Letters | Sunday, 04 January 2009

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Beware of the manipulators

One may be a prime minister in a cosy office like Castille, or an apparatchik inside a contractor-financed glass office, or in the newsroom of an English language daily, or some TV station. Whoever, and from wherever, your day-to-day grind will only be noble on the surface, as sure as eggs are eggs.
What you really spend most time upon is the simple manipulation of events, persons, and finances… always of course presented under the guise of “a vocation”, of “noble ideals”.
The art of manipulation has now reached sophisticated standards at all levels of Maltese politics. And we shall definitely be seeing the best manifestation in the coming elections for a new set of Maltese members of the European Parliament in June this year. It will be in the media where the clash between certain candidates and certain parts of the media will manifest itself. Party delegates will have to be on their guard against moves which will not serve as much to eliminate candidates, as to put a dagger in the back of democracy in Malta.
There is no democracy where the Mitterrand principle of ‘l’alternance, c’est la democratie’ (Change is the essence of democracy) is not allowed – precisely by manipulators – to take its true course.
Where a country condemns itself to a situation of “one party as the natural party of government, and the other as the natural party of opposition” – as Malta has been prima facie doing over the past two decades; where a party endorses only so-called “well-known names” or “experienced campaigners”; where a biased media, or building contractors’ money, hold power; when such are the elements of a country’s political situation, then rust and disenchantment will creep into the nation’s body politic, and condemn its citizens to the tyranny of Mammon.
These are some of the realities that Opposition Leader Joseph Muscat is up against. He has to fight against both manipulation and complacency, against evident media tactics firmly aligned against him and the Labour Party, against diabolical manipulative tactics that extend from all around the block at Castille, to the glasshouse in Pietà to Hal Farrug and all the way to Brussels, and beyond.
Having experienced many bitter realities myself, I know how such manipulative nets are knitted and cast, and I know too how and why electors – for even, theoretically, the most powerful man in the world – can and are often simply given the cold shoulder by precisely the same citizens who will be most effected by their outcome.
Over the Christmas holidays I couldn’t help not observe several of those prospective candidates for the European Parliament elections who already enjoy most of the media backing and cash availability, openly disregarding their party’s promise not to engage in political activity over the festive period. There they all were, at parties and party clubs, in bars here, there and everywhere, in “get-togethers”, lavishing on all and sundry the rounds of drinks and appetizers and, of course, toasting with crystal champagne flutes.
But the manipulation is also manifesting itself in other methods. GonziPN’s manipulators are hell-bent on exploiting fully the fact that – with the EP rules as they currently stand –Malta will still be having only five seats in the EP after June 2009. But the prospect of a new referendum in Ireland over the Lisbon Treaty some time after June 2009, the situation in the EP will change, such as to allow Malta to have six seats.
But GonziPN are tactfully and manipulatively ignoring this.
They are not prepared to allow a voting system in the coming June 2009 elections to enable all Maltese voters to freely engage in a voting system of preferences that will – from Number 1 to 2 to 3, to 4, to 5 to 6 and so on as far as the voters wish for – clearly manifest their wishes as to who, in sequential number order they wish to see serving their interests in the EP.
No, GonziPN want to say to us citizens, “you will vote for only five, and then we make new rules for the elections of the sixth seat when it materializes and according to what we make of the political support dangers to us at that point in time.”
So watch the hypocrisy and the manipulation. First we spray “economic recession” to the four winds, and raise tariffs, charges, and what not, and then we indulge in costly double elections when one (and obviously less costly) would serve the same purpose.
I am personally fully supportive of Arnold Cassola of Alternattiva Demokratika when his party exposes such Machiavellian approaches to electorate manipulation.
As I campaign amongst party delegates I realise how important it is that all citizens of good will come to increasingly think and ponder over how much they have become mere pawns in this game of manipulation. The manipulators which I mentioned at the start of this article need to be watched and studied day by day. We shall be seeing more and more of the same as June 2009 approaches. I will not hesitate to expose them.

Robert Henry Bugeja
Prospective EP candidate for PL

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