Muscat interviewed by Bloomberg Business Week: “Over the past decade or two, my country has been more focused on Europe. I think now we have to move on.”
I had missed this interview (October 4) which Muscat gave to Bloomberg Business Week. The link to the full piece is below, but start with this:
TINY MALTA TURNS TO CHINA, SAYS PRIME MINISTER
By Dexter Roberts – Bloomberg Business Week, October 04, 2013
After becoming prime minister of the tiny but strategic Mediterranean island nation of Malta in March, 39-year-old Labor Party leader Joseph Muscat has put a new priority on strengthening relations with China. This marks a major shift for the Maltese government that rules over a population of 418,000. While maintaining good relations with Beijing during their almost 25-year-tenure (apart from a brief 18-month-period in the 1990s, Labor has been out of power since 1987) the conservative Nationalist Party had focused much more on the relationship with the European Union.
(…)
How will your government take a different approach in dealing with the world and China in particular?
Over the past decade or two, my country has been more focused on Europe. I think now we have to move on. We don’t really consider European affairs to be foreign affairs any longer. That is the most significant shift in foreign policy that we have adopted. We see European affairs as an extension of national affairs.
That is why we are positioning ourselves, and devoting as much time as possible, to outside Europe. We are fostering relations with African nations, but also with partners such as China, with which we have a long-standing relationship. Malta was one of the first countries to recognize China.
We have an astonishingly close relationship with China. I call it astonishing because of two factors. One is distance–there is considerable distance between our two countries–and the second is size. We find it quite extraordinary that the Chinese show us such a great deal of respect and have so much time to devote to us. I think it boils down to our historical ties. We want to maximize those ties so they don’t remain simply courtesy ties, or only related to the past.
—–
He thinks it boils down to our historical ties. He is astonished that China has the time of day for Malta. Is he bluffing or is he just a thumb-sucking, starstruck idiot?
‘Why is China so interested in Malta?’ falls into the same category of questions as ‘So, Miss Smith, what attracted you to 90-year-old oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall?’
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http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-04/tiny-malta-turns-to-china-says-prime-minister
His use of “my” in “my country” sounds somewhat defensively possessive. Gonzi and others would have said “Malta” or “our country”.
[Daphne – Well, actually I think he used ‘my country’ in the way uneducated Maltese do: “in my country we do diss”; “in my country we do dett”.]
‘..it also won substantial economic aid from China, that included providing complete factories to produce glass, textiles, and chocolate’.
Chocolate.
Deserta was Chinese.
Ah, so that’s why it tasted of melamine.
And that’s why it tasted sweet, but sour at the same time.
rattan, carpets and so on and so forth.
Zibel.
It seems that with the PL in government, Malta can’t just be Malta.
Alfred Sant aspired to change Malta to a ‘Svizzera fil-Mediterran’, and at the rate we’re going with Joseph Muscat at the helm, we’ll soon become ‘Cina fil-Mediterran’.
“Are you interested in encouraging Chinese to seek residency in Malta?”
“We are interested in bringing in all those who are reputable people, who are willing to take up residence in Malta. We however, don’t do the hard selling. An address in Malta, residence in Malta, comes at a premium. So we are not into selling this right cheap. We have limited space in our country so we have to choose people carefully, no matter what nation they come from. In the next few months we will be issuing what I believe will be new exciting programs on residency and even citizenship. Again, due diligence and choosing the right type of person will be paramount.”
Sure.
We have been focused on Europe, no thanks to him.
The difference is that J. Howard Marshall was under no illusions and, rather sneakily, left Anna Nicole Smith out of his will.
Muscat, on the other hand, has already broken out the family silver and is practically giving it away.
Josanne Cassar has taken to giving us her opinion on the sale of citizenship.
She ends her rant like this:
“If the Labour government has its ear to the ground as it did so successfully during its election campaign, it should know fully well where public opinion rests on this matter.”
The Labour PARTY had its ear to the ground during the election campaign with the sole aim of getting into power. Now the Labour Party is in power thanks to the likes of you, Josanne Cassar, and others like you.
If you can’t trust the Prime Minister on such a serious matter, how can you trust him on anything else.
Yet you voted for him. Idiot.
You reap what you sow.
So do we, unfortunately.
Josanne Cassar is one of the many deluded fools who thought Muscat was elected on the basis of his ability to listen to people to give them what they want, rather than using that knowledge to further his own interests.
[Daphne – Not quite. Josanne Cassar was raised a Mintoffian in a family of Mintoffians. Raised in California, she was brought to Malta by her parents at the age of 15 during the worst of the hellish years circa 1981 when Mintoff was prime minister, because they thought they were truly golden so it was a really good time to come back, and her uncle was Minister of Education, Philip Muscat. The mistake too many people make here in Malta is to assume that others share their values because they speak English, have manners, wear normal clothes and are not overtly ‘hamalli’. How wrong that is – as is the assumption that people who are all those things vote Labour. She has never been anything other than rabidly Labour. She just liked to pretend otherwise when being Labour wasn’t fashionable.]
How very true.
During the last election campaign, I discovered that a lot of people I knew way back at university and at work through the years were rabid Mintoffians and never voted PN.
I was misled by the fact that they spoke English habitually or hung around with others whose views were very different. Now, with hindsight, I realize that they only did it out of convenience and for personal image.
These people ‘came out’ when Mintoff died, and subsequently were more ‘vocal’ on Facebook during the election campaign.
Daphne, another precise observation of yours. Many times I made the mistake of assuming that being properly dressed and speaking good English was not Mintoffian.
Perfect examples the ambassador to Spain, Kenneth Zammit Tabona and Norman Shaw. They stand out in a Labour croud, they are the worst snobs, and the way they move upwards is ruthless.
P Shaw, do I know the type. One trait gave them away: considering success as ‘luck’.
Conversations gravitating gradually around their lives, misgivings and indolence.
Give me a Zammit Marmara’ for an ideological slanging match any day.
European affairs as national affairs. It seems Roderick Pace’s dream has come true.
“Over the past decade or two, my country has been more focused on Europe. I think now we have to move on. We don’t really consider European affairs to be foreign affairs any longer. That is the most significant shift in foreign policy that we have adopted. We see European affairs as an extension of national affairs.”
There, we have it from the horse’s mouth. According to Joseph Muscat, Malta’s foreign affairs under the Labour government is equivalent to the potential to sell the EU passport for cash.
I repeat for the umpteenth time: Alex Sceberras Trigona had publicly said that foreign policy must feed into the budget. This is the doctrine being followed by Joseph Muscat, who brought AST back from the wilderness to occupy the post of International Secretary of the Labour party.
“Over the past decade or two, my country has been more focused on Europe. I think now we have to move on. We don’t really consider European affairs to be foreign affairs any longer.”
Will he be saying the same thing in ten years time about the links with China ?
It is just that Joey has lost his sense of direction.
You do not move on from Europe to China.
You go backwards.
Bhal granc.
This is more frightening than I would like to think.
WHO is pressurizing the Prime Minister and WHY is he being held to ransom?
WHAT will happen to Malta if the whole scheme is called off?
I shudder to think what comes next.
1996, Sant, Malta, is- Svizzera fil- Mediterran.
2013, Muscat, Malta, il- mafia Ċiniża fil- Mediterran.
What a sorry idiot…..
“We find it quite extraordinary that the Chinese show us such a great deal of respect and have so much time to devote to us.”
He sounds like some naïve, ugly, menopausal man who’s been fawned over by a gold-digger half his age, and who thinks it’s because he’s so fantastic and she’s so respectful of his wonderful qualities.
Citizenship should be EARNED and not bought (and at giveaway prices, at that)
“Maximize those ties”? Doesn’t sound right.
What gets to me is how he uses words to distort meaning.
So he wants to look outside Europe, fine, what about Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand and India? Most of these have very old relations with Malta.
How about Obama’s USA and Brazil? Aren’t these leftist enough?
He talks of close to shore investment location, Microsoft came to Malta specifically to launch into Africa.
Muscat wants to reverse the process, his strategy in line with anyone’s wish to keep the divide between the wealthy north and a poor south willing to work for subsidies by the Chinese.
I just can’t accept Labour always going for the most undemocratic of states, agreements which we’re not allowed to know and a foreign policy verging on sabotage of any improving formal and commercial relations between third parties.
We just have to go for underhand tactics or the riskiest of ventures. Whatever it is, it’s surely not European, civilised or first world.