people is weak, this because people who deal in drugs can harm lots of people and not only those “who visit the centre”, so if he believed that the person seen with drugs could harm people, his duty was to make a report. Even more so, if as he claims, “The members of the committee were terrorised”.

It would then have been up to the police to worry about that and whether witnesses were ready to speak up and whether to follow it up. What I find a bit hard to believe is if the club president was so terrified of the man with the block, how come he could dispose of the stuff with no come back?

Of course the PN (Nationalist Party) or the Prime Minister had notified the police in 2010, I presume, (since that is when the recording is said to have reached the Prime Minister). The police made their first enquires then and had interviewed “all the persons involved” in the case but none of the statements revealed any details or information “which could further lead to identify the person or place mentioned in the recording”. Well, now the police know the place and are again investigating the “white block” affair and have asked the PL’s president of the Safi club for a statement.

Tony Abela does however have a point in questioning (rhetorically) why the Prime Minister saw fit to release the recording at this crucial time when he had it in his possession four years ago, since that was when the police held their first investigation on the case.
A worrying comment came from Joseph Muscat when he told reporters, on Tuesday, “now that the PN had given the barman refuge”. He was talking about the barman sacked by Tony Abela in the drug case. According to Joseph Muscat the barman had approached him wanting to be reinstated but he was refused. So it looks like the police can now identify the barman whose friend was allegedly chopping the ‘block’ in the club kitchen. I do hope that he is not ensconced in a PN club now.

The plot thickened when the PN earlier this week published letters sent to Joseph Muscat in 2009 and 2012 from the sacked Safi barman, claiming he had been framed and treated unfairly by the party. On Friday, we also heard that a 2010 police investigation into the PN’s Mosta club ended with five people being arraigned on drug-related charges, including three who ran the bar. Apparently, the PN released the latter to show that unlike the PL it did the right thing.

It said it had received reports about music after-hours and other complaints about the bar’s management, including the type of people who frequented the bar. It cooperated with the police to probe these reports. The person running the bar was not the same person contracted by the party and the club was closed immediately.

So it seems that both sides are open to a criminal element and there was a problem with drugs in clubs belonging to both parties. Of course these two drug incidents are the only ones that have surfaced so far and they are part of the tactics to persuade voters on whom they can place their trust, otherwise why have we heard about them now.
As though the electorate is not confused enough. I am not talking about the diehard partisans who seem to be unbelievably blinkered, but the thinking public.

Published in the Malta Independent on Sunday 24/02/2013

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Poor Valletta

 

I am a fan of architecture and when editing the Malta Sunday Times supplements, Architecture was my favourite. As in most other genre, my taste is quite eclectic and I love some contemporary buildings as well as my favourite Baroque, the latter maybe because of the Knights of Malta’s heritage – Valletta, the city I was born and grew up in.

I was therefore interested in watching Renzo Piano being interviewed by Sarah Montague on Hard Talk (BBC World) because I cannot forgive him for replacing our city gate with a gap. The top of the gate was one of the few access points into Valletta and since it lead me via Hastings Gardens to where I grew up I miss it terribly.

He was being interviewed as the Shard in London was officially opened this month. I had walked past the construction site often on my way from London Bridge Station to my son’s apartment and had watched its progress with interest. So what did Piano have to say about perhaps the tallest building in Western Europe right now?

He did not agree when Sarah Montague asked him “Isn’t the Shard a monument to wealth and power?” Because he said it is open to everyone. She also asked him whether he agreed that the public should pay £25 (to go to the top, I presume). He said he did not, but that it was beyond his control, which of course it is. Architects always avoid uncomfortable questions by saying “Ah, but it is the client who rules”. When I recently asked an architect, discussing that point generally, “Couldn’t the architect just refuse a project if s/he disagrees on certain principals?” His response was “Yes, but then the client would just go to another architect.” Meaning s/he would lose the work.

Anyway, what really struck me in the Piano interview was this “I do not live in the sensation that everything I do is right. It is always a great surprise... If you make something wrong it is wrong forever”, Ms Montague asked him does it mean “If you do something wrong you can’t fix it?” Piano answered, “Exactly, that’s the tragedy. That is why as an architect you have a very dangerous job to perform and it is even more dangerous for the other people because if you do something wrong it is forever.”

Poor Valletta

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Face off

Never have we been reminded so persistently that politics monopolise the news, to the point that people who are not engrossed in the whole election shebang are fed up to their back teeth with all the shenanigans. It must be said that the Labour Party (PL) is coming across as cooler and not as defensive as the Nationalist Party (PN), which is showing signs of desperation.
It is not surprising that at election time tension is running high and some people do lose their cool. But I have to say that I found certain remarks, made by the previously debonair MEP Simon Busuttil in one of the latest face offs between the PN and the LP, simply inane.
First of all, of course both parties use people to their advantage. Because, that was the context of Simon’s latest, quite silly, comment when he told Deborah Schembri that the Labour Party (PL) was using her because she had a Nationalist face.
The PN infighting caused by Franco Debono was milked by the PL and now the PN is doing the same with Anglu Farrugia and exploiting the PL’s “links with contractors” and being “too close to big business”.
But hang on a minute, does not the PN have links with big contractors and is also close to big business? A run through past and current media stories will show that it does. So what’s the excitement?

The latest, real hot potato and which the court has put media restrictions on under the terms of the Money Laundering Act, is the ongoing investigation into the oil procurement case. On Friday night, Cabinet accepted the advice, of the Attorney General and the Police Commissioner, to recommend the granting of a presidential pardon for businessman George Farrugia in return for information on the case. Although any added information would obviously help the police they apparently already have ample evidence to secure convictions.
So why is Simon Busuttil harping on about the PL’s business contacts? He also went one step further and claimed, “Big contractors are dictating Labour Policy”. But are they? Did Anglu say this in his interview with the Sunday Times? More on that later.

Regarding Ms Schembri, she came to the limelight during her successful push for divorce in that campaign and, if I remember correctly, it was because of the PN’s stance against divorce that she left that party. Now, one might have thought that the PN’s deputy leader meant that her face was known as being a PN candidate, but apparently not.
He was also quoted as giving a warning, “The packaging of those who had started to wear a Nationalist cloak would come apart and the real face of Labour would be uncovered”. He named Karmenu Vella, Alex Sceberras Trigona and Evarist Bartolo as among those presenting a Nationalist front. The claim is that rather than a ‘New Labour’ image the PL was trying on a Nationalist mask.
I know it is carnival time but all this cloak and mask stuff is a little over the top. I am afraid that not so simple Simon has lain himself wide open to ridicule, which is not something I would have expected from him.

Now, if we are going to be talking about faces, Simon Busuttil’s face gives the impression of an open, sincere and sophisticated man and not of one to succumb to such ridiculous comments and manipulate issues to suit, which brings me to The Times online “Pictures of the week” quote yesterday  “Anglu Farrugia's explosive comments in a Sunday Times interview”.
For those of you interested to know whether Anglu’s comments were indeed explosive and want to know what he actually said in the interview, here we go: “I say contractors are close to the Labour Party, like some are close to the Nationalist Party. My problem with contractors is that it triggers fears of corruption.” That is what Anglu said in the Sunday Times interview.
I really can’t see why the PN are getting so excited that businessmen and contractors are courting the PL. They should be well used to being courted by the same people. Besides, we have seen a fair amount of hobnobbing by PN executives and ministers with businessmen and contractors. The latter obviously want to be well in with whoever has the power and purse strings.

Thankfully, despite all the mud slinging on both sides, the campaign has not proved volatile and if the worst thing to be slung at one is that one’s face demonstrates one’s politics, which is how some people perceived it, we should be grateful.
I was quite shocked as I was waiting for something decent (as in good quality) to pop up on my car radio, the scanner picked up a Maltese song (I am afraid I don’t know which channel) saying something along the lines of “It is a good thing I know you otherwise I would smash your face in (inkisirleq wiccex)”. Since faces have been on my mind that phrase stuck. Should any local radio station be transmitting such violent language?

Published in The Malta Independent on Sunday 10/02/2013

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Knights of Malta to open soup kitchens...in Britain - timesofmalta.com

 My how we have regressed!


Knights of Malta to open soup kitchens...in Britain - timesofmalta.com

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So much activity, is there an election on?

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

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environment survey

Do take part in this survey on our environment and if you share it widely the politicians might listen

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What Light's you up?

What is sure is that, whoever wins, we shall enjoy cheaper energy. At least that is what we are being told. That has monopolised the electoral debate so far. Is it really all we care about? It seems that is what some journalist’s think. Following the electoral trail with Dr Gonzi visiting a tomato farm in Gozo, they showed no interest in the farming sector and instead asked him about the Labour Party’s (PL) proposals on energy.

He told them that the employers, developers and other businesses had welcomed the PL’s energy proposal before the Nationalist Party (PN) exposed it as a gimmick, adding they did so before they were made aware that the proposal, which Labour claimed would cost about €360 million, would in fact cost €600 million. “The taxpayer will have to pay, bills will increase, industry will crumble and jobs will be put at risk,” he told journalists.

Reality or babaw tactics? The PN was not happy (to put it mildly) that the PL’s proposals have been welcomed by the Employers Association (MEA), the Association of Hospitality Executives (MAHE) and the Developers’ Association (MDA). They have all welcomed the PL’s long-awaited plan to reduce water and electricity bills.

The MEA even lauded it, calling it “ambitious and courageous”. The MEA expressed its satisfaction that the PL had taken on board the recommendation in its memorandum to political parties to create a parliamentary position responsible for energy, lower electricity tariffs, and greater involvement of the private sector, environmental consideration and health considerations.

The MDA said it considered the political discussion on electricity tariffs a positive development because it could be the key to a stronger, more vibrant Maltese economy. It noted that the proposal led to a mature discussion on the energy sector. The positive effect of cheaper tariffs, on the scale indicated by the PL, on the Maltese economy would undoubtedly be enormous and would stimulate the business sector to contribute further for the good of Maltese society and its further progress, it said.

“MDA appreciates the Labour Party’s effort to put together its proposal and feels it is a serious attempt to solve the problem through a doable project, although it is preoccupied on how possible it is for the project to be complete in two years,” said their statement.
It is quite intriguing really the way the debate over this issue has developed. The Labour Party (PL) has been promising this for a while now and it had been met with scepticism, including from yours truly, since I wanted to know how it was to be achieved and always feel that the money has to come from somewhere and it was usually our taxes.

Finance Minister Tonio Fenech also stressed latter point on Thursday afternoon, claiming Labour’s water and electricity proposals would lead to higher taxes. But will they? Now that the election is nigh, the PL has finally come up with specifics, which it was reluctant to divulge until now. On Tuesday evening, a detailed 370-million-euro plan was unveiled, which was to be overseen by Joseph Muscat as Prime Minister, and an Energy Minister (an innovation) and we were told it would not come from our taxes.

The Delimara power station was to be gas-fired leading to an average 25 per cent reduction in our utility bills. The private sector, (and this is open to all interested parties. A call will be issued in April) will finance the new plant while the BWSC extension will remain the property of Enemalta.

Labour would complete the project within a two-year timeframe and effect savings for private households next year. Water bills would be reduced by five per cent through savings made from reduced electricity bills. According to the Kema Dutch energy consultants, the cost of electricity generation, including a return on capital investment, will drop to 9c6 per unit.

By Wednesday evening, the PN also insisted that it was committed to reducing water and electricity bills water and electricity bills. “We are proposing to have a gas pipeline to deliver gas to our power station, funded partly by the EU and partly through private investment,” said Prime Minister Gonzi in Berlin, adding that the PN would be giving its detailed reactions on Labour’s proposals at a press conference the next day, which indicated the PN was worried by the PL’s effect on the electorate with its proposals on energy, despite their counter offensive calling it a “gimmick” and saying their pipeline would also reduce tariffs.

Other points, which would strike a positive chord with the electorate, were Joseph Muscat’s assurances that Enemalta’s management would be bipartisan. “Directors would be chosen on the basis of their merit, whatever their party,” his party’s commitment to safeguard the jobs of all Enemalta workers and that he would step down if Labour does not deliver on its energy plan.

But the PL know that it cannot keep flogging the same horse, although the issues it is now raising do not have the same impact. “The party wanted to move on from its much discussed energy plans and start unveiling other electoral proposals,” said Joseph Muscat. These included proposals about workers’ rights – with a specific focus on those in precarious work – and ways of integrating women into the workforce, he said.
A Labour government would strengthen Malta’s equality commission and update social security laws to further promote gender equality, he said on Friday. The PL would also make the government more representative by ensuring more women were appointed to its boards, Dr Muscat said.

Sounds good, but if the PL are so sold on women taking their rightful place in society, what have they done so far within their own party to validate that statement? None of the political parties have been known to take this issue seriously. One only has to look at the electoral line up of all of them to see that.

“Social security laws are based on families in which the male was the sole breadwinner. That is often not the case anymore and we need to address that,” said the PL leader. My question is – Does it take a general election for this outdated law to be brought forward and addressed? “The PL’s electoral programme would include an entire chapter discussing gender equality measures”, promised Joseph Muscat. That is certainly one of the promises I shall be following closely.

Published in the Malta Independent on Sunday 13/01/2013

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