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Why is this election for the five MEP seats in the European Parliament so appealing to independent candidates? From Emmy Bezzina and John Zammit, crusaders for divorce and freedom from the PN-Curia alliance, to football agent Damian Iwueke, independent candidates have sprouted all over the place for these new elections.
The guarantee that these elections in no way hamper or threaten the government in power has been a determining factor for so many hopefuls who believe that their presence alone in these elections is good enough a reason for a protest vote to be lodged in their name.
But what looks to be more significant is the congruence of so many of these candidates’ agendas: divorce, gay rights, cohabitation rights, and abortion have been given prominence in most manifestos.
Their pretentiousness and elementary political logic runs the risk of giving these struggles a bad name. Most of the independent candidates hang on to a conviction that it is their sole courage that gives their struggle a just cause. But in Maltese politics, there has been little done in the name of courage and these elections are about candidates that can burn inroads into the European bureaucracy in Brussels.
What so many of the independent candidates fail to fathom is that they cannot go armed into the European Union with pretension, confidence and a good sense of humour. Expertise on the ways of Brussels’ bureaucracy, a strong political party affiliation, and experience in the European field, legally and politically, are essential to an archetypal MEP, even if the European parliament has had its few cranks and personalities from strange walks of life.
This is of course the first wave of ‘European’ inspiration that is hitting Malta: the issues of divorce or abortion are now becoming set topics for future debate. Independent candidates represent solitary voices that echo loud thoughts. They may not share much affinity with the popular agenda, but there will be nodding heads in certain quarters.
European accession has opened up the doors of Maltese potential. With the boundaries of ideas pushed beyond the Maltese mainland, there could be nothing to prevent furthering the scope of debate amongst civil society.
Government is facing its first signs of opposition from a civil society that fully understands its rights within the European context. In such a small-country scenario, where everyone tends to be close to the centre of power, this could even be a further debilitating blow to centralised omnipotence.
The Independents
1) Manuel Calleja
Lib-Dem hopeful offers red hot tip for tourism – nudist beaches
Manuel Calleja, 40, first made a public appearance on TV when prior to the EU referendum he had been selected by the Xarabank TV programme to feature in a ‘big brother’ emulation of a group of house-bound voters debating their voting intentions. ‘Iva, Le, Ma Nafx’ (Yes, No, Don’t Know) placed a small group of voters in a house to interact and discuss with each other their voting prospects in the 2003 EU referendum. Calleja arrived in the house armed with a Malta Labour Party flag and the portrait of his son: he expressed love for both the MLP flag and his son, justifying his intention to vote for the EU, himself being a Labourite, for the future of his son. Later on after the end of the programme, he would be invited for the PN’s rallies in favour of the EU vote as one of the pro-EU Labourites to address the masses.
In a publicised excerpt from his manifesto, Emanuel Calleja says he is seeking affiliation with the European Liberal Democrat Reform political grouping. His manifesto seeks the respect of diverse cultural and linguistic identities, the rule of law and the respect of human rights without discrimination, sustainable development, and a healthy environment to ensure a more peaceful and stable world, “where freedom and democracy is the rule, not the exception.”
He was invited to attend an ELDR conference in which he also met Pat Cox, who hails from the liberal democrat family and is also outgoing President of the European Parliament: “Pat Cox told me, ‘Manuel, don’t bow your head down because you are going in an arena where the lion is ready to jump on you. I was shown great support by the ELDR for my campaign. Cox also told me he is aware of the party-controlled media and the handicap this creates for other EP candidates.”
Calleja talks about a “six-decade old unholy alliance” between the “two mean parties” (read: two main parties) “in collusion and scratching each other’s back.” He says Malta’s electoral system has been carved out in such a manner that favours only the PN and the MLP. He also believes there should be a limitation on religious interference in Maltese politics.
“My first priority is to send a clear message that Malta needs a change in its electoral system and that religious interference has to be limited,” Calleja told MaltaToday. “We need to open up to new realities. We cannot have the Church and politicians dictate their values to us. In Malta there is no freedom of expression. I would like to see divorce and abortion being introduced in Malta, as well as decriminalisation of hashish and also more gay rights.”
Calleja also says the opening up of Libya is a threat to Maltese tourism and he wants to encourage the introduction of coffee shops a la Hollandaise and more nudist beaches. Drawing a line at gay adoptions, citing “common sense” as his justification, Calleja says he is keeping his feet to the ground: “My supporters are my wife and I have two other friends helping me. I know my limitations but I want to use my voice to send a clear message to the political parties.”
2) Victor Zammit
Canadian emigré seeks end to Gozitan economic handicap
Gozitan Victor M Zammit returned back to Gozo after thirty years in Canada, and now seeks to address the economic imbalances between Malta and Gozo. The 54-year old unmarried candidate seeks to increase Gozitans’ standard of living to an equitable level that matches Malta’s GDP.
“The plan is simple,” Zammit says. “Recent GDP figures for Gozo and Malta, compared to EU levels, are that of 40 per cent and 55 per cent respectively. That means that Gozo’s gross domestic product is 73 per cent that of Malta. This is a very significant difference within such a small country.”
The economist from Xaghra, nicknamed ‘tal-Kusi,’ is contesting on an independent ticket and as yet is undecided which political grouping would suit his economic plan. Asked about what needs to be addressed in this economic context, Zammit says Gozo’s GDP is destined to remain below Maltese levels until Malta reaches 75 per cent of the EU average. “The next step involves tackling government spending and investment, looking for areas of investment in which the Gozitan people can benefit.”
Zammit said returning from Canada after thirty years revealed a great contrast. Now he is meeting people and learning a lot. “There is a lot of partisan allegiance which is difficult to break through. But people appreciate my ideas. They see it as interesting. Otherwise I am enjoying myself doing home visits and meeting people. You need to win the support of an equivalent of 2.6 electoral districts in this campaign, so I am conducting it in Gozo and in Malta. But I’ve done my homework and I hope for the best.”
3) Emmy Bezzina and
4) John Zammit
Just don’t mention the Curia
Long-standing advocates for the introduction of divorce, Emmy Bezzina and John Zammit have as yet not launched the new political party they claim is in the offing. A former Labour candidate, Bezzina says the party will focus on an agenda based on the introduction of divorce, gay rights, abortion, cohabitation, illegitimate children, and against “the constant interference of the local Catholic Curia on sensitive such as marriage annulments.”
“If we generate a positive response in the forthcoming elections, we are not ruling out a long-term campaign based on the national elections,” Bezzina says, who along with John Zammit, has been the figurehead for the Men’s Rights Association and the Divorce Movement. They have not yet declared their intention as to which political grouping from within the European Parliament they will seek to join.
In Bezzina’s traditional vein, the party’s political objectives has highlighted the Malta Curia as one of its targets. The new party will tackle the “secret agreements between the PN and the Curia, the lack of decisiveness in the MLP, the arrogance and lust for power in the leadership of the two main parties, and the parochial political garb of local parties and independent groups.”
Bezzina also accuses the PN and MLP of double-standards on both the national and European scene. He said that both Zammit and himself have been instrumental in raising a number of social issues which had been “left under the social carpet so that the interests of the Nationalist Party in liaison with the Malta Curia be safeguarded… Despite unpublicised agreements between the Nationalist Government and the European Commission intended to safeguard the interest of the Catholic Church in Malta, divorce legislation and gay rights will have to be introduced in Malta on the grounds of discrimination to one’s private and family life, enshrined principles in the European Convention on Fundamental Rights…”
Bezzina also said the new party will be carrying a European identity, and will seek to remove the entrenchment of the Catholic religion from the Constitution. “This new party is a party for everyone who has Malta’s pluralistic and cosmopolitan new European image at heart. We are the ideal candidates for the new European Malta.”
5) Mark von Brockdorff
“I’m confident I will be elected”
“We’re going to change the heart and mind of the country,” Mark von Brockdorff, 50, says enthusiastically down the telephone. “Our party charter has been sent to every single newspaper and local council. We shall be fielding candidates in the local council elections and also a candidate for all the five MEP seats. However, I will not be naming any names for the time being.”
Von Brockdorff’s party, named the Christian-Democratic Republican Party, will be run on “aristocratic” (aristocratic in terms of excellence of service) terms, as he says. “This is a party for the family. It will be a party that will support women and children. We want to see day centres opened in every locality for women to be able to go out and work and have the opportunity to be trained and educated later on in life, as mothers. We also want to see more services for the elderly as well as creating local clubs for young people, so they will not have to go to Paceville.
Von Brockdorff, who says he is an international banking consultant, claims he will be setting up an art college and a Gozitan university. “I have spent 12 years working in the streets dealing with society’s underdogs. We have a serious drug problem in Malta. Ecstasy is being distributed for free. We are in a state of crisis and this is escalating. I think our chances of being elected are very strong and once I have the opportunity to air my views, people will realise now is the time for change.”
6) Norman Lowell
Nazi-sympathiser, immigrant-hater and all that national front lark
“Germany under National Socialism had a vigorous and healthy youth… The weak, the genetically defective were prevented from breeding, a policy copied from socialist Sweden which was the first, in 1929 to adopt such a eugenics programme… A good and sound investment and today one can still see the result: Sweden has a completely healthy, non-defective population – the healthiest nation in the world.”
This is what Norman Lowell writes about in his spare time when he is not entertaining young, black-clad, Skrewdriver fans at Tattingers. The 58-year old Nazi sympathiser writes about National Socialist Germany as “one of the happiest, healthiest and safest countries in the whole world.” His own plan to maintain Aryan purity in Malta is to shoot immigrants as they approach the Maltese islands. In his words: “European cities have become jungles of concrete, infested with trousered apes. Our women get mugged, beaten and raped. Reverse discrimination goes on unabated, cruelly punishing whites while encouraging blacks. Our traitor politicians offer platitudes and Christian cant.”
Lowell is confident he appeals to the 20 per cent of the electorate in which believes he can find a following. His ideology, enshrined in his two publications Credo and Imperium Europa (pretentiously sub-titled ‘a book that changed the world’), is that of the Imperium concept, whereby Malta will become a spiritual base that will ignite a European renaissance.
The former banker first hit mainstream notoriety with his radically caustic views on race and the ‘holy hoax,’ as he calls the holocaust, featured in Credo, where he rallied for the “judicious balance of capitalism and race” as the only way for the survival of the white race.
“My election to the European Parliament is the only opportunity to prevent Malta from becoming a Haiti of the Mediterranean, thanks to the priests and monsignors who have succeeded in unleashing these Africans in our midst,” Lowell told MaltaToday in earlier comments when he launched his campaign. “They are a financial and economic burden, as they take work in factories at half our wages as Maltese get fired in their hundreds. Then at night, they are f****** our women.”
His grandiose project however is forming a new right-wing political grouping called Nova Europa, to which he expects to be designated as one of its “natural leaders.” The bloc will draw in federalists such as Lega Nord, and other far-right parties like Alleanza Nazionale, Vlaams Bloc, Le Pen’s Front National and Haider’s FPÖ. He is confident that eventually, Nuova Europa will grow into the largest grouping and elect the European Commission.
“Everything’s going to happen in 2012,” Lowell ominously predicts of the intersecting year which will greet the Mayan apocalypse and the Hindu’s dawning of the golden age, which according to Imperium’s founder, will be hosting cataclysmic events and the coming of a new era for Nova Europa.
“This is not an election like the rest. I am on my own, ‘una voce vera, la verità, la realtà’. I am appealing to those 20 per cent who understand me, and who hold their noses every five years to vote for either the squalid socialists or the christian-hypocrisy. This is the only chance for them to liberate themselves from the dictatorship of those other 80 per cent, and give their progeny and the children of the other 80 per cent an island as it was handed to us by our fathers.”
7) Damian Iwueke
“So if someone asks you why Damian, ask the person WHY NOT?” (sic)
“My slogan is WHY NOT because corporate politics in Malta is boring!” For such a slogan, Nigerian-born Iwueke, 44, decorates himself with self-aggrandising chutzpah: “an authentic folk hero, self-made emigrant, confident and with a great sense of humour, an anti-establishment straight arrow running for the European Parliament elections to speak for the minorities and voters who are fed up with the wheeling and dealing of politicians in Malta.”
Of course Damian Iwueke knows a bit about wheeling and dealing: a FIFA licensed agent, he made a name for himself when he became the agent for so many Nigerian footballers in Malta like Murphy Akanji, Chris Oretan and Orosco Anonam. He arrived in Malta in 1989, and later on founded the Nigerian Community Association, the Nigeria-Maltese Businesses and Cultural Association and also co-founded the Society for African Studies at the University of Malta. Today he is the chief librarian and documentation officer of the Foundation for International Studies at the University of Malta.
Like so many other independent candidates, Iwueke, whose chief campaign manager is Victor Borg (former chauffeur to Guido de Marco), is coming out on a mixed agenda of minority rights: women’s rights, single parenting rights, gay family rights and inheritance rights for gays, children’s rights, better conditions for sportsmen and sportswomen, “and in particular I will use my influence as a FIFA agent to attract rich businessmen to Malta to invest in our football so that our clubs can become competitive in Europe…”
Trying to capitalise on recent hiccups – smoking laws and motorcycle insurance costs – Iwueke’s agenda is clearly opportunistic and built on generic tenets of disillusionment. He talks of civil rights but also about eagerly attracting big business, whilst lambasting ‘corporate’ government, underlined by common distrust in the ‘hypocrisy’ and ‘selfishness’ of politicians.
With his slogan ‘Why Not?’, Iwueke believes he is good enough a reason for a protest vote against government: “Your vote for me will be a protest vote to show the government and political parties how disappointed you are with them.” But who is Damian Iwueke, or rather, who does he think he is? Like so many other independents, self-aggrandisement intermingles freely with delusions of grandeur.
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