He’s not going to put all his eggs in one basket
The prime minister appears to be conscious now of the fact that he is perceived as chasing China’s tail a little too hard and too desperately (when it is China, in reality, that is desperate for the chance to swallow whole a microscopic EU member state).
Speaking at a breakfast meeting organised by The Malta Business Weekly (same stable as The Malta Independent) a few days ago, he said of the five-year agreement on “all aspects of Malta’s economy” which he will be signing in China next week: “I would love to have similar agreements with North American countries.”
Really – North American countries? How many are there? The United States, Canada and Mexico. Oh, and technically, Greenland too.
Muscat meant the United States and not ‘North American countries’ – so he should have said so. Like his predecessor Alfred Sant he is infatuated with the United States for no good reason other than that it isn’t Europe – while flouting, back home in Malta, almost every fundamental principle which Americans hold dear, at least today.
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Greenland is not a country.
[Daphne – It is a country. It’s not a state. Malta was a country even when it wasn’t a state but a British colony.]
Technically, it is. It has its own parliament, government and prime minister.
[Daphne – Yes, as did Malta when it was a British colony.]
Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark. Their currency is the Danish Krone.
And indeed, Malta was a country even back then.
More fascinating factoids.
Greenland Eskimos choose to die when they get tired of life, and they book an appointment with the doctor so he can issue the death certificate. There is much that we can learn from them.
Technically, even Canada, until 1982, wasn’t a State even if it had its own Parliament, three levels of governments (Federal, Provincial and Municipal) and a Governor General (still does).
It was administered under the British-North America Act. In 1982 the BNA was ‘repatriated’, amended and a Charter of Rights attached to it.
The Queen of England is still the Queen of Canada, but for all intents and purposes Canada is an independent country, even if, technically, it does not have a homemade Constitution! I believe Australia is in very much the same position but with louder rumblings of sidelining the monarchy.
Interestingly it is also the only part of EU territory to have voluntarily left the Union.
Angus Black, if you’re going to be pedantic, get your basic facts right: it’s the Queen of the United Kingdom, not England alone. And of course Canada is independent. Who’s head of state is irrelevant.
If Joseph Muscat really wished to have similar agreements with the United States, he shouldn’t have made George Vella as his Minister for Foreign Affairs.
He managed half a smile only at the very end when the car exhibition was mentioned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ujWLp1iobA
It’s a pity the video did not continue for we would have heard our President calling the U.S. Ambassador: Gina Abercrombie AND Winstanley.
Nothing to do with the above but on RAI 1 at the moment a very interesting programme from Lampedusa about migration.
Compared to some of us Maltese the Lampedusans are real and true Christians.
If only some of those who wish the migrants ill were to watch this programme.
[Daphne – Christianity is beside the point. These are not the Dark Ages, and people do not require religious guidance or fear of hell to be civilised and humane to others. The people of Lampedusa do it because they are civilised and not because they are Christian. The Maltese are largely uncivilised, and that’s why they behave like animals towards others and not just black immigrants.]
True
This argument infuriates me. Whenever a Christian helps someone the typical christophobic reaction is that the only thing that prompts them to help is the fear of hellfire.
Most Christians, like most atheists etc, actually help for the sake of helping not for some Middle-Age fear of eternal damnation.
[Daphne – Which is my point. And I am no more Christianophobic than I am Islamophobic. It is presumptuous to assume that the people of Lampedusa are 1. Christian by default, and 2. helping because they are Christian. Equally, it is insulting to all those who are not Christian to assume that the drive to help others comes from Christianity. It most definitely does not. It comes from a fundamental morality that is more generally transmitted to children outside of religion or alongside it. That is precisely why many Maltese people are so amoral or immoral: there was absolutely no attempt made by their parents (who doubtless had the same attitude) to teach them morality outside religion. You will notice that very many Maltese people link morality to religion, as our commenter is doing here. Morality taught only within the context of religious instruction does not become an intrinsic part of the person’s character. There are very many really bad people in Malta, and they’re not necessarily criminals – just very bad people, unprincipled, liars, cheats and backstabbers, disloyal. This is where it all stems from. ]
Could not have said it any better myself. In Malta, and much of the rest of the West, morality is linked to religion. In the eyes of many one cannot be atheist or a Modern Liberal if he helps others – the reason being that we are all animals and must act as such. Any other kind of act of love or fraternity is deemed antiquated, motivated by the threat of pain in the afterlife.
Sorry, I caught the tail end of the programme.
You are drawing attention to what I feel is an important part of Muscat’s speech.
In the previous posts, you drew attention to his use of the word “astonishing.”
He also he used the words “ground-breaking,” another term that is slightly used in Malta. His use of that term worried me, partly because of the rare use of the term and partly because Muscat did not explain in what way the agreement with China will be ground-breaking, and the ‘journalists’ did not bother to ask him.
Once again, Muscat managed to give the media what it wants: a headline – while he escaped their scrutiny.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140703/local/ground-breaking-memorandum-of-understanding-to-be-signed-with-china.526092
But the last time that Muscat thought out of the box in a ground-breaking way, he made headlines on the global media, for all the wrong reasons. That was when he decided to secretly sell the EU passport to anyone with money. Then, after causing a lot of damage to the reputation of Malta, he panicked, and from the other side of the world, reluctantly agreed to remove the secrecy of the persons buying EU passports.
Later, he had to face the ire of the European Parliament, and despite his “thanks, but no thanks,” he was called to Brussels where he had to bow in front of Commissioner Reding and accept the imposition of a 1 year effective residency.
I smell another rat.
I had been smelling this rat since Muscat appointed Alex Sceberras Trigona to the World Trade Organisation. I have long believed that Muscat’s deals with China are part of a plan by AST – this has never been denied. It was AST who had stated on radio that foreign relations are there to feed into the budget.
Muscat has mentioned China and North American countries in connection with his agreement, but not European countries.
I have this suspicion that Muscat’s ‘ground-breaking’ agreement in some way circumvents some of the free trade/free movement rules of the EU, and that he may be preparing for another battle with the EU commission, something which he enjoys doing for obvious political reasons.
China seems prepared to either break up, or break into, the internal free rules of the EU.
When Muscat prepares the way and tells us that it is something big and we will be surprised, you can rest assured that he knows that sensible people are not going to like it.
What he is doing here is preparing us for a fait accompli.
Now that would be a right mess. People working in the EU’s foreign affairs institutions will have to deal with the ramifications, as quite the carrot-and-stick approach is one of the cornerstones of such policy; circumventing trade rules would definitely remove both a bit of carrot and a bit of stick.
Malta would also be exposed as a pariah and Chinese stooge among EU circles, which I’m sure will become a lot less patient with Muscat’s antics. I can only imagine what this could do for Malta’s reputation, its standing in EU politics and its economy.
With whatever rewards promised by China firmly in Muscat and his followers’ pockets, Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burns comes to mind.
Everything Muscat does is ground-breaking, historic, momentous, record-breaking, the ‘first time ever’, etc. It’s the way Muscat sees himself: because he himself is so astonishingly important, everything about him must be ground-breaking.
He’s Joseph the Great.
I think it’s because he’s a hick from the sticks with little awareness of the world outside the bubble of his personal existence. If he’s impressed, then it must be because it’s impressive, and not be because he never knew much at all or has zero self-awareness.
See, e.g., his self-referential “British” humour, his self-delusion that he’s playing China at its own game, his ridiculous claim that he’s moving Malta’s economy out of prehistory, his absurd belief that he is running the country when he’s really just a puppet on a string.
Wanting American business is not he same as having it. With China, Muscat has put all our eggs in one basket. And the Chinese have him by the (ellipses).
The Maltese business community just sat there, with expressionless faces, listening to the harping-on of the PM. I wonder what’s in for them in the ‘memorandum of understanding’ with China.
Technically there are 23 countries in North America as Central America is not considered as a separate continent.
[Daphne – When I was at school, America was a single continent, divided between north and south and with a bit in the middle that was Central. It still is, though there is a competing school of thought that says North America and South America are two separate continents. Central America is exactly that: North America ends in Mexico. And the Caribbean islands are the Caribbean islands – they are not what you think of when you say ‘North American countries’. I suggest you give Wikipedia a rest and use common sense instead.]
Somehow I doubt he was referring to Nicaragua. Having said that, we now have solid contacts in the Caribbean thanks to Dalli.
It’s summer. We shouldn’t be wearing anoraks.
What the Prime Minister meant was the USA. End of story.
It’s rather difficult to know what the prime minister means by what he says. Many a time he says things that he does not mean and that is by his on design, such as Malta Taghna Lkoll and many other well-known lies.
Sorry but you fell for it. I mean the prime minister’s trick. You ignored what he was saying and ended up discussing what he meant by ‘north American countries’ and forgot to discuss what he intended to do and how he would achieve it.
You hit the nail on the head. Sure he likes the idea of USA, but they will put conditions on any relationship.
This is the same situation with all those third world corrupt African countries – they are gloating that now they can do business with China because China has absolutely no interest if they dictatorships, corrupt and a bunch of crooks.
Malta has the same problems with dealing with USA – who see Malta for what it really is – namely a money laundering, tax haven run by dictators and a corrupt elite.
Everything Joseph does or say is ground breaking and/or ‘astonishing’. But the most astonishing thing that he has managed to do during his first 16 months in office is to fail dismally in attracting real foreign investment. In contrast to this, during the PN’s administrations we saw high-tech, high value-adding firms moving here such as SR Technics, Lufthansa Technik an innumerable quantity of software development companies, we saw the banking sector expanding from just two banks to twenty one banks I think at the last count. That was the reason why Malta always beat the unemployment challenge.
Conversely, during 2013 foreign investment saw a drop of 300 million euros; during the first three months of 2014 exports dropped by 23%. So what does Joseph do? He goes running to the communist Chinese who take decisions in an ‘astonishingly fast’ manner and sells them Enemalta and most probably, according to internal hearsay, WSC. Air Malta has been touted too; vide the recent resignation of Ray Fenech from the position of Chairman who was handpicked by il-Guy just after the election result was out. (Ray Fenech and Joe Gasan are joint owners of a private jet company and also partners in the LNG power station).
In spite of his steel-faced expression and confidence-effusing marketing tactics, Joseph’s plans are going awry, like the field mouse in Robert Burns’ poem:
The passport sale, the oil drilling spoof, the failure in attracting private foreign (and local?) investment; all of these has forced him to make deals with DICTATORIAL GOVERNMENTS, namely China and Libya.
This is the main point of our present economic platform: Signing deals with dictators to fill in the emptiness that should have been filled by private foreign investors as we had been seeing during the previous 25 years. In other western democracies, Chinese investment is in private firms and not in buying government assets. It is only in Malta and African or third world countries that China buys state property such as in Zambia where the Zambian government sold state-owned metal mines to China.
This situation is feeding itself into a sort of vortex. The powerful position that the Chinese government is increasingly having on our economy makes private foreign investors get the jitters. When investors carry out their risk assessment when considering moving here they do so in a very professional manner and this is as expected of them considering that it is their own money that they would be risking. Seeing a strong Chinese presence and having a lot of clout withing the local political sphere is not conducive to attracting private investment. The loss of this investment will then force our Joseph to make more deals with governments that have an ‘astonishingly fast’ ways of working. Whose next? Putin? Azerbaijan? Saudi Arabia?
The only increase we are seeing, which is of course positive, is in the tourist industry which really is a low-tech industry having low value adding potential employing a high percentage of lowly-paid foreign staff.
Malta is seeing a very drastic change in its economic platform. The effect of this may not be felt immediately due to the resilience of our strong established economic base that was slowly built with lots of perspiration and some inspiration in the past quarter of a century. But if we keep on losing private investment we would start feeling the pinch.
An interesting watch to see where China may be heading.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2-axIk5yyI
As with many other gegraphical concepts (eg Europe) there is no clear definition of North America. Greenland although geographically American is culturally and politically European. In any case the plural word countries can just mean 2 countries.
[Daphne – David, Greenland is most definitely not ‘culturally European’. Around 90% of its population is Inuit.]
Did you know “anorak” is an Inuit word? Fascinating, innit?
Greenland was, for a number of years, part of the European Economic Community.
Why are we all so anal about Greenland?