Manuel Mallia really does have a problem with noughts
Perhaps he should count that cash in his mattress again. It might be just Eur50,000 and he’ll have over-declared by Eur450,000.
We all know by now that he thinks a billion is a hundred million, which is why he wasn’t that impressed by Malta’s Eur1.2 billion EU package.
But this evening on TVM’s Times Talk he showed that he can’t differentiate between millions and hundreds of thousands, either. “Enemalta is Eur800,000 in the red,” he said.
Oh really? So what’s all the fuss about? Shouldn’t that be Eur800 million? (Handy household hint: another Eur200 million and it will be a billion).
Perhaps at this stage we should wonder whether he meant to price Maltese passports at Eur6.5 million, but inadvertently dropped a nought in his notes to Henley & Partners.
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And what about this news?
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2013-11-19/news/opposition-voting-against-incentives-for-families-pm-3240165376/
“Prime Minister Joseph Muscat this evening hinted that he would not shy away from a referendum on the ‘citizenships for sale’ scheme, insisting that he was never afraid of the people’s judgement.”
The prime minister says he is ready for people’s verdict on IIP. But when he could obtain the people’s verdict, at the last general elections, he hid the scheme from the public and was AFRAID of the people’s judgement.
Eight months after the general elections, the prime minister is still not in governing mode, because of course he is unfit to govern, and his party’s war machine is awash with cash.
Experience has shown that he is very capable at conducting electoral campaigns. The masses can be easily deceived during electoral campaigns. They are less easily deceived during government.
The prime minister was elected to govern, not to carry on with a permanent electoral campaign which is bound to create economic uncertainty.
The Prime Ministers’s intention is to keep the electorate in election mode all through the legislation. This way he keeps on brainwashing his voters and come election time they will be ready to give him the helm again.
Don’t forget, they might not agree with the sale of citizenship but they have faith in him.
veWell if that is so that must be it then… but at least those who really understand the meaning of this law has the right to voice their opinion with a referendum.
The sycophant can’t bear being unpopular.
I have to add another point. Now that the Prime Minister has admitted that he is ready for the people’s verdict, he must be told in no uncertain terms that currently he DOES NOT have the consent of the people to implement his Citizen for Sale Scheme, because he denied the people from voting about it at the last general elections.
Which means that the enactment by the government was a betrayal.
Which means that he has now put himself in a situation where, without the people’s verdict, he cannot implement the scheme.
Manuel Mallia has a 0.000006 inch waist.
I shudder to think that when the Minister suggests (through Henley & Partners) that under the Citizenship for Sale scheme “250 persons” will be granted Maltese citizenship annually, he may actually mean 250,000, or maybe 250,000,000 or possibly 250,000,000,000.
Never mind his waist we should be more concerned with the size of his brain
I don’t think so. He has an I.Q. of 40,000.
The size of what? Can you repeat that again, please?
Thank goodness he’s not the finance minister, although I’m not too hopeful of Mr. Carkulejter Sc
Scicluna.
Manwel Mallia has €5,000,000 stashed at home.
massive
He needs it to feed his 2 billion children.
H.P., you’re entangled in the zeroes. He only has 0.03 children. Honest.
I saw part of the said discussion on TV. I really am starting to like X FM Radio.
To be a criminal lawyer (I really like this title) in the Maltese law courts, does one have to speak in disjointed sentences? I suspect that Mallia, purposely avoids SAYING what his listeners, jurors, judges are made to assume.
I hope the PN responds appropriately to Joseph Muscat’s arrogance.
Civil society does not need Muscat’s gracious concession: we can easily collect 35,000 signatures in 7 or 8 weeks, such is the widespread eagerness to get rid of the citizenship-selling scheme.
Meanwhile, regarding “not being afraid of the people’s judgement”, we have just casually got another extraordinary piece of information from Parliament, thanks to Beppe Fenech Adami.
The Government wanted to cancel all local elections during the entire legislature. The excuse was that there are going to be a number of international events involving Malta and there will therefore no time for elections.
Not being afraid of people’s judgement? U l-partnership rebah, I suppose.
This may be more than arrogance. It may be a way to influence the type of referendum – consultative or abrogative – if one is held, and the nature of the question, even if I detect a sense of bluff in the PM’s words.
Maybe the opposition should ask the Prime Minister to have the verdict in general elections, given that the Prime Minister is keen on electioneering.
Minister Mallia was removed as Minister of Justice, and hopefully his version of selling passports will be amended or should I say repealed to a real investor programme.
Hopefully we will have a Humpty Dumpty fall, in the not too distant future.
That would seriously tempt me to vote Labour in the Euro Elections as a thank-you to Dr Muscat.
[Daphne – You cannot be serious, Freedom5. Somebody saddles the country with a bad problem in the first place, and then – not because he recognises the problem but because he is afraid of losing votes – he tries to limit the damage, and you praise or thank him? This is the equivalent of having somebody come to your house, deliberately rip up your most precious painting, and then when you get upset, he clears up the mess and you say ‘wow – thanks; I must pay you for that.’]
I think Mallia is more the boss here than Muscat so there’s no getting rid of him for a long time.
I think that Freedom5 is joking – otherwise he’s nuts.
Government speakers are consistently tying the revenue to be gained from sale of citizenship, to which they refer by the less innocuous sounding word ‘passports’, to funding of social housing, education, social benefits and health services. That is, the ‘free’ government services with which the average voter can readily identify.
Government is already and not so subtlety influencing public opinion away from the real and terrible consequences of implementation of IIP to Malta’s international reputation and to the Maltese economy. Muscat is yet again taking a purely populist stance in what might be a lead-up to a referendum on the sale of citizenship issue.
If the overwhelming response last weekend to the taxpayer-funded ‘free’ trips on Gozo Channel is anything to go by, no wonder Muscat has stated that he is ‘not afraid of the people’s judgement’.
Well last Friday Owen Bonnici said that the secrecy behind the selling of citizenship is done to attract talent in Malta. Well when Gerard Depardieu move from France to Russia because of fiscal reasons Putin didn’t apply secrecy but publicized it.
Don’t know if this is relevant to the subject but it’s a great animation about the English Language:
http://youtu.be/H3r9bOkYW9s
This is one of our ministers of government. X’misthija.
“If the money can not be reunited with a legitimate owner then it will become the subject of a further court forfeiture order.”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2510074/Finders-keepers–60-000-worth-bank-notes-floating-Lincolnshire-river-dog-walker.html#ixzz2lB4Lowyw
In Malta we have a minister who declared that he keeps€500,000 in cash .When asked about there provenance he said they came from the sale of property, which sale was never recorded in a public notarial deed.
I would definitely have believed him had he said that his nanny had found the money on her way to Palace square fountain to fill up her jerry cans. Finders keepers, isn’t it.
The truth is that the Gozo freebie that cost 250,000 euros did nothing for the Gozo economy in real lasting terms. The next freebie will the weekend before the EP elections.
I always saw the figure of 650,000 as quite odd and wondered where it came from. My guess is that it is some nice round number in some other currency, presumably of the country where our first guests will come from.
Chinese was the first that comes to mind. It is close but not quite there. 5 million yuan is about 610,000 euro. Or maybe it is and they just rounded it up.
The amount being offered to Malta, net of fees and commission, is ￥5,000,000 – perhaps this was the deal proposed to the PL – nice round figures always help to close a deal.
Yes, it would have been 600,000 or thereabouts; but then Henley and Partners wanted an extra 50,000 for themselves