Two and a half Russians

Anger is not a sentiment, it is a highly impulsive emotion. 

I guess it is this that makes me tick and tick and confront the challenges that others may choose to ignore. 

The last time I felt this way was when Magistrate Francesco Depasquale fined this newspaper €3,000 for a ‘quote of the week’ which in his judgement defamed Peter Fenech, the man the same magistrate strangely declared not to be a public person, even though he held political appointments. 

Just for the record, that was one of three fines for the same story. They amounted to more than €18,000. And they found MaltaToday’s most respected journalist, James Debono, guilty as hell… and that was just for doing his job. 

Apart from, that is, the additional fees to PN lawyer Joe Zammit Maempel who, of course, has made it his mission to represent those who want a free holiday from MaltaToday.

I do not mind being found guilty (though more on Peter Fenech next week), but to be fined on a ‘quote of the week’ is absurd and disgraceful.

But this time round I am much angrier. 

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has declared that he will be postponing the 2015 local council elections and have all local elections on the same day as the elections for the European Parliament, next due in 2019. His lame excuse is that he will save money for the nation.

Whether he likes it or not his decision will scuttle the referendum to abolish spring hunting and work wonders for the hunting lobby. And he appreciates and recognises that hunters and trappers are an important electoral consideration, more so when he is losing to the switchers.

He says it is not the case. I would like to believe him, though he knows that whether it is the intention or not, it will still have a very negative impact on the democratic process known as the referendum. I will tell him to his face that I do not believe him and that he has purposely postponed the elections to curry favour with a bunch of men who make it their mission to either shoot anything that flies or hang around with a small cage and a bored songbird under their arm pits.

He knows that bringing out the vote in the referendum will be difficult if people are not ‘obliged’ to do their duty and vote in the local elections.

But the criticism of Muscat should not be about hunting. We all know that he does not really give a toss about hunting or birders.

Muscat gave the bird tormentors an open trapping season in violation of the accession treaty, though he did not even commit himself to re-introduce trapping in the electoral manifesto. 

But back to his weak argument that he will be saving money. If he honestly wants to save money he should really start looking at the way his administration dishes out private contracts.  

If he were serious, he would have allowed the 2015 local elections to go ahead and then award the councillors elected an extra year to make their election coincide with the European Parliament elections in 2019.

Muscat is not an African dictator as Simon Busuttil described him. African dictators rig elections and have brunch with American ambassadors, but at least they have the gall to organise elections, even if they are heavily rigged. Muscat has chosen to do away with elections that are held only once every three years.

The argument that this move will save money is absurd. If I were to list all the money this government is squandering to keep some boys and girls happy it would amount to more than one round of local elections – the upkeep of roundabouts and landscaping in one year, for example, costs the equivalent of several local elections.

Since when did a democratic litmus test have a monetary value?

For Muscat money is no problem when it comes to maverick and Form II whiz-kid Franco Debono (€24,000 as law commissioner, a car and chauffeur, and serving as consultant to the PM for an unknown amount), to millionaire Joe Zammit Tabona as envoy at €34,000 a year, or to the regiment of Labour Party candidates who have been given handsome remunerations running into the €70,000 range and even higher. Not to mention Austin Gatt’s cousin Lou Bondi, who is on a yearly retainer of €54,000, apart from all the perks.

And what about the daily subsidies for public transport, the subsidies for so many travelling expenses and the hand-outs for purely electoral considerations.

To equate a democratic process to a fiscal budget means that Muscat has a problem differentiating between a monetary consideration and an institutional necessity. This is a crisis of understanding.

He says that the local elections will cost the taxpayer €2.5 million each time, equivalent that is to two and a half Russians who have been given a frigging Maltese passport. 

Two and a half bloody Russians who have made their money from God knows what.

The cost is so serious that according to our Prime Minister this should be addressed by postponing democracy.

I have no doubt that the Prime Minister has made his political calculations. I am sure of this. But he has made one miscalculation, and that is that not everyone has a price. 

In eight years under the Gonzi administration, this newspaper faced literal annihilation because it opted to stand up and be counted. An eight-year period which meant braving the waves alone, without the support or intervention of Malcolm Naudi’s Press Club.

Some years ago Joe Saliba, the former secretary general of the Nationalist Party, who should be awarded a medal for landing the PN in its present financial crisis, had decided not to field Nationalist candidates in the Marsa and Zejtun local council elections… to ensure that there would no elections there. Saliba’s intention was to dampen the final result that was evidently going in Labour’s favour. The PN’s decision was diabolical and anti-democratic. 

Muscat’s decision is no better.

A few weeks back, before Muscat’s decision was taken, a private poll was carried out to find out what the public thought. 

The questions were loaded and they specifically asked the public if they would prefer to vote for the councils and the European Parliament on the same day, instead of in batches of council elections. The answer to that leading question was as expected, an overwhelming majority agreeing that they would prefer to vote, as the question suggested.

It was as if people were to be asked whether they preferred not to pay taxes.

As expected, Muscat was planning to cite the survey to justify his arguments.

On a matter of principle, as was the case with the adoption by couples in civil union, Muscat opined that he would be ignoring what the surveys said and get on with his adoption proposal.

This time round he has conveniently decided to embrace a crooked survey that was rigged to come out with the result that the majority prefer one election instead of elections every three years.

Western-style democracy is not something that grows on trees. It is an achievement that takes ages to evolve and it makes a nation different from another. That is why I am proud to be Maltese and not, for example, Chinese.

China may be the greatest and fastest growing economy in the world, where everyone loves money and is in love with Louis Vuitton and Porsche, but you simply cannot question the supremacy of the Communist State. Perhaps that is not a priority for most people around the world. But in Beijing when you err you not only have to fight court decisions and political boycotts, the outcome is usually a lonely and dirty prison cell.

If MaltaToday were based in Tripoli, there is little doubt that most of its journalists would be under a death threat and if we were in Moscow, it would be a feat if we were not kidnapped or made to disappear.

But this is Malta: we are supposed to debate how we should vote and for whom, not when.

Muscat has in his wisdom, and in my view, succumbed to the pressure of the hunters’ federation and decided not to combine the referendum with the local elections. In doing so he has wrecked a democratic process.

It is a dangerous precedent. 

Democracy is not a prime minister’s prerogative. It is the will of a nation that we have a democratic process which elects people to positions of power, and referenda to impose the people’s will.