It’s bad form to say ‘I told you so’, but at this stage, I don’t really care
Joseph Muscat visits China as Opposition leader in the spring of 2010, and signs a ‘memorandum of understanding’ with that state. This when somebody representing the Opposition can’t enter into a bilateral state-state agreement, which means that the MOU was between China and the Labour Party.
From day one I have been saying that the government is under pressure to rush the ‘sale of passports’ law through parliament not because it needs the money but because the people who were promised those passports – no doubt in return for cash used to finance the Labour Party’s campaign (I don’t dare suggest what some of us really think, that some of that money went into private pockets) – are calling for their pound of flesh.
China, I said, it’s bound to be China. The Labour Party got money from the Chinese dictatorship and in return it has promised EU passports to the families of Chinese officials and favourites.
Rational thinking: when you’re looking at this level of unseemly haste and panic by our government, what you’re looking at is people under pressure to deliver. Given that it is not the electorate that is putting them under pressure to deliver the sale of passports (rather the opposite, in fact), it must be somebody else, somebody to whom they have made a promise. One person is not enough to justify it, so it must be a group, a collective, of some sorts.
A business? Not really – why would a business need that many passports, unless it was selling them, like Henley – but then Henley can afford to wait a little. So the pressure isn’t coming from Henley. Who operates collectively? A dictatorship. China. China wants passports for its favourites.
China has given the Labour Party lots of money. The Labour Party has allowed it to buy a 35% stake in Malta’s power monopoly, and China has allowed the Labour Party to think that it is the one doing the Malta government a favour rather than the other way round. Now it wants passports for its officials/favourites and the Labour government is behaving as though it has a knife to its chest or a gun to its temple.
There’s more: Joseph Muscat said at the outset that he expects “65 immediate applicants” for the purchase of Maltese passports. There was no way he plucked that figure out of thin air. The man is not as clever as he thinks he is and has a tendency to drop clues like deer drop spoor. He spoke as somebody who knows there are 60 people waiting and he spoke as though it is those 60 people to whom passports have been promised.
Now tonight, Henley & Partners has told TVM news that yes, there are “60 families” waiting for Maltese passports and…they’re Chinese.
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Kitten from Malta will be glad. He will have 60 new potential customers for his famous Maltese paintings.
Kitten is not waiting for the Chinese to buy his unsold and unwanted stock. The 2014 budget has alloacted EUR 50,000 specifically for this.
Line item 5683 within the OPM’s budget represents EUR 50K to purchase artistic objects. We all know that EUR 50,000 is a pittance in the real art world, but it will pay for a lot of airconditioning and houseboys.
How long will it be before the Malta Labour Party presents Chinese persons on its electoral ticket for the European Parliament?
Daphne, how many votes do you think the socialists will have bought thanks to this scheme by the time of the next election?
Could we assume around 2000? Ultimately in a country where 500 votes wins elections, this is not insignificant.
The beneficiaries of this citizenship scheme will obviously have a vested interest in voting PL come next election.
The PN may also cotton on to this, subsequently changing their stance on renouncing citizenship. That could be the only way of winning the next election. If they do not do this they may come up short come election time.
[Daphne – Why do you assume they will have the right to vote?]
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2013-11-13/news/secret-citizens-eligible-to-vote-3173777415/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook
Joseph Muscat confirms that these new citizens have a right to vote.
At the same time, the government is insisting that the list of these new citizens must be kept secret.
In democratic scenarios, that’s perfectly illogical. How can it be ? Special secret polling booth/s in embassies run by super one envoys maybe ?
While writing this, I an telling myself …. “Tesagerax, Salv”
Hold on, but what if there is a further illogical twist to all this ? What if they have in mind of adding fictitious names to that list ? Each name/vote would ‘only’ cost the government 25k+ euros. There is nothing to stop them from grouping these extra votes in bunches of extra large families.
Should we just ‘trust’ Joseph Muscat – like Marlene Farrugia did – that our Prime Minister was never thinking along those lines from day one?
My thoughts exactly.
One of the most fundamental rights that citizenship confers on the citizen is the right to vote. Rules regarding the right to vote (for example South Africans can vote regardless of how long they have resided abroad I believe) vary by country.
At the moment Malta does not allow overseas voters — or at least restrictions apply — and I am not sure how easy it would be to change that.
However, they could introduce voting at embassies, who knows. Frankly, I can’t be bothered checking. However, just to reiterate my point, the right to vote and the right to parliamentary representation is intrinsically linked to citizenship.
And still many people refuse to see while Privitera continues to defend the indefensible. I used to find his comments amusing but now I just feel exasperation when I read his arguments. How can you make such people see sense?
More specifically, it was Henley and Partners’ CEO Eric Major who made that announcement.
The correct term is “firewall”. China’s INTERNET firewall is known as The Great Wall of China, for obvious reasons.
There is no such thing as a Chinese Wall, though there are Chinese whispers and Freudian slips, which, in this undemocratic country, is the only way to find out what’s happening.
Eric Major is involved in IIP Malta Limited’s, which means he has direct access to its data and operations.
So much for Henley and Partners’ separation of operations.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20131103/local/Firm-vows-measures-to-avoid-any-conflicts.493010#.Un1EFLK9KSM
“There is a Chinese Wall between both entities which in fact will operate in different office premises,” he told The Sunday Times of Malta.
Although, like you, I’m disgusted with all the passport/citizenship saga, Chinese walls is actually a term used in the business world.
It seems that the memorandum of understanding signed by the Labour government with China in September 2013 apparently about Enemalta contains some important conditions and deadlines about Maltese passports.
Those first passports to the Chinese are being issued after putting the Maltese government under duress, and that’s a good reason for their revocation under Chapter 188.
Who says it was in the September 2013 Memorandum of Understanding?
Oh, I am pretty sure that the 2010 Memorandum of Understanding already contained the agreement about the sale of citizenship to the Chinese.
But I also believe that the delivery by the Chinese on the September 2013 MOU must be based on the delivery by the Labour government of its part of the deal about the passports.
So was his calculation of netting 30 million in 2014.
We knew the fink was dangerous and as time goes by and the vise gets tighter he is apt to act even more irrationally and soon we will start wishing that he was just as or a bit less evil than Mintoff and KMB. The two will look like benign twerps by the time Joseph gets through this mandate.
And now for the obvious question: why on earth would 60 Chinese families wish to get Maltese citizenship?
[Daphne – You are starting off from the wrong premiss. The correct one is: why would the Chinese dictatorship require EU passports for 60 Chinese individuals. China is not a democracy.]
I think that the Opposition should start a campaign for an abrogative referendum so that this takes place at the same time as the elections for the European Parliament next year. I know that this is risky because some people just do not see the threat to national sovereignty. This is an issue that should gather a Movement around it. We are risking our choice of Government being decided by people who have no knowledge or affinity with this country.
I think that the last sentence has already happened.
What can we do? Tell us, Daphne. Because I’m in the pits of helpless desperation. Surely there is something that we can do.
It has been said here and elsewhere: what we can do is to force a referendum to abrogate the law. If this happens the Opposition would then insist that passports already issued are withdrawn.
The debate whether citizenship can be revoked or not is a bit of a red herring. Passports can certainly be withdrawn and without a passport, Maltese citizenship becomes useless.
I feel very much like I should do something but then I have memories of the 1980s when the PN and its followers, including my father who took me along, took to the streets in mass rallies chanting ‘xoghol, gustizja, liberta’. Like many others, I was raised to speak up and fight for my rights together with like minded individuals.
And that is where I realise, that it is not up to me to do anything. I have voted for the Nationalist Party in the last election and in doing so, have entrusted them with a duty to safeguard Nationalist belief. It is therefore their duty to rally the people and if they do, I will come, even though I have not been to a single meeting since the 1998 elections.
A mass meeting and a quick campaign aimed at collecting votes in an attempt to call for a referendum is the only thing that can be done. It will surely be much better use of the Nationalist resources who seem bent on yelling blue murder but doing nothing more.
If the Nationalist Party will not step up to the plate, then perhaps it is high time that they move out of the way and make place for a new breed of politicians who are ready to stand up and fight for Malta. I will gladly follow them.
I will also not, I repeat, not vote for a party or politician who does a Neville Chamberlain on the Maltese population by appeasing the Labour government.
Keep on dreaming, Osservatore. The PN is broken right now. They haven’t finished picking up the pieces yet, let alone putting them back together.
Nothing can be done, Baxxter. The citizenship battle cannot be won at the moment.
But timing is everything in a war. And make no mistake – politics is war, and this war is not yet lost. These are just small skirmishes.
Labour think they can do whatever they want because they won with a landslide – and they are right. There is nothing that can stop them at this early stage, but what has been emerging, thanks to Daphne, is that, even in their moment of victory, their hands are tied.
They have so many commitments and promises to honour that they cannot help tying themselves up in knots the further they go with the legislature.
Daphne is doing the best thing that can be done right now. Hound them incessantly. At the slightest misstep they find Daphne putting it all out for posterity – and for reference in another four years.
Why do so many people think through their nether regions? “Lead and I shall follow” is not a battle-cry. It is a whinge.
If you want the law to be abrogated, start up a petition. The PN won’t do that for you, nor should it.
I dare not identify the only remaining course of action, because it is too terrible to contemplate But that is the only choice left to us.
La Redoute, the US marines have a saying – Lead, follow or get out of the way. For those of us that do not have the time to lead, or perhaps the drive to lead single handed, then the next best thing is to follow.
Bur let’s assume that as a private individual, with the support of a few trusted others, I was to start a petition to collect sufficient votes to force a referendum? Who is going to support such an initiative from a person who is a political nobody? Now if the PN had to start said petition, they would manage it within a week or two.
Yes La Redoute, it is a whinge. I would rather be shaking my fist in the street in front of Castille showing that this proposal angers and upsets me. But instead I have voted for a party that has chosen a leader who frankly, does not have what it takes to mobilise the sizeable part of the electorate that still supports the PN and who are surely, mostly against this scheme.
So what now…do we have to do the PNs job too? I like many others had once sworn to keep out of politics. Do I need to dirty my hands?
(Pls excuse typos…typed on mobile!!)
The revelation by Henley & Partners that the applicants are Chinese explains why Muscat & Mallia do not want to publish their names. They do not wish to tell the Maltese public who is taking over.
No wonder that Mintoffianomics Professor Sigg Luna will be working to strengthen the Renminbi on international markets.
And Konrad Mizzi is selling Enemalta to China.
Wouldn’t that ” donation ” to Enemalta’s coffers by the Chinese cover the cost of a lot of passports?
Another riddle from Malta’s prime ponce to unravel?
60 families waiting for passports = at least 40million euros.
In budget estimate for next year is 30 million euros.
This does not add up.
http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2010/04/bow-and-scrape/
http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2010/04/arani-ma-l-avventuri-ta-joseph-fic-cina/
http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2010/04/blast-from-the-past-joseph-muscat-goes-to-china-with-ast/
http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2013/01/china-here-it-is-somehow-we-all-missed-it-and-let-it-go/
Dear Daphne,
I am not too sure whether this pertinent point was raised earlier.
Your assessment that the purchase of citizenships will reach thousands is spot on. It is also a fact that acquiring citizenship automatically gives the individual the right to vote in all elections held in that country of which he or she are citizens of.
[Daphne – No, it does not. You need to be registered in Malta. Your vote is actually tied to your identity card (non-alien) and not to your passport.]
Hence does this mean that four years down the line the Labour Party would have an added advantage of say, a few thousands votes, over the Nationalist Party by virtue of this dodgy scheme?
One final observation; who of those acquiring citizenship would want the Nationalist Party in Government?
Labour propagandists said that the Sale of the Maltese Passports Scam is ideal for rich, successful and talented foreigners who are living under threat from their own government in their own country. It gives them the opportunity to seek safety in Malta.
So are they now going to tell us that there are 60 Chinese families threatened by the Chinese government who are seeking refuge in Malta, China’s best friend in the democratic world, and that the Maltese government will gladly protect them here in Malta?
Can this law be challenged in the Constitutional Court? I would contend that there may be a rights issue, in that our Maltese citizenship is being devalued and cheapened by this commercialisation. Surely somebody cleverer than I am can build a case?
If it is Chinese officials that Muscat is trying to please with this scheme than rest assured that there is Shiv Nair’s hand in this.
And alongside that of Shiv Nair, the hand of both his local and foreign partners. The local ones who are aiding and abetting, the foreign ones who are steering.
The NP is not simply fighting another Malta party, it is fighting a battle that is far bigger. This is like pitting David against Goliath.
The stakes have gotten out of hand.
Sixty families, not 60 individuals – that’s quite a lot of people already.
The Nationalist opposition is against the IIP law which basically is secret passport sales.
Do all MPs on the government benches know the details of the government’s contract with Henley & Partners? If not, why are they taking it on trust and voting for it all the same?
And if they do know the details, why have these MPs been made privy to them, while other MPs, on the other side of the House, have not? MPs are the representatives of their constituents. All constituents have a right to know.
Can some journalist do us a favour and stick a microphone and aim a camera at all the MPs on the government benches who will vote in favour of this fishy law?
The MEP candidates should also face some questions about this. I am particularly keen to know what Cyrus Engerer thinks.
Well said.
Muscat isn’t the type who’ll take decisions to dent his popularity.
Sticking to the scheme with these horrible conditions isn’t like him at all. In a way, the comparison with Dom makes sense in that Mintoff wouldn’t have risked being seen doing it.
Finally, refusing to appear in parliament and explain betrays a degree of pressure. He knows it’s wrong, and there’s nothing he can do.
Perhaps he can refer where the free study for the Gozo bridge is instead.