Read here for more information on the British company which planned the winning electoral campaign in St Kitts & Nevis with funding and support from Henley & Partners. And draw your own conclusions.

Published: November 25, 2013 at 3:09pm

SCL Elections is an ‘election services’ company registered in Britain, with close connection to Henley & Partners. It claims to have never lost an election on which it worked, but with the exception of claims about three British election campaigns, all those elections appear to have been in the third world.

Third-world campaigning is very different to campaigning in a true democracy where society is more sophisticated, educational levels are higher, and superstition, irrational thought, poor analytical skills, personal envy and the need to destroy what you feel you cannot have for yourself do not come into it. Labour’s 2013 election campaign was textbook third-world campaigning, which is why it had such strong echoes of Chavez and Venezuela, masked by the occasional US-inspired video and placard.

The ‘three election campaigns’ in Britain which SCL lay claim to fall within the period when Tony Blair’s Labour won, which means they worked for that party. That would be why the overall framework of the campaign, containing the third-world emotive appeals to irrationality, had such strong echoes of the Blair campaign 16 years earlier.

SCL Elections sell themselves as having the “expertise and technical know-how needed to effectively orchestrate the behavioural change required to win an election campaign”: “We help our clients identify the ‘buttons’ that need to be pressed and help press them, thereby guaranteeing electoral success”.

This, for example, is the use of third-world tactics (hysterical appeal to the emotions rather than to the rational mind) using first-world technology. It is perfect because it reflects the meld, in Maltese society, of third-world thinking with state of the art technology. To other Europeans, with its overtones of Hitlerian hysteria, it is frightening, tapping into a part of the collective psyche that appears to have passed much of Malta by completely.




27 Comments Comment

  1. Bubu says:

    “It claims to have never lost an election on which it worked”

    This is such a corruption of the true spirit of democracy.

  2. Carmelo Micallef says:

    SCL Elections was incorporated as a UK company in October 2012, its first and only full financial year was completed upon 31st October 2013: As a result it has never filed any audited accounts.

  3. DO you remember phil Noble says:

    This time they went for something more professional

  4. Edward says:

    What a terrible thing to say. Push the right buttons? Orchestrate behavioural change? What are we dealing with exactly?

    • La Redoute says:

      Mass psychosis.

    • Esteve says:

      Sophisticated marketing techniques applied to politics.

      It’s been going on for quite a while now and it has reached our shores too, just like a filthy oil slick from some far away grounding.

      It’s one thing to take advantage of those with weak character or feeble-minded enough to buy a product. But it is on a different level when it is done to steer a country in a particular direction.

      There is simply no escape for anyone – the only way is education and instilling a critical objective mindset.

      Unfortunately, most Maltese, even those with a formal education, are brought up with a mindset which is ready and wanting to believe anything and anyone sounding comforting or familiar (“U dak kien joqghod hdejna, taf kemm hu orrajt/ragel sew” etc..).

      The rest just have to lump it.

    • Victor says:

      The Maltese mentality.

      My only surprise is the large amount of people who think they are intelligent and above others in their thinking, falling prey to this orchestration, only proving how very stupid they really are.

  5. Dickens says:

    http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/en/businessdetails/business/businessnews/No-height-limits-in-MEPA-s-new-policy-on-tall-buildings-20131125

    What happens in the case of a strong earthquake that will cause the collapse of such tall buildings in a neighbourhood with not so tall buildings or nearby heritage? Who will be held responsable for the damage caused?

    Will Michael Farrugia and his dining companion Musumeci be held responsable?

  6. pablo says:

    It has just occurred to me that there is another reason for the government’s surprising change in favour of consultation meetings: Henley & Partners must be totally pissed off at seeing their own reputation, murky as it is, being splashed all over the world media in mocking, insulting manner, and dragged down further by a banana republic Labour Party that has told its people ‘it’s either this scam or we have to tax you more’.

    And if you think Henley & Partners have no sway over Muscat and Mallia, think again.

  7. Makjavel says:

    So if two and two make four, not twenty two, the passport citizenship brainwave is obviously the method of payment to Henley and Partners.
    No cash transaction takes place, but if the election is won, then payment is done indirectly by getting an indecent commission.

    [Daphne – GROAN. SIGH. No. It’s the other way round. Henley & Partners don’t fund the campaign and then get rewarded with a contract for selling passports. First they get the deal on selling passports, and then they fund the campaign to put in power the people who will make it happen.]

  8. Lawrence Attard says:

    “In 2009 the Prime Minister of SVG, Ralph Gonsalves, held a press conference [21] in which he accused the opposition of using the services of SCL Elections to run the ‘Vote No Campaign’ for a referendum on constitutional change. Gonsalves accused the opposition of courting, and being funded by, groups who wish to maintain the practice of “economic citizenship” – which he calls “selling passports”, and benefits economic migrants and tax exiles – mentioning in particular Henley & Partners, who describe themselves as “the world’s leading specialists in international residence and citizenship planning”.[22] Gonsalves makes the accusation that Henley & Partners funded SCL’s contribution to the ‘Vote No Campaign’ – although this is unsubstantiated.”

    http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/SCL_Elections

  9. pablo says:

    Another window on this so called investment industry-

    http://www.isla-offshore.com/second-passport/second-citizenship-fraud/

  10. Foggy says:

    It’s interesting to note that the directors all appear to be Old Etonians.

    • Gian says:

      Very interesting comment under that link. Reminds me very much of J Dalli BA, Frankie Tabone & co.

      ”What is certain however is that the Comrade has a long pattern of eviscerating and besmirching political opponents, and later integrating these same individuals to his camp to demoralize and discombobulate the NDP.
      One can immediately cite Campbell, Bonadie, who were accused of corruption when on one side of the fence, but who are honorable men when on the other.”

  11. manum says:

    you mean to say something more sinister

  12. If SCL Elections had anything to do with the general election in Malta earlier this year, those switchers who feel that it was their IQ that led to their decision, must feel rather sheepish to discover how they were led by the nose by people who worked out which of their buttons to push.

  13. Rumplestiltskin says:

    This practice may not be illegal but it is certainly morally reprehensible.

  14. Giraffa says:

    To plagiarise Alfred Sant, I am morally convinced that Henley & Partners worked on the strategy for the PL to win the last general election and the Citizenship scheme was all agreed months before the election proper.

    • Francis Saliba MD says:

      The Labour Party is willing to make pacts with the devil in order to win a general election. And we now know the name of the devil and the signatories on that pact.

  15. Alex Vassallo says:

    This was revealed by Kristy Debono in parliament further investigated by Il-Mument last Sunday. A journalist Hamlet Mark from Grenada gave insightful details.

    [Daphne – No, it was actually covered on this website several weeks ago. http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2013/10/news-report-from-grenada-about-henley-partners-conflict-of-interests-in-the-sale-of-passports-scheme-there/%5D

  16. Thackeray says:

    Another media comment on the passport and citizenship for sale racket and its manipulation by undesirable individuals. This time from the Economist magazine.

    http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21590574-murky-world-bouterses-passports-ignominy

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