Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/734031
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 2 OCTOBER 2016 26 Opinion Protest against the establishment? You must be bonkers... B onkers. I've always loved that word. Let's face it, anything that starts with a bonk can't be half bad. (Provided that the bonk is consensual, of course. And that it doesn't result in the accidental conception of the Anti-Christ, or anything like that.) Strangely, however, such an evocative and emphatic word is rarely ever used as anything but an insult. And nowhere more frequently than in Malta: where even the concept of ' bonker-ness' itself (bonker- dom? Bonker-tude? Bonker- anity?) is occasionally extended to perfectly ordinary, everyday pursuits. Like protesting against the authorities, for instance. Never mind that protesting is, in itself, a fundamental human right (actually, a composite of several such rights: freedom of expression, association, the right to a fair and equitable justice system, and so on). In the local context, actually exercising any of those rights would be considered every bit as insane as claiming that you are Lucifer or Napoleon Bonaparte... or, to give a more detailed example: believing that the act of masturbation, wherever it is performed in the world, has the effect of sapping the virtuous of their moral strength; so entire lamaseries full of Tibetan monks are paid to masturbate furiously each day, for the express purpose of corrupting your own virtue... That, by the way, is an actual, documented, real-life psychotic delusion, suffered by French actor/stage director Antonin Artaud in the 1920s. Now, most would agree that Artaud was, in fact, completely bonkers. (He was also known to routinely accost passers-by in the Luxembourg Gardens with the outrageously hilarious demand: 'Sir, the world has done me much harm. You are part of the world, therefore you have harmed me. Give me 5 francs!') But who's to say, really? I certainly never made it my business to find out what goes on in the private quarters of Tibetan monasteries. So how can I, hand on heart, confidently assert that Antonin Artaud was WRONG to believe what he believed? Then again, I haven't spent years studying and practising clinical psychiatry, either: which places me in the same category as those policemen who, in 2014, decided that a man must clearly be a lunatic, because he staged an impromptu protest outside Castille. And a dangerous lunatic, too: they even tried to get him committed, which (in this day and age) is only supposed to ever happen in cases where the patient poses a danger to himself or others. On what basis did they reach any of those medical conclusions, I wonder? Last I looked, the minimum requirements to become a policeman in this country were three passes at Ordinary GSCE level. The minimum accepted pass-mark is a 'D'. Yet there they all were, eagerly jumping to conclusions about the state of a man's mental health... where even a veteran psychiatrist, with years of training and experience under his belt, would have hesitated to pronounce a diagnosis. Amazing, the advances we've made in secondary school education... But let's go over the known facts again. This week, the Constitutional Court ruled that a certain Nicholas Busuttil 's fundamental rights had been violated by the police, when they: a) arrested him for staging a peaceful, one-man protest outside Castille; b) referred him for a psychiatric evaluation; c) rejected the first professional advice they were given, and sent him directly to Mount Carmel Hospital to be examined by another doctor; and d) had him temporarily committed, until he was discharged following a third evaluation. By my count, that's quite a few assumptions being made there. Not all of them concern psychiatry, either. In fact, you don't even have to proceed beyond point (a) to encounter the first of many major problems. On what grounds was he even arrested? There was nothing in his behaviour that suggested a public disturbance; he didn't violate any laws concerning public assembly. All he did was affix a sign to his car with the words: 'MEPA ma timxix ma kullhadd l-istess' [MEPA does not treat everyone the same way'] The official charge, by the way, was 'obstruction of traffic' – when he plainly wasn't obstructing anything at all... except maybe the rosy view the police want us all to have of the benevolent Maltese state, and all its immaculate apparatus. Viewed from that angle: yeah, I suppose he was kind of standing in the way. But that only takes us back to all those fundamental rights I mentioned earlier. If they exist at all, it is precisely to allow people to obstruct a perception with which they disagree, and which others are trying to impose on them. Other problems immediately arise. One, what Nicholas Busuttil did was effectively no different from what countless other people do at all times, each and every single day. Raphael Vassallo The Constitutional Court pointed out a glaring injustice but by handing €2,000 in compensation, it also underscored the sheer extent of the same injustice C lose to four years into this administration is enough time to assess and appraise. Both government and opposition should be subjected to scrutiny. Both are to be held to the same standards and both are to be held equally accountable to their pledges and undertakings. Is Labour honouring its solemn pledges of transparency; meritocracy and a fresh style in politics where competence is judged on what it is – competence as opposed to political allegiance or, worse still, opportunistic expediency? Are we living in that fairer society with heightened democratic practices and enviable social justice? Is the Nationalist Party really any more "vicin il-poplu" than it was? Is this insistence on honesty in politics for real? Does it risk sending the wrong message to an electorate which politicians have perhaps tended to subconsciously classif y as totally treatable in Nineteen Eighty Four fashion for the entire legislature right up to the last anaesthetizing pre-electoral budget? A week is a long time in politics and a political week is also a good way of judging politicians and their actions. There have been quite a few of these in the past weeks. Let's take last week as an example. One reality emerges from objective, politically dispassionate studies; poverty and poverty-risk are on the increase. Whilst this is certainly not a reality that was created today, it is indeed ironic and inexplicable that this should happen under a left-wing administration stressing economic growth. This aside however, the facts and numbers are there. More importantly, the pensioners, working-age men and women and the children behind those figures are there. Last week the Nationalist Party announced fresh proposals, including measures to alleviate pensioners from the poverty-line risk through a complete range of free medicines; a reasoned increase in pensions and the removal of income tax on pensions. Subsidies for those finding real difficulty to cope with rent in private rentals are to be increased. At the same time the surprising and quite insensitive increase in rent on social housing will be reversed. These measures indicate a renewed focus towards politics aimed at promoting once again fairness and equity in societal change as it did in the past with the opening of education to the masses and the provision of multiple social mobility ladders across the board. This is done with balance and sensibility. A government which is "pro- business" ensures wealth generation and tempers its side effects with real measures of social justice. A government which is simply "pro-businessman" forsakes the emphasis on social justice and increases the divide between the few haves and the have-nots, to whom is reserved the wait for stop-gapping handouts. On the PL side last week brought the announcement of what was described as the second most important recent foreign direct investment with a 100 million dollar set-up by Crane Currency in Malta. Good news indeed. The announcement was however somewhat thrifty in its detail. It subsequently emerged that the investment is to be largely spent on equipment purchased outside Malta. Then came the other news. Crane, who at the press conference in the US publicly praised the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff and his team for having with admirable efficiency completed all arrangements and procedures within just six months, will be directing this major part of the investment in buying this machinery from none other than… the company whose local agent is the very same Chief of Staff 's private business. It has now long since become clear what Dr Muscat's pre- electoral "pro-business" pledge really meant. No surprise that the PM's reaction to this glaring conf lict of interest is yet again a version of "Different Strokes" Arnold 's "Whatcha talkin' ' bout Willis??", complete with a condescending stance. If a minister rushing to set up a Panamanian company within 48 hours of taking the oath of office and pledging to deposit annually a minimum of $800,000 declaredly from commissions and consultancy is OK for the Prime Minister, then "Different Strokes" sadly for all of us, turns to "Anything Goes". If this happens once it would be a coincidence, if it happens almost always then it is a coincidence no longer. For how long will decent, law- abiding citizens, take this sheer brazenness? This is where the comparative assessments and appraisals kick in. Is it really a case of six of one and half a dozen of the other? I for one sincerely think not. Alex Perici Calascione is a Nationalist Party election candidate A week is a long time in politics Alex Perici Calascione