“The perception which now seems to have formed worldwide is that Malta is desperately cash-strapped and has resorted to selling passports with no strings attached”
Comment sent in by Dr Mark Fenech:
Daphne, sometimes I really wonder whether Joseph Muscat and his retinue realize the extent of the seriousness of the situation.
As you are no doubt aware, in the real world, it is perception which most often counts, and so one must be very careful not to stoke unnecessary fires.
The perception which now seems to have formed worldwide is that Malta is desperately cash-strapped and has resorted to selling passports with no strings attached.
The prime minister has absolutely no idea what damage this perception is doing to our financial services, and possibly our maritime, industry. Stupidly, the Labour government has failed to foresee the obvious consequences and has totally ignored the dictates of common sense, i.e. that this “brilliant idea” would have the potential of feeding false or inaccurate perceptions which, in the financial services world, can be (and most often are) lethal.
Malta’s success in the financial services industry should never be taken for granted. Labour has shortsightedly played right into the hands of our competitors in Dublin and Luxembourg.
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So what. He’s in power. He made the deal. He got the cash that helped him get in power. That was the goal. He made it.
It was always downhill for him from then on. He wiped the floor with the PN. Job done. Giving away passports in secret as part of the deal was no problem. You think he cares?
After Edward Scicluna’s hopeless gaffe last April, talking on Bloomberg about the Euro teetering on the brink of disaster because of Cyprus, this is all the Eurozone needed.
Muscat the pseudo-economist and his economic advisers need reminding that screwing up our currency means screwing up the entire Eurozone.
A team of “cutting-edge economists,” and the only solution they could come up with to spur economic growth was the Citizenship Sale scheme.
He did warn us though that he was going to surprise us.
Surely he wasn’t counting on surprising the entire world.
That is a remarkable achievement isn’t it?
Uwijja who cares about perception. Karmenu Il Guy Vella told us not to believe everything we read in the press.
That’s all that matters to him, because perception doesn’t affect tourism apparently.