Tonight’s top comment
Posted by Matthew S:
The number of months a person spends on the island is irrelevant unless that person makes a genuine investment in the country. Without an incentive to invest, the obligation to stay here for a few months sounds more like a house arrest order than an investment stimulus.
Everybody is forgetting the reason why such schemes have a residence criteria. It’s not so that the person can enjoy his property, try the local cuisine and learn a few words in the vernacular. Nor is it so that the locals get themselves photographed with a millionaire.
It’s so that the person feels bound to invest.
The agreement reached goes against the spirit of the law. There’s nothing to make the person want to invest. Even if the applicant spends a full twelve months on the island, s/he won’t generate much more wealth than an average tourist. It will be just like an extended holiday.
The law is an ass. The European Commission has let Joseph Muscat off scot-free and the Maltese have been screwed over by their own government. Again.
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Muscat doesn’t care for investment, indeed he doesn’t want others setting up shop here. What he’s after is the cash to proceed with the next campaign. If that means a centralised economy so much better.
He stuck to two criteria, money and passports issued no strings attached.
Joseph Muscat has a knack for following the letter of the law in order to break its spirit.
The same thing happened with the Farrugia Sacco case.
We had lawyers, experts and politicians debating whether it is legal to revive an impeachment motion but nobody bothered explaining why motions are considered ‘dead’ when a new government is elected.
Motions are ‘killed’ so that a new administration is not encumbered by the priorities of an old one. It is assumed that a new administration will have different priorities to the one preceding it. Instead of making the new administration vote down bills left over by the old one, all bills are just pronounced ‘dead’ in order to move things along and save time.
It therefore follows that if there are cases where a new administration has the same agenda as the old one, it can continue where the old one left off without missing a beat.
A new cabinet can definitely revive the interests of an older one. You don’t even need to consult Erskine May to figure that out. You just need some common sense and an understanding of why ‘motion killing’ exists.
When a law is discussed in a vacuum without an explanation of why it came into existence in the first place, it is easy to interpret it in whatever way one feels like.
A law is not an old custom which we follow just for the hell of it. We follow a law because there is a logical reason to do so. When the spirit of the law is better served by ignoring the letter of the law, we do not follow the law to the letter. If the law’s spirit is constantly broken by its letter, we strike the law off the books and pronounce it obsolete.
It’s a bit like driving. If you take the same route to work everyday because it is the most efficient one, it doesn’t follow that when the road is blocked, you should not take a more long-winded route to get to your destination.
The reason why Joseph Muscat stopped at the roadblock and refused to take another route is because he was not really interested in getting to work. The roadblock just happened to be the perfect excuse to avoid doing so.
The Maltese have been screwed, excuse my language, by the European Commission.
We expected nothing better from Joseph Muscat from Burmarrad, at least not those of us who have the honour of belonging to the exclusive “I was not taken in” club.
But we did as a last resort finally expect to be safeguarded by the European Commission, especially following the whopping vote at the European Parliament.
Surely all that condemnation could not have been about a few months here or there.
Ultimately, the European Commission has screwed all other members of the European Union, or the more affluent amongst them, which is where these passport-seekers are finally destined.
May I have your email address please.
[Daphne – [email protected]]
It is a repeat of the ‘maggoranza’ issues. Mintoff won more seats with fewer votes.
It was a legal victory but highly immoral. He was correct legally but broke the spirit of the law.
So does the citizenship sale scheme. With the endorsment of the EU it has become legal but it remains highly immoral.
It breaks the spirit of the law.
But Muscat does not give a damn, because all he is after is money with which to buy votes to secure his power.
He does not give a damn about Malta or the Maltese. He only thinks of himself.
The sad part of it all is that he did this with complicty of the EU, the institution we believed we joined to safeguard our democracy. The EU has let us down badly.