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20 maltatoday EXECUTIVE EDITOR Matthew Vella MANAGING EDITOR Saviour Balzan Letters to the Editor, MaltaToday, Vjal ir-Rihan, San Gwann SGN 9016 E-mail: dailynews@mediatoday.com.mt Letters must be concise, no pen names accepted, include full name and address maltatoday | SUNDAY • 29 DECEMBER 2019 30 December 2009 Censors cite 'visual impact' of plays they haven't seen The Board of Film and Stage Classification this month submitted in court a list of policy guidelines used by local censors to decide on ratings for films and theatre productions, at the request of Mr Justice Joseph Zammit McKeon in the ongoing Constitutional case regarding this year's ban on Stitching. This is the first time that the board's in- ternal policy guidelines have ever been made public, and what immediately leaps to the eye is an apparent contradiction between the directions given to classifiers with regard to theatrical performances, and the way these same performances are classified in practice. In the section subtitled 'Stage Performanc- es', the final sentence reads: "As with films, the classifier must take a decision after con- sidering each work globally, as much for its visual impact (original: 'sew f'dak li ghandu x'jaqsam mal-viziv'), as for the message the work triesto put across." But members of the same board never watch a performance before deciding what rating to give a stage play. The reason for this is that the classifiers' rating has to be issued before any play can be performed in a Maltese theatre: a fact which makes it physi- cally impossible to rate any play on the basis of its visual impact. Instead, the censors limit themselves to reading the script: which as a rule gives lit- tle or no indication of the play's effect on a visual level. In fact, individual members of the censorship board have testified in court that they had not watched Andrew Nielsen's Stitching before deciding to ban it alto- gether. In justifying the ban, the Film and Stage Classification Board chairperson Theresa Friggieri cited four 'taboo' topics that led to the decision: blasphemy; "obscene contempt for the victims of Auschwitz"; "dangerous sexual perversions leading to sexual ser- vitude"; and "reference to the abduction, sexual assault and murder of children"... the latter including a "eulogy to the child mur- derers, Fred and Rosemary West." However, it remains difficult to grasp how the censors could have reached this decision after 'considering the work globally, as much for its visual impact as for the message it tried to get across'. MaltaToday 10 years ago Quote of the Week Trading in influence must be regulated Editorial IF a recent news report is true, and it certainly has not been denied, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat will have a lot to answer for in his last two weeks in office. The report claims that Muscat was gifted a Bvlgari watch, said to be valued at €20,000, by Yorgen Fenech: the Tumas magnate facing charges of having masterminded the assassina- tion of Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017. Irrespective of any connection to the murder case itself, the scenario is too uncomfortably reminiscent of the notorious 'arlogg tal-lira' incident before the 2013 election: when former finance minister Tonio Fenech had accepted the gift of a traditional Maltese clock from oil trader George Farrugia. Ironically, at the time Joseph Muscat had gleaned maximum political mileage out of Fenech's uncomfortable situation, ahead of an election that propelled Muscat into power spe- cifically on the promise of 'cleaning up Maltese politics'. On his part, Muscat has so far not denied having accepted the gift: arguing instead that his acceptance constitutes no breach of the ministerial code of ethics. This very issue is now the subject of an investigation by the Commis- sioner of Standards in Public Life; separately, the NGO Repubblika has filed a criminal report with the police over suspected bribery. Either way, the prime minister now owes the country an explanation for this state of affairs. And the matter cannot be resolved by means of just any inquiry. The problem with our code of ethics is that it delegates the responsibility of clearing min- isters who accept gifts to the Prime Minister himself, as the ultimate reporting authority. This is not suitable, especially when it is pre- cisely the Prime Minister who can be compro- mised by such gifts. This is all territory we went over well before 2013: ever since the notorious incident con- cerning Tonio Fenech and that traditional Mal- tese clock, the dangers of MPs cultivating close rapports with business interests have become all the more apparent. Simply put, the power wielded by parliament makes its members vulnerable to attempts at 'buying' their patronage. In 2015, former health minister Joe Cassar had also admitted to ac- cepting a car from Joe Gaffarena – the business- man whose son was at the heart of an inquiry over the expropriation of the BICC offices on Old Mint Street in Valletta – against an anony- mous €1,000 donation to the Nationalist Party. This latest case is however far more serious for Joseph Muscat; and not just because of the discrepancy in value of the items involved. This is the case of a Prime Minister who accepted a gift from someone with whom his chief of staff already had a secret business relationship through the Panama network, and was directly interested in legislation being passed in the House or in public procurement: i.e., the Elec- trogas power station. That all this happened only within a year or so of Labour having made political capital out of Tonio Fenech's gift, at the time of the oil scandal, only adds to the absurdist flavour of proceedings. Regardless of the outcome of any ongoing inquiry, then, what is needed are clear, un- equivocal rules to ensure that Malta's House of Representatives does not degenerate into a marketplace for politicians and businessmen to trade in influence. To this end, one may consider models em- ployed abroad. The American system, for instance, employs its Department of State to regulate the gifting and receiving of gifts by members of executive, throughs its Office of Chief of Protocol. It is this office which recommends which gifts are given to foreign dignitaries, but members of the executive also have to report gifts they accept to this office; the gifts are donated to the State if worth more than some $260, and the State publishes an annual list of gifts, the identities of the donor and the beneficiary, how much the gift is valued at, and why the gift was accepted – usually since it would often be em- barrassing to refuse a gift. Compared with other levels of regulatory safeguards in other laws, our ministerial code of ethics falls far short of its stated aim. Nonethe- less, even if in a rudimentary form, it still spe- cifically prohibits MPs from placing themselves in positions where they may be indebted to third parties. This applies to Muscat – more so than other MPs, by virtue of being prime minister – re- gardless of whether the Fenechs also gifted the same timepiece (of which the late George Fenech had apparently acquired 25) to other politicians before 2014. Ironically, Muscat himself has now under- scored the danger, by claiming to being 'black- mailed'. That is the whole point of the matter: it was his own decision to accept the watch that placed him in a position where both he and his government could be blackmailed. After all, the sphere of influence of a minister is not just in- side his own ministry, but also within his party and among other Cabinet colleagues. From this perspective, the question many will now be asking is: who knows how many other people may have exerted the same kind of influ- ence? Or how many still are today, undetected? This can only be expected, when there are no proper rules of engagement regulating the issue of trading in influence. "I would go as far to say as that no gifts should be received by whoever is in office. Whoever wins the race, either Chris Fearne or myself, has to mean business" Labour leadership candidate Robert Abela