By selling citizenship to others, the government cheapens our own
Over a pear and Roquefort salad at The White Sheep between photo-shoots today, I think I pinned down the main source of my disquiet (and probably also that of many others) at the government’s sale of Maltese passports.
By putting a price on Maltese citizenship for others, it has put a price on ours. The price of my passport, my citizenship, it hit me suddenly, is Eur25,000.
You know, because I’m a wife, and the draft law is written in such a way as to make it amply clear that ‘additional spouse’ is a wife, not a husband, especially given that polygamous situations involve more than one wife and not, except in perhaps one or two tribal societies, more than one husband.
It would have been bad enough if I had been a husband (or an unmarried woman) with my Maltese citizenship valued at Eur650,000, but Eur25,000? Most people’s mid-range cars cost more than that.
So the price of my Maltese citizenship is about what you would pay for an Alfa Romeo Giulietta. And because around 50% of my identity and sense of self is tied up in being Maltese, that makes it offensive and degrading.
Why are we all so annoyed about this sale of passports business? I think it’s because of this, mainly. You like to feel that your citizenship is something on which you can’t put a price. But now the government has gone and done just that: put a price on it. And it’s mind-bogglingly low.
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What I personally find disturbing is that:
1. the government is selling citizenship without a mandate to do so (God knows what will happen next since the electoral manifesto isn’t anything to go by);
2. money is the only thing that counts with those people, and positive values are only defined in quantifiable terms, not in terms of principles.
So right! The tragedy though is that 95% of the population of this rock would never even come close to this thinking process.
It seems as though the vast majority of people living here have been transformed into the living dead. We no longer think, we don’t question, we don’t discuss…we just accept everything that is thrown at us by the powers that be.
What will it take to awaken the people from the general stupor that has overcome them?
The Greece, Cyprus, Spain, Portugal economic spectres that are silently creeping up on them as they slumber. And that is going to be one big rude awakening.
OK, but please let us not forget that this is the most feminist government in the history of the first republic.
So whilst the Alfa Romeo Giulietta may cost as much as the passport for an Azeri oligarch’s wife, the Alfa Romeo Giulietta has a road licence which needs to be paid annually, and Joseph Muscat has just increased road licences across the board. There is no annual charge associated with the Azeri billionaire wife’s passport.
You see, if you are an Azeri tycoon, it pays more to invest in your wife’s Maltese passport which comes with no strings attached, than to buy an Alfa Romeo Giulietta.
Small print: The Alfa Romeo Giulietta may represent a better financial opportunity than a Maltese passport for your wife if you bought your Alfa Romeo Giulietta between 2004 and 2008. In this case, you may qualify get a VAT refund some time before 2018.
Besides, if you buy a Maltese passport for your wife, this may be revoked by a new Maltese government come 2018.
The law, with its ‘applicant and additional spouse’ probably discriminates against same-sex married couples.
[Daphne – Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that. There are most certainly no same-sex couples, let alone same-sex married couples, in the target markets for the sale of Maltese passports.]
Following your argument to its logical conclusion, I shouldn’t even have a Maltese passport, because I cannot afford it.
Pear and Roquefort salad? Mhux ahjar naqa soup u selit, qalbi?
[Daphne – That’s exactly what I ate, the difference being that Mrs Muscat’s food, as shown on television during a propaganda documentary, looked thoroughly disgusting.]
I couldn’t take the clutter in that kitchen.
There wasn’t one free centimetre of surface where to prepare anything.
I have read a number of the postings and comments about the planned sale of Maltese passports and I confess to being puzzled by one aspect of it: The assumption that obtaining a Maltese passport necessarily means obtaining Maltese citizenship. I am not sure that this is (currently, at least) correct.
The current law provides that passports can be issued to Maltese citizens or “other Commonwealth citizens” (that covers some 54 countries!) and also mentions Alien Travel Documents for people in the country without any travel documents. (Interestingly, it also provides that a Maltese passport “shall remain the property of the government and may at any time be invalidated, withdrawn or cancelled”.)
This piece of legislation definitely does not link the possession of a Maltese passport with the possession of Maltese citizenship. It would required new legislation to provide that linkage.
[Daphne – It is being taken as read, John, because all the marketing material and sales pitches pivot on the buyer’s ability to move freely throughout the European Union and the world as a Maltese citizen. This by definition means a passport. A Maltese citizen can move only throughout the European Union with just an identity card, and even then, outside Schengen – especially getting into Britain – you are going to have problems when using an ID instead of a passport. Also it is clear at the outset that what is being sold is not citizenship but a passport.]
Excuse my jurisprudential ignorance, but what is the difference between a passport and citizenship?
True. But not only.
I am also very uneasy, angry almost, when I read the Henley & Partners website. There’s a patronising undertone to the whole thing that is really upsetting.
Muscat has always held Europe in contempt. This, in his mind, is even better than a NO vote. It’s a way to stick it to the EU.
What really disturbs me is that Government thinks that Maltese citizenship is theirs to sell.
The government is there by the mandate and tolerance of citizens. The model collapses as soon as citizenship becomes a commodity traded by government. It becomes like Ouroboros, eating itself.
I wonder how countries with whom we have agreed, signed and ratified double tax treaties (including the United States of America) will react to this sale.
A national of a contracting state in a double tax treaty is any individual possessing the nationality or citizenship of that state.