OK, this is the bit which I CAN’T understand: the marketing strategy/tactics
The Maltese government is not selling Maltese passports. It is selling EU passports. I think we are all clear on that, and those who were not have received the message loud and clear from the European Parliament and EU Commissioner Reding.
At this stage, you have to be very, very slow-witted indeed to believe that what people want to buy is an actual Maltese passport for its intrinsic value and so that they can come and live a life of Maltese glamour in a flat at Portomaso with John Dalli as a neighbour and pizza with the chavs.
So why, just at the point when it has launched the scheme and is receiving applications from crowds of people who want to buy an EU passport and move to London, Paris or Milan, has the government declared war on the European Union while the Labour Party calls a general conference to discuss Malta’s “European identity which it had before joining the EU” and “integration with other countries which are not EU member states”.
This undermines the unique selling point of its product (we’ve got to speak in those terms because that’s the brutal reality of the situation). The government is selling EU passports while communicating, very strongly, the message that EU membership is now optional for Malta and that we are going to integrate with countries outside the EU.
Let’s take that American press magnate who The Sunday Times told us about this morning. There is only one reason why he would want an EU passport, and it’s not because an American passport isn’t valuable or restricts movement around Europe and the world, or even because he needs it to set up in business in Europe.
It’s because those who hold American citizenship are pursued by the Inland Revenue Service and have tax reporting obligations wherever they are in the world and even if they have never lived in the United States of America. The reporting obligations are so onerous that many Americans, even if they are not at all rich but live elsewhere and so have a double reporting burden, are seeking to let go of their American citizenship by obtaining citizenship elsewhere.
The Americans who buy Maltese passports are not doing so to keep both and to have dual nationality, because as long as they retain their American citizenship they will have reporting obligations to the IRS. They are buying Maltese passports so as to be able to give up their American citizenship.
The US press magnate we have been told about will be doing just this. And that means if Malta pulls out of the European Union, he has a serious problem. He will have given up his extremely valuable American citizenship not for equally valuable European citizenship, but for a passport that gives him the free run of a 17 x 9 mile rock and its sister island which is even tinier.
The Chinese who buy our passports, and who are not permitted to hold dual citizenship even if they want to, will not be so upset. A Maltese passport, even if it is not an EU passport, is always going to be more convenient for travel than a Chinese passport – but still, that is not what they buying. They will want reassurances that Malta is going to stay in the European Union, even if we now know through experience that you can’t believe a word Labour says.
How has it come to this already?
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Reply to your question: Yes
“Tora! Tora! Tora”! Kullhadd’s editorial. There, you have it. How more belligerent can one get?
And look at the title of this idiot’s article:
http://www.kullhadd.com/201401185831/Ahbarijiet/hidma-prudenti-u-bla-waqfien.html
Please, oh please, do not call Joseph Cuschieri an idiot – because he is by far worse than that.
If, for extreme reasons, you really have to, make sure you apologise to real idiots for doing so.
If that’s the title, then this is their day of infamy.
Do they know what that led to, Iwo Jima, Tokyo’s complete torching with incendiaries…Hiroshima?
I demand asylum as a refugee.
Labour has always been anti EU. In 10 months of power, it has had two major rows with the EU: over immigrant push-backs and now over selling EU passports.
Many Labour supporters write constantly against the EU on internet comment-boards. They never gave up on that theme, but now seem to have redoubled their efforts.
So the question is, why?
Does Labour want to withdraw us from the EU, but want to be seen as it’s the EU’s fault, because they bullied poor little Malta?
The only reason for this to happen that I can think of, apart from fulfilling some secret pr- election agreement that allied Malta with another bloc, is that if Malta withdraws from the EU, all the checks and balances that cramp Labour’s style will no longer be there.
Or is this a modern twist of political brinkmanship as practised by Mintoff.
Quick cash has been MLP’s tactic for 40+ odd years.
Let’s rewind:
MLP supported poverty, mediocrity and insularity. The MLP impoverished the country and their government’s only hope lied on help from dictatorial rejects such as Chinese and the Libyans.
To survive, the Maltese, oppressed and left in complete disarray, had no other choice other than to resort to tax avoidance; fixing and micro-criminality; truancy from work in order to secure self-employed work; utility theft (even I know about the meter tampering!)… The government had to close eyes and ears to avoid the worst.
Labour people’s concordance to PL’s is a sign of poverty which they or their parents were brought up in. Habits and memories die hard…
Labour people’s concordance to PL’s scheme is a sign of poverty which they or their parents were brought up in. Habits and memories die hard…
I think it is wise to point out a fundamental aspect of this situation which seems to have gone unnoticed and is starting to become the main focus of this issue: freedom of speech.
This issue has brought to light the PL’s idea of what freedom is, that it is all perfectly fine until it taints the image of ‘Malta’, for which read the Labour government.
Malta first and foremost, that ultra conservative and oppressive phrase, silences us all. We are not allowed to voice our opinions when they are negative ones because we all have to make Malta (the Labour government) look good.
It goes to show that the PL has no idea what today’s values are and what other countries admire about each other. It is not the ability to silence your critics, bully your opposition into submission, steamroll your way through parliament and call anyone who disagrees with your policies and who is vocal about it a ‘traitor’.
Actually it is the very freedom to speak out against your government without fear or favour that is the basic value all western countries demand. Telling people that we cannot do this on television, which ends up on YouTube and is watched by foreign politicians, tarnishes Malta.
This issue has brought about a discussion on the most elementary values of democracy. You can damn well bet that many people are now going to pin Muscat to the floor on this one. They will not budge until the scheme is scrapped.
This is not just because they don’t like it, but also to remind him that no one wants Mintoff or his ideologies around any longer. Mintoff belongs to the past. Muscat’s way of doing things is not fresh. It is straight from a past that Europe rejected completely 24 years ago with the fall of the Berlin wall.
The whole passport saga is unbelievable.
It’s unbelievable that many Maltese believe and feel proud that ‘foreigners’ want to be Maltese and pay for it. The fact is, many of these passport applicants would not even be able to locate the island on a map. They don’t want to be Maltese. They want an EU passport and would have bought it from any country mad enough to offer to sell them one.
It’s unbelievable that many Maltese believe the Opposition has influence over MEPs and the international press.
It is Joseph Muscat who has silenced former journalist/broadcaster Lou Bondi (while Malta burns in anger, he talks about babies and guitars on Facebook; he should close down his account if he’s not prepared to talk about anything relevant to a man his age with a lifetime’s career in political interviewing, instead of making himself look more and more ridiculous by repeatedly posting photographs of his baby and his guitar, as though there is nothing important to talk about), and political louts JPO and Franco Debono.
Can you imagine the fuss these three people, under different circumstances, would have made about this scandalous passport sale or if it had been introduced under a Nationalist government?
Daphne, your starting point is that the PL needs the money from the citizenship sale and that the whole point behind it all is the monetary income.
[Daphne – No, my starting point is that the Labour Party needed money to fund its massive election campaign (and I don’t mean just the official six-week campaign) and struck a deal on passports in return for donations to its war chest. It now cannot renege on that deal, not because it will have to pay the money back, but because it lives in fear that those it betrays will bleat loudly and publicly.]
But if the primary objective was not the money (as has been made clear by the dear old profs Xjikluna during his dazzling expose’) then the satisfaction or otherwise of potential customers would be of no consequence.
You are right, the marketing strategy does not make sense. And the PL is expert at marketing strategy – just look at the electoral campaign.
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and waddles like a duck, then it must be a duck (or a prime minister, but let’s forget that for the time being).
All this indicates that Muscat doesn’t give a toss about the applicants and the money. All he wants is to stir up a hornet’s nest in Brussels. He’s not worried about the money, obviously because he’s been promised support and financial income from the Chinese government.
He’s in effect engineering his own jum il-helsien with the “EUSSR”, as the elves are fond of calling the EU, instead of Britain, and with China as a stand-in for Ghaddafi providing the cekkijiet tac-cildrin ellawins.
Even so. If you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
Do you remember when Muscat oddly said on American TV that it was Malta’s geographical position that was important?
Important as what in this day and age? For what?
As being above Africa, as opposed to it being below Europe?
http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=9659
Muscat isn’t that keen on Malta’s neutrality clause either.
A base for China in the Med. Since Malta is neither in Nato nor in the Middle East or the North Africa coast, and neither, it seems, in the Western World, China could have its base in the Mediterranean without inconveniencing anyone of note.
All the better to keep an eye on everyone, to show off its military hardware to its major customers in North Africa and the Middle East, to make a show of force against Nato and Russian fleets, and to intervene under the guise of “humanitarian missions” in the world’s major trouble spots, thus duping everyone.
The Attorney General will obviously give the green light, because it wouldn’t break any rule in the Constitution now, would it?
Why do I think that the article ‘prepared exclusively’ for The Sunday Times was really meant to give Muscat a leg up for this morning’s ‘homily’, and why did The Sunday Times swallow it hook, line and sinker?
Nobody, but nobody, is described as a ‘press magnate’ any more. The press is a dying business. A media magnate, yes, but press magnate – never.
As to expressing an interest – well, that is easily done without telling porky pies.
Henley: ‘Good morning ex-formula-one-driver-who-nobody-remembers, would you be interested in a Maltese passport?’
Ex-Formula-One-driver-nobody-remembers: ‘I could be, tell me more’.
Bingo! One ex-formula one driver ‘interested’, and material for an article in The Sunday Times.
Well Nelson Piquet already owns a house here so he would be an obvious target.
What TALENT would a retired F1 driver have to offer us, even if he were to live here at all?
Maybe he’ll give our government some instruction in how to head straight for that wall.
Or how to read a road map, Gaetano.
Besides the “press magnate” and “ex-Formula 1 driver” and other has-beens, the MLP should be worried about the rest , who are not buying a Maltese passport for its own sake but for access to EU and visa-less travel to the United States.
Some of these could, due diligence and all, be less than savoury characters who would be quite miffed if Muscat’s brinkmanship leaves them with just a Maltese passport, worth nothing at all.
“Just a Maltese passport, worth nothing at all”
Something tells me that, with his bullying and defiance, Muscat is certainly not bent on being kicked out of – he would say withdrawing from – the EU.
Why? Because, as you imply, the unsavoury characters now flocking, with their millions, at the gates of Henley and Something want cast-iron reassurance that their shiny new Maltese passport is going to remain an EU passport.
In the same way that Muscat lied through his teeth to the electorate and to the EU, he won’t hesitate to lie through his teeth to his customers.
I don’t think he will hesitate to take the money, hand over a passport and run.
That said, I don’t think Muscat is planning to pull Malta out of the EU. He is simply planning on exploiting membership; enjoying the benefits while ignoring the rules.
Muscat will rely on the EU’s good will and slow political machine. In spite of Viktor Orbán’s authoritative style and Greek’s financial woes, neither Hungary nor Greece were chucked out.
There is no precedent to a country being forcefully pushed out of the EU. For that to happen, it would take massive political will by the other 27 countries and something heinously bad by Malta. It would be very, very messy.
Muscat will continue giving a two-finger salute to the EU, knowing full well that the EU won’t be able to do much about it.
He triumphed over the PN by exploiting its weaknesses. Now he’s about to go really big and try the same tactic with the EU.
Well, they are not making much international fuss about getting out of the EU; only here have they conveyed that message.
To any foreigner it will seem out of question that Malta leaves the EU so they will lose nothing there.
In Malta, the continuous arrogance of our PM has sent a message, a message that he ‘has balls’. That message impresses the slow-witted who search for a “salvatur”.
Dr. Muscat, like Mintoff before him, is giving his slow-witted supporters a reason to feel rebellious. That is his strategy, losing nothing from outside, but gaining a lot of admiration from his core supporters.
Let us pray that he does not use this air of excitement to force his will like Mintoff did before him. Then Malta will be in deep sh*t, and with an arrogant PM like ours, you can’t tell where it will end.
It’s probably all about brinkmanship the old Mintoffian way.
He’s already done it with the push-back saga going as far as ordering the planes to take the immigrants back only to say it was only an attempt to be noticed.
Now he’s going to do the same so as to elicit favourable concessions from the EU towards his IIP programme.
If it fails the MLP propaganda machine will make it look like a victory, Partnership fashion, exactly like Mintoff did when ‘kecca l-Ingizi’ when all he did was beg them to stay on for a further five years.
Extracts from the British Parliament – HL Deb 25 January 1973 vol 338 cc250-2
EARL FERRERS: Mr. Mintoff asked for what he called a guarantee against devaluation. He was told that we should not be prepared to agree with this. We informed him in writing before the agreement was made, and he signed the agreement on March 26 fully knowing what the British position was.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl whether it is not about time to recognise that, although one knows the difficulties that confront the Maltese Government, or Mr. Mintoff himself, financial aid by the United Kingdom to Malta is now just an act of paternalism and has nothing whatever to do with strategy? It has just become a barracks, a very limited barracks, with no strategic value whatever; and that is the opinion of all the accredited military chiefs.
The above took place in 1973, a full six years before the British actually left, so much for ‘kecca l-Ingizi’ Joe Grima please note.
Unfortunately for Joseph, communications have come a long way since 1973 and Malta has considerably more than one state TV and radio station.
What is More, Malta is well connected to the EU, Europe and the world. Joseph well knows that an EU passport cannot ever be replaced by a Chinese one, he knows full well that leaving the EU is not an option and will have consequences.
Joseph Muscat realises that the minute Malta breaks away from the EU all those thousands of Maltese working in EU countries will have to leave and come back here.
The cost of that plus the cost of lost jobs as foreign companies who are here thanks to Malta being part of the EU leave will be more, considerably more, than the billion euro Joseph is hoping to obtain through the IIP scheme.
Joseph still has one card available. He can come to terms with reality and together with the PN come up with a decent plan that falls within EU legislation and he better do that fast before we start preparations to host what may become the most embarrassing EU Presidency ever.
Doubt it. He still needs €30m to balance the books this year. Kumbinazzjoni it’s the amount needed to reduce W&E bills this year (main electoral promise) and which amount was meant to have mystically been paid in advance by the winners of the power station charade.
Also, the 70% of €1.5bn figure he keeps quoting as going into a fund leaves 30% or €450m over 5 years unaccounted for. Conveniently that is roughly what the blessed power plant will cost the government (+ the €30m). So yes the Scheme is needed to fulfill an electoral promise, and it’s the big one.
Bravo!
My thoughts exactly.