Ev gets tough
Evarist Bartolo – he of the vuci ta’ patri and the clothes of tal-Muzew – spoke to Labour delegates in what the pro-Labour press and di-ve.com like to call ‘the south of Malta’ or ‘is-south’ (as though Malta is so damned huge that it can be divided into north, south, east and west).
In is-south – or should that be is-sawt – he promised that if those delegates were to make him party leader, then he would work to amend the electoral laws, so that “only those who have a right to vote are allowed to do so.” Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Because right now, I’m thinking that finding a Labour spokesperson who speaks sense means sending out the town-crier.
The law already says that only those who have a right to vote are allowed to do so. That’s why it’s called ‘the right to vote’, because it’s in the law. If you’re voting when you don’t have the right to vote, it’s not because the law allows you to do so, but because you’re cheating the system. Evarist’s is a classic example of a nonsensical statement. What he might mean, though it is very hard to guess, is that he wants the law tightened so that fewer people have the right to vote. That would be entirely commensurate with Labour’s attitude to democracy. Or he could mean that he’s fed-up of people cheating the law and voting when they shouldn’t. But changing the law won’t help matters. Only better checks and balances will do that.
Evarist made another nonsensical statement (oh, what a surprise) when he said that the government has a majority of ‘half a seat’, which di-ve.com translated as ‘a half-chair’ (nofs siggu). I tried to work out what he means. We all know by now that the Nationalist Party has a one-seat majority in parliament, because the Labour Party keeps banging on about it. So where did this ‘half-chair’ come from? Oh yes – 1,500 votes are equivalent to half a chair.
Evarist encouraged Labour delegates to use their minds – I won’t pass a remark here – and work to have the Labour Party elected to government ‘as soon as possible’. This is part of what Alfred Sant would call the latest Labour narrative: that it is somehow possible for Labour to end up in government before 2013. I don’t know what sort of apocalyptic event they might be predicing – a fight with Dom Mintoff down at Birgu, perhaps? – but whatever it is, it’s not going to work. I know that five years might seem like ages, but believe me, they fly, especially when you’re over 35.
Ev tal-Muzew made another latest-Labour-narrative statement when he said that the government is being arrogant – presumably by doing what it is there to do and governing – despite the fact that ‘less than half the population voted for it’. Maybe Ev can tell us of some other countries where a single party is catapulted into government with the votes of 50%+ of electors? I’ve racked my brains and haven’t come up with a single one outside those still crawling on the road to democracy, and Malta up to 2008 (bingo). Perhaps some of you might be able to help.
He sounded terribly cross when he said that 4,000 people came over to vote and promptly went back again. Ev didn’t seem to like this at all, which surprises me given that at least one of his daughters, who is at university in England, was among them. It would have been a little more honest if he had told the Labour delegates ‘4,000 people, including my own daughter, came to vote and went back again’. Unlike annoying me, they have no other way of knowing because they don’t move in the tal-pepe social circles that Ev’s wife and daughters move in. And what’s wrong with coming over to vote and going back again, in any case? Ev may have failed to notice – well, he can’t have failed to notice, really, given that his daughter is taking advantage of the reduced UK university fees for citizens of EU member states – that Malta is now part of the EU and the Maltese have FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT. This means that thousands of Maltese have shot off to work or study or both – Ev’s outrageously clever daughter among them (yes, she is).
Are we saying that they should be stripped of their right to vote, which means their right to have a direct say in who gets to run what is still their country? I don’t think so. I happen to be against the stipulation that you must, unless you have diplomatic status, spend at least six months of the year leading up to the election in Malta so as to have the right to vote. If you pay tax in Malta, you should have the right to vote even if you haven’t set foot here for 10 years. No taxation without representation, remember? There are also strong arguments for allowing certain groups of Maltese citizens to vote even when they don’t pay tax here and haven’t spent the last six months on the islands. They may still retain a direct interest in the running of the country. You don’t have to live here year-round to have a direct interest in what happens to Malta, for heaven’s sake.
Then Ev il-patri said that the Nationalist Party has become an unscrupulous and soulless machine (really? there are some machines which have souls and scruples?) which stops at nothing to steal votes. Get that – steal votes, not win votes. When people vote for the PN, those votes have been stolen from them, or stolen from Labour. But when people vote Labour, then that’s different.
Like Alfred Sant and all the other Labour dreamers, Evarist Bartolo thinks that the secret of success lies in The Media. If they can get The Media right, then they will conquer all. What do they imagine, I wonder? That the Nationalist Party has been so successful because In-Nazzjon, Il-Mument, Net and 101 are so wickedly enthralling, and not because the party has sound policies and more importantly, a sane leader? The Media…..ahjar ma nghid xejn. When a potential Labour leader thinks that a newspaper, a radio station and an internet portal are an adequate substitute for sound policy and effective leadership, you really have to give up and tear your hair.
For yes, now Ev has latched on to the dream of an internet portal. He told his delegates all about it, though I would be fascinated to find out just how many of them know what a web portal is. That web portal is going to save Labour, or as Ev put it: “it will see the Labour Party enter body and soul into the world of IT” – about damned time – “enabling it to build ongoing debate with society while formulating its policies.”
Yes. Sure it will. The day Labour formulates a policy will be the day a pink elephant strolls down Republic Street, web portal or no web portal.
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“Maybe Ev can tell us of some other countries where a single party is catapulted into government with the votes of 50%+ of electors? I’ve racked my brains and haven’t come up with a single one outside those still crawling on the road to democracy, and Malta up to 2008 (bingo). Perhaps some of you might be able to help.”
France, with the two-round voting system.
[Moderator – That system is designed to produce an absolute majority. Note that this is still not an absolute majority in Malta-Labour-Party-terms, which takes dead people and abstainers into account: Sarkozy was elected with 53% of the votes cast by 84% of registered voters.]
Yes of course that’s what I meant. But I was only half right, since you have more than one party in the cabinet, and the government.
That’s what happens when you try to answer a question of the “who else except MLP” type. You fail miserably, because they’re in a class of their own.
The provision of the Constitution defining the qualification of voters (Section 57) is entrenched. Varist will never succeed in changing the law.
As to mounting a legal challenge I have already written on the Maltese working with EU institutions and how their right to fiscal domicile is guaranteed by the Treaty. Considering that in 2003 the Court decided in favour of Cassola on weaker grounds (i.e. when Malta was not a member of the EU and Cassola wasn’t working for an EU institution) if Varist decided to go down this road he’ll just be wasting time.
Could some mathematician tell me how the majority Bush and Prodi had works out compared to our famous 1580 majority ?
I heard even Blair was elected with a small majority – is it true ?
Thanks
Daphne, as far as the MLP is concerned, there is a North and South, and I am not talking geographically here, but more along the lines of mentality. (As a small aside, it is very much in the MLP’s interest to encourage this mentality, as an us vs. them mentality, or a siege mentality, is a very powerful method of keeping your supporters primed and unified. But let me not digress.) Take how the MLP wannabes address their target audience, and specifically, let’s take our Varist. It is clear that he is just trying (like the rest of them, to some degree) to be all things to all men. When he chats with tal-pepe, he speaks in a non confrontational manner, and I bet that he hoists his little pinky when drinking tea, anything in fact as to appear as one of them. But when he trots of to chin wag with the heaving mass of MLP supporters, he knows he has to talk the talk. So out comes the nonsense, the anger, the hard done by act, (although he probably would draw the line at the bokla) etc etc. The trouble is that Varist should remember that you cannot wear two hats and get away with it for long, and especially in this day and age.
The PN have it easy. The boss will just have to try and talk sense (more or less), stay away from any controversy, and the PN and the independent marmalja will love him.
The MLP wannabe on the other hand, has to appease the hard liners, appear reasonable to the middle of the road, and finally appeal to the tal-pepe.
@marika
Comparing parliamentary elections (e.g. Malta’s) to presidential elections (e.g. the US and France) does not make much sense. Presidential elections often “force” a majority as there is only one seat to fill.
As to parliamentary elections in 2006 Prodi’s l’Unione was elected to power with 49.8% and in 2005 Blair was elected with 35.3% of the vote.
Here’s the result to the 2006 election to the Italian Chamber. Somehow the link did not show up in the previous comment.
I have a question for Evarist Bartolo and because I’m not into politics much, I would like the answer to be just either a Yes, No or I don’t know.
Question: Do Maltese nationals working in Libya have a right to vote?
Six months or no six months in Malta prior or post an election – these are all conditions that tend to confuse more rather than control.
These workers may not represent thousands but certainly hundreds.
Due to a taxation agreement, most of these workers do not pay tax in Malta – they, or the companies they work for pay it in Libya. Only social security contributions are paid locally. The income these workers generate is in most cases received in Malta and by large, it is spent here.
A rough guestimate of the political opinion of a few I hang around with, some of whom are friends, good friends too,would be 65% inclined to labour and 35% nationalist. No kidding!
So, I look forward to an answer, if ever there’d be one.
As for Mr. Bartolo’s daughter, outrageously clever or not, I’m really glad that she and many others have choices today that were unheard of some thirty odd years ago.
I think that unless Varist and co truly understand why people like me cry in relief (I did a weghda) when PN win the elections they stand no chance whatsoever.
The only one so far who SEEMS to have understood is George Abela.
But it’s incredible how many labourites just don’t get it!
In the 2005 UK general election the governing Labour party won 35.3% to the Conservative party’s 32.3% and the Liberal Democrats’ 22.1%, yet Labour secured 356 parliamentary seats to the Conservatives’ 198 and the Lib Dems’ 62. Many people assume the result is unfair, but is it and would a system of proportional representation be any better? Some argue that the UK system of ‘first past the post’ is fair, and in fact much more so than replacing it with one using PR. In the United Kingdom there are 646 individual constituencies, making each national battle one comprised of hundreds of much smaller ones. A big advantage of this system is that – in theory at least – every voter in each of the constituencies has the chance of casting the winning vote for a party’s representative. For example, in the 1997 election for the seat of Winchester the winning MP’s margin of victory was just 2 votes. Another example from a country that districts its national election, the US, is Florida in the 2000 election where George W Bush beat Al Gore by just 537 votes. Democracy isn’t only about giving people equal power in an election (but about giving each person as large an equal share of power in deciding the outcome of an election as possible. The people of Winchester or Florida would have had virtually no chance of having the sort of impact on their respective elections they had if their votes had been diluted into a sea of many millions of other votes, as would happen under a system of PR.
Elections are always lopsided, and the power an individual voter has to make a difference to the election’s result goes down the more uneven an election is. Breaking a nationwide election down into lots of smaller localised elections balances out some of this lopsidedness, maximising the individual voter’s power. There are other reasons to support a system of ‘first past the post’ over PR. Labour may only have won 3% more of the national share than the Conservatives at the last election, but they won seats all over the country, whereas the Conservatives relied on the South of England for much of their support doing particularly badly in the North, Wales and Scotland. First-past-the-post prevents politicians from simply wooing a majority bloc at the expense of minorities. What’s more, PR rarely results in a majority government (even now in Malta for the first time) meaning that the parties have to go behind closed doors and haggle with each other over forming a coalition. The public have no say in these backroom negotiations. With no constituency link between members of parliament and the voters, the real power lies with those parties who can successfully jockey for position in a coalition government.
Brian, that is due to the fact that the way seat boundaries are drawn up in the UK overwhelmingly favours the Labour Party as they are stronger in the urban centres where the population (mostly working class) is chiefly situated. In fact, if you had to look at the electoral map of the UK coloured red, blue and yellow (Liberal Democrats), you would almost think that the Conservatives are the stronger party as they hold well over 3/4 of the territory.
In the US its basically the same with their Electoral College system, one can get a minority of popular votes and still govern as its the number of college votes which count.
That’s why the almighty fuss kicked up by the PN in 1981 is misplaced and retrospectively nilly willy.
“I think even if you analyse our last campaign, whether we like it or not I think we give ourselves a very tribal image – that if you don’t form part of this tribe you’re not welcome… it’s as though we put up obstacles to prevent people from joining in.
The party has to open up and make itself appealing to the middle classes, he insists, making his leadership pitch.”
Guess who said this???? In an interview around 5 weeks ago to the Sunday Times, in the same interview he discovered why his students didn’t vote labour.
I would like to know what good this 4k ineligible voters stunt is going to do in terms of “opening up and being more appealing” to the party Varist wants to lead.
But then again, he was speaking to the south people, right? So what, do they not form part of the middle class?? Tribalism anyone??
@Mcomb
Your argument is nonsensical as we use Proportional Representation and not the First Past The Post system. The systems used in the UK and the USA ensure that the people who do not live in the densly populated areas are not disadvanataged. This clearly cannot work for Malta. Personally I like the system used in Israel where the whole country is one district and people vote for party lists.
Evarist is a communist and should be banned from the labour party and politics in general. I find it hard to believe that anyone takes him seriously and believes his communist views. He is a disgrace to politics in general and an insult to any person’s intelligence.
@ Pat – why do you say so and how are you so sure?
This topic was picked up in a previous post but again; what is this obsession the MLP has with disenfranchising the Maltese living abroad? This idea seems to be somewhat shared by Daphne, from what is written above.
Our European neighbours encourage their nationals living in other countries to vote in the elections albeit without providing the ludicrous cheap flights. Malta should pride itself in having many citizens working successfully in other countries, should encourage them to vote and have a say in their motherland even if they are not always physically present.
And what is this nonsense that paying taxes implies the right to vote. The American quote of no taxation without representation does not apply to everything. Are we going to also disenfranchise all the Maltese who are on welfare, dont reach the tax ceiling, students, OAPs etc.?
I live abroad, but follow Maltese politics and going-ons perhaps better than the locals, visit often and feel totally Maltese. Why should I not have a say in who runs the country where my family lives and where I have already spent most of my life?
[Moderator – I think you misunderstood the article. The point is that it is morally wrong to tax the disenfranchised.]
@Adrian Borg. Are you holding out the 2000 U.S. Presidential elections as an example of fairness? I certainly hope not. Remember Gore got more popular votes than Bush nationwide and the election result he refers to in Florida was based on a partial recount conducted amid allegations of vote rigging against key Democratic constituencies. The recount in Florida which if completed would likely have given Gore the presidency was stopped by the U.S. Supreme Court after the Florida Supreme Court voted to allow the recount to go ahead. The vote on the U.S. Supreme Court was 5-4 for stopping the recount. The five justices voting for stopping the recount were all Republican appointees and issued an opinion that they conceded could not serve as constitutional precedent (because it was so bizarre and lopsided). The U.S. Senate only approved the electoral college vote amid vociferous protests on the floor of the senate by African American congressmen and congresswomen alleging disenfranchisment of their constitutents – a key Democratic voter base. The closest Malta ever came to the a result similar to the 2000 U.S. Presidential was in 1981 – a result which was acknowledged by all sides (eventually) as having been unfair and resulted in electoral reform.
Traits of a true leader.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20080509/opinion/no-nonsense
Thanks Fausto for referring to Prodi’s win in the 2006 Italian elections. His coalition of parties obtained 24,755 votes more than Berlusconi’s Polo della Liberta, out of 38 MILLION votes cast . That would translate to a majority of 180 votes in Malta ( a majority of 0.05% not 0.5% !) Prodi did not share any power with Berlusconi.
aaah you might argue Prodi’s govt only lasted 20 months not 5 years. Yep thats true because his coalition fell apart.
So anything short of Pulicino Orlando crossing over to his ex wife’s party, the PN need not do any power sharing as JM expects. But then you never know MLP accepts all sorts of leftovers.
The PN governed for a full term in 1987 with no pairing agreement and a one seat majority. So Varist just keep hoping… well with him leader there could be some MLP parliamentarians voting with PN !
Re Varists critical view of voters flying in… there may well have been a majority of labour supporters flying in to vote. I know of 2 flights where viva l lejber chants on the plane ( but then again empty vessels make most sound)
So we have Varist concluding that it was the plane loads of voters who gave PN the majority. Varist just shut up, you are in denial about MLP losing the election, just as much as you are in denial about losing the Deputy Leader election 5 years ago!
Lejber is indeed a party of misfits should they elect him Leader after dumping him as deputy leader.
VARIST: Daphne you really hit the nail straight on the head
Really DGG, you’re sounding like Lord Haw Haw with every passing day, reaping nothing but sarcasm and venom on your foes ( don’t like the word ‘foes’ but I suppose that is how you see these fellow Maltese). I suppose you have to do this to pander to the lowest common denominator among your ‘avid’ fans.
[Moderator – Mario, you have 30 minutes to live until you are fatally poisoned after ‘reaping sarcasm and venom’. DUM DUM DUM.]
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20080509/local/mlp-egm-most-speakers-against-amendment-motion
Seems that the motion will be defeated after all – fellow bloggers, what do you think?
Illegally voted ?
So why not go to court ?.
U halluna…..you are nothing but a pathetic politician
@amiro: Now that the proposal to have the Party members involved has been shot down, I suggest that the delegates lock themselves up in the glass palace. No TV cameras or microphones permitted. No speeches but plenty of praying and meditating. If the first round of voting is inconclusive, there will be a puff of black smoke. And so on until a puff of white smoke will signal to the outside world that a leader has been chosen. I know it doesn’t sound original but I’m morally convinced it will work.
In 1981 MLP said there was no gerrymandering – just a `perverse` result which could occur in any election and just happened to have occured then.
They still didn`t share any power with the PN even though the result was perverse.
I agree that the limitation on the period of time during which a Maltese national is required to spend in Malta to be eligible to vote should be removed in the case of those Maltese nationals who are still considered domiciled in Malta. This would exclude those who have Maltese nationality or dual-nationality but are domiciled elsewhere, such as migrants. In principle, I would agree that even the latter should vote but one can argue that they no longer have a “stake in the country”.
Furthermore, I also hold that arrangements should be made, through amendments in electoral laws, to enable Maltese who live abroad but are still domiciled in Malta (e.g. those working overseas) to vote in Maltese embassies or consulates where these exist. This system is used by many countries and the logistical challenges involved can be solved.
In a democracy, rights of suffrage should be widened as much as possible and not restricted. The following quotation from Tocqueville, illustrates the principle beautifully:
Once a people begins to interfere with the voting qualification, one can be sure that sooner or later it will abolish it altogether. That is one of the most invariable rules of social behavior. The further the limit of voting rights is extended, the stronger is the need felt to spread them still wider, for after each new concession the forces of democracy are strengthened, and its demands increase with the augmented power. The ambition of those left below the qualifying limit increases in proportion to the number of those above it. Finally the exception becomes the rule; concessions follow one another without interruption, and there is no halting place until universal suffrage has been attained.
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805 – 1859), Democracy in America (1835)
@ DCG: I wonder if you listened or watched Evarist Bartolo last Monday (12th May, 2008) on Smash (I think it was Smash) at about 8:45 p.m. I hope you had better things to do with your time but I have to tell you, the bitterness which Marija l-Maws showed in your regard is incredible, apart from the fact that he tagged you as somebody “li hlief tinsulenta u tghajjar ma tafx”.
Indeed, your writings (online and on paper) are hardly music for his ears but I really relished in the thought that he actually thinks you’re insulting because that goes on to prove how undemocratic and how incapable he is of stomaching valid criticism, any criticism really – only yours is very valid.
The only thing that is insulting is that he said that if anybody should offer an apology that’s the PN and then the MLP should follow suit for the mistakes committed by same MLP (referring to 80’s and 70’s) but PN should start apologising. The only thing that’s more insulting than his words is his gracing our TV screens. More than insulting, it’s revolting!
One thing is sure, in five years’ time, if GA is not elected on the 5th June, we’ll have another run for the medicine cabinet – Valium anyone??