Simon Busuttil: “The Opposition will not budge on the principle that citizenship is not for sale.”
On Times Of Malta this afternoon:
Although the Opposition is willing to come to a consensus with the government on the citizenship scheme, it was not willing to budge on the principle that citizenship was not for sale, Opposition leader Simon Busuttil said.
Speaking during a dialogue meeting in Nadur this morning, Dr Busuttil said the Nationalist Party had been against the sale of citizenship from the very beginning and wanted this to be transformed into an investment scheme. But its appeal for a consensus was ignored and bulldozed upon and the government passed the law from Parliament through its nine-seat majority.
Dr Busuttil said that responsibility for the damage already done to the country by the scheme had to be shouldered and asked who was to shoulder this responsibility.
The government, he noted, blamed the Opposition for reports against the scheme proposed by Malta in the foreign media.
But did anyone really believe that the Opposition was capable of controlling the world media, he asked.
(…)
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http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20131124/local/citizenship-opposition-willing-to-reach-consensus-will-not-budge-on-principle-it-is-not-for-sale.496056#.UpIyvCcueV4
Simon Busuttil has a golden opportunity to lead the way and show the prime minister how to be a statesman.
As things stand, the PN is on the right side of history, while Joseph Muscat is once again on the wrong side of history, like he was when he wanted at all costs to keep Malta out of the European Union.
Therefore, the PN must at this point have a clear plan of what is best for Malta, make it public and seek public acceptance, explain it clearly, and then put pressure on the Labour government to implement that plan.
We want to see Simon Busuttil the statesman versus the Joseph Muscat the salesman.
Simon Busuttil has an excellent incisive intellect, he is highly articulate in Maltese, English and Italian, and above all he is a good person.
Joseph Muscat is not articulate in any language including his mother tongue and has, at best, a slightly above average brain which he has trained to learn a few tricks with which he will bore and upset people.
He has no morality and is patently amoral. The truth means nothing to him. Other people, all other people, mean nothing to him. He is a bad person.
It is not good enough in just being the good person – it is imperative that the good person wins the battle – now.
[Daphne – Joseph Muscat is articulate in no language, including his mother tongue. His vocabulary is extremely limited, his sentence construction poor and his word-flow is catastrophic. I don’t think he has evolved much beyond the level of articulacy in his original home environment, but he should have because he had all the advantages.]
Agreed Daphne,
the difference between a teleprompter or Musumeci’s rehearsed Q&A’s, and the current vacuum is notable.
It’s just not the same individual. Or better, there wasn’t an individual in the first place.
It may sound strange but Muscat’s limits could very well provoke renewed interest in politics, Maltese mostly partial to pity.
I mean, lately I’m finding myself curious to see which foot he’ll put into it next.
While Labour’s champions bleat on about akampanja orkestrata biex thammeg lil Malta, Minister Manwel Mallia plods on proving the point with his stentorian threats of raising taxes to make up for the shortfall if passports aren’t sold.
It is useless for Minister Mallia, and the Labour government, to seek to threaten the Maltese electorate that the choice that it faces lies between the sale of citizenship or higher taxes.
What Labour promised before the elections was economic growth. Economic growth comes from investment, work, increased productivity, exports, development of new economic sectors, savings, and then investment etc. all over again.
So it is Labour which faces a difficult choice. They either give us economic growth without an increase in the tax burden, or else they will be shown the door.
Joseph Muscat and Labour think that they can make easy money while they keep their bums warm and comfortable on the seats of power.
What they should do instead is roll up those sleeves and get down to work to attract honest, real and productive investment into Malta.
Yesterday on Iswed fuq l-Abjad, (Black on White), a Net TV journalistic program, Owen Bonnici, Parliamentary Secretary for Justice, who has been at the forefront in defending the Citizenship for Sale scheme, said that it was important that the Individual Investment Program be based on an up-front donation to the government. He said that the government decided against offering citizenship to persons making investments in economic activities because those investments remained the property of the investors, and they could take them back by selling or liquidating their investments. So the government – because it is “wajs” – decided to take an up front sum, which the government will then invest it in the economy.
Pathetic. Absolute communism. Did they say that “Labour is safe for business”?
The scheme is sheer deceit and betrayal of the principles of work and personal freedoms including that to do business, which underlie the Maltese Constitution. It is Joseph Muscat’s Labour which is breach of the Constitution when it sells Maltese passports in betrayal of work and freedom to do business, and not the PN when they pledge that they will withdraw those passports sold by Labour.
How can one believe what Owen Bonnici says, or take him seriously? During the last electoral campaign Owen said that the future Labour government will use 20% capacity of the interconnector because Malta’s independence in the energy sector would be threatened by Italy!
Owen said he was against censorship , but when asked to read aloud “Min ikisser ihallas” on the court’s steps he budged.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XG0RIYo4rA
Sorry to disagree. Owen Bonnici was not pathetic, he was deceitful. Qisu bir-raggiera, but then he talked in such a way as to confuse minds, especially those rabid Laburisti who keep on repeating what their masters say.
Did he actually say that? Masks coming off finally, then they’ll wonder why investment doesn’t materialise.
Hi there
I saw you posted a copy of the Individual Investor Programme regulations back in October. Do you know if they have been published yet? I’ve had no luck locating them on any of the government pages.
Any help would be much appreciated!
Re LNG
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ae32d7b6-51ff-11e3-8c42-00144feabdc0.html
Minister Mallia’s blackmailing threats that the people will have to choose between the sale of passports or more taxes is yet another example of the PL’s contempt for the people who elected them. Hu go fik ja poplu.
Worth reading what Beppe Fenech Adami said on the programme “Iswed fuq l-Abjad” and as reported by maltarightnow.com “Il-passaport Malti mhux ghall-bejgh”:
http://www.maltarightnow.com/?module=news&at=Il-passaport+Malti+m%27%27huwiex+g%26%23295%3Ball-bejg%26%23295%3B&t=a&aid=99852415&cid=19
The Nationalist Party must keep the pressure on Joseph Muscat
This is simple common sense. The very essence of citizenship denotes some nexus or link between the individual and the state of which he is a citizen, giving rise to allegiance towards that state.
Why it ever had to be turned into a battle of principle boggles the imagination. Whatever happened to Labour’s Malta l-ewwel u qabel kollox ? Far from socialism this is the greediest form of capitalism and exploitation.
Has the Financial Times UK issued anything on the sale of passports?
Muscat’s belief in freedom of speech explanied in one sentence:
Dr Busuttil has to shoulder responsibility for attacking the country publically on international TV stations, the PL said.
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2013-11-24/news/damage-has-been-done-pn-leader-says-on-citizenship-scheme-3281223681/
The same warped mindset as the hunters who shoot eagles and blame Birdlife when the press cover the news.
Forget Muscat, miskin. He’s made a big mistake. He actually became PM, and now he doesn’t really know what to do next.
He didn’t expect so many people to dislike him so suddenly, or have the international press attack his dumbass ideas.
The government knows that increased investment and economic growth is very unlikely during its term of office.
It knows this from past history.
Investors do not trust an MLP government.
They are very wary. And rightly so.
Nobody with a sane mind risks his hard-earned millions in a country run by pimps, fraudsters and imbeciles.
This is exactly why the government has to resort to such obscene and abhorrent devices such as selling citizenship secretly and cheaply.
There is no other way.
It is a question of do or die.
God help us.
Yesterday on L-Iswed Fuq L-Abjad on NET, Owen Bonnici said that 650,000 euros is 1,500 euros for every Maltese citizen.
Does anyone in government know how to do a simple sum because it only amounts to Eur1.50.
Oh, I noticed that as well. It was probably a calculation given to him by Manwel Mallia.
He also said that Citizenship for Sale is the next big thing for Malta, on the same level with the financial services centre. Shoot me now.
Actually, the net sum is zero because there are no plans for direct distribution – not to non-government people, at any rate.
The Times’ opening line should have read:
“Although the Opposition is willing to come to a consensus with the government on the citizenship scheme, it *IS* not willing to budge on the principle that citizenship *IS* not for sale, Opposition leader Simon Busuttil said.”
Am I the only one annoyed at, “it was not willing to budge”?
Yes, reported speech typically shifts a tense back, but an exception is usually made when the original statement was about something that is still true. In any case, the mix of tenses here, after the first “is willing”, only creates ambiguity about the possibility that the Opposition was not willing to budge in the past but might be willing to do so now.
I would be wondering if the confusion was deliberate if The Times had reporters who could write half decently.
Yes, and that’s because Times of Malta cannot portray Muscat as being a follower.
They have to come up with some alibi, put last week’s mess in the past.
Maltatoday on the other hand, results totally schizophrenic, they say they hate the scheme, but will blame the PN, make that Tonio Fenech and his ‘praise’ for Henley and Partners.
What both won’t do is outline the Opposition’s position clearly. Disgraceful to say the least.
Whatever it is, the English speaking press, except the Independent, is at a loss how to proceed, reacting to this blog or, utterly pathetic, their polls’ response.
It is Sunday night leading on to Monday morning and the start of yet another bloody working week, so I will ask you to indulge me while I spread a giant wet blanket over everything.
The Opposition’s protestations will achieve nothing. Labour won with a solid, unassailable majority, and they will govern for the next five years as they please. They care nothing for you, me, or anyone else. They are in this for themselves. And they will make lots of money on our backs.
We need a new understanding, a new post-democratic paradigm to help us live regardless of the whims of our evil politicians. So here it is: you make your own luck. There is no one to help you. Nobody loves you.
The Maltese internalise their relationship with politicians as if we were all still living in the 1950s, when the future was bright and our elected representatives strove to better our lives. All lies. The future is dark. Our children will curse us for bringing them into this world and ashes will fall out of the sky or whatever it is that the Hopi prophecy says. This is the Apocalypse without a rapture at the end.
I am telling you to ignore your politicians. Yes, ignore them. They thrive on your attention. They need you. You do not need them. So ignore them. Forget them. Stop buying the papers (they talk only of politics). Stop watching Maltese TV (nothing but politics) and stop looking at billboards. Only when we become as fish in the wotsit, as wotsits in the wind, will we be truly free.
It will soon be Christmas, that most depressing time of year. By all means be nice to each other. Be nice to your children, your parents, siblings and to your friends, if you have any. But stop expecting good things. Good things will not happen. Survive as best you can.
This isn’t a novel this time.
You’re rivalling Blanchot now. Indeed, it may be ideal; but let me wrap you in a colder and wetter blanket: it’s a perpetual Stockholm Syndrome with them politicians.
What a dire thing to unleash upon us at bedtime, Baxxter.
Elsewhere I suggested Simon Busuttil, who it seems will sit on the citizenship scheme board, ought to personally warn beforehand each and every person who is buying a passport of his party’s intention to revoke it when they are in power.
Do you think that might stunt Muscat’s scheme somewhat? Or is the PN’s entire position that it will revoke passports likely to backfire horribly and result in an even greater foreign financial backing for Labour come next election?
We prefer your fairy-tales pal. Have a valerian and wet your quill.
Don’t expect good things from bad government, but don’t let bad government get away without a fight.
Indeed.
Unfortunately, the kind of fight Malta needs is one that has so far all but eluded us. The fight against bad government is not even a fight against politicians. It is a fight against the demon Ignorance, that gives rise to an almost complete absence of critical thinking skills among many in the Demos, the people at large.
It is a fight that has left the Beasts, the Dinosaurs, with not even a scratch but, on the contrary, more powerful than ever, even after 25 years of heavy onslaught in the form of better education and an unprecedented and previously unimaginable broadening of horizons and opportunities.
Twenty years of unlimited supply lines at our disposal — all the information we could ever want, accessible through the Internet — have served for little because we have not used them wisely enough. Worse, those same supplies were sabotaged and used to defeat reason.
There can be no democracy in Malta when the Beasts, the Dinosaurs, can so easily seize the Kratos from the Demos like candy from babies, with the simplest of subterfuges and sleight of hand.
What we have is only an illusion of democracy, and until we fully recognise that even the whole war we think we are fighting is an illusion, we will be waving our swords at ghosts.
Unscrupulous politicians will summon and feed Ignorance and use it to stay in power.
Ignorance is not a crime when you are ignorant of your ignorance. It is a disease, and these people need our help and our compassion, even as they turn and attack us. Without that, there will be no salvation for our dear Maltese brothers and sisters, part of the Demos.
Let us exorcise the Demon from their souls, not by hacking at their throats, but by patiently explaining and teaching them the thinking and analysis skills they need to safeguard the Kratos and delegate it with wisdom.
Take heart, brothers and sisters, we don’t even have to save them all before the Dinosaurs eventually starve to death and go extinct, and a new breed of politicians evolves to fill the void.
Thank heavens for the morning. The morning has brought hope.
This is not just about Malta. The 20th century was the century of ideologies. The 21st century will be the century of political agnosticism.
Have you heard of “the cold indifference of nature”? This is the cold indifference of politics.
Man stands alone. Mankind no longer exists. Nor does the common good.
Have faith, the rise of ideology depended mainly on the previous industrial revolution, creating a new breed of leaders, yeomen and visionaries.
This one, and it is in its gestation, it will be the democratisation of production, rendering each and every one of us unique value producers.
Mass production, last bastion of both capitalism and its inverse, as we know it and in all its implications and unbalances, is being eroded. Technology can, and will, fragment capital and reject the production line.
The production of energy itself being a first, take it up a notch and imagine the pre-raphaelites’ vision made digital.
We haven’t even started tapping into the potential of computers, the internet and their influence on the meaning of trade, goods and money as a certificate of value.
http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/13/obama-talks-3-d-printing-calls-on-congress-create-network-of-innovation-hubs/
Fancy the factory as a lending library somewhere close. Imagine open source goods and what happens to branding.
You sound like Peter Serracino Inglott, who for forty years fantasised about a technology-driven milk and honey utopia of kind, happy, fulfilled cottage-dwellers.
I am going to ask this again: Since this scheme is what holds all of Muscat’s promises and policies together, and is also extremely controversial and requires the Maltese to view themselves and their country in a completely different light, and since this scheme has had and will continue to have such embarrassing coverage all over the world, shouldn’t Muscat step down and call another election?
I mean, it’s like the PN saying nothing about the EU 20-15 years ago, and then getting voted in and then telling us they want us to be part of the EU. It just doesn’t make sense.
When asked how one is planning on funding everything you can’t just give us the typical Mintoff reply of “Wouldn’t you like to know” and then spring this on us when we have no choice.
We should have been told all this. This is deceitful and down right wrong.
Not telling us something like this, like we wouldn’t have anything to say about it. Who does this man think he is?
The PN government applied for EU membership in 1990.
Yes,but we were well aware of the issue once they were going through with it, is what I am saying.
I just feel that this is too big an issue to have been left out of the campaign.
Perhaps as part of the consensus dealing, the PN can ask for the calling of fresh elections. Let this scheme be the platform on which Joseph Muscat seeks reelection.
But that’s it really, he can’t both govern and seek re-election, he said so himself.
Decisions tend to be hard for someone who never made a clear choice.
Remember how he intervened when Marsaxlokk was torn apart, saying he’ll consider the pipeline or when he announced the free vote even though Labour as a party was for divorce.
He just won’t make a step forward, unless his calculations correspond. He’ll bring government to a halt, just like Italy’s obsession with concertazione, literally decisions involving every player like an orchestra, which song sheet is never agreed upon.
I agree totally. Muscat won the elections in an extremely deceitful manner. The voters knew nothing about this scheme except perhaps for some of the MLP contenders and if so more shame on them.
Muscat is in deep hole now. He made a dangerous deal with the people who funded his campaign and now he must deliver or else he is finished. He can’t back down now.
Since a referendum is Muscat’s last card to play, Simon Busuttil must make it unequivocally clear today that the PN doesn’t have the money to fund a referendum campaign, so whatever the outcome will be the PN will never accept an immoral law. Busuttil must never give in. He has to keep exerting maximum pressure to have this humiliating law defeated.
Muscat damaged the good reputation of our country. He is not up to the job of Prime Minister.
If the prime minister decides to go for a referendum, he will expose himself to attacks from Simon Busuttil and the PN as to who is funding Muscat’s referendum campaign. It cannot be anyone else other than the same entity or entities who want to lay their hands on the Maltese passport.
Muscat is making a mistake to think that a referendum campaign will be easy for him. He was campaigning 8 months ago, but see what he has done after the vote. He turned all his promises upside down.
Labour is the perfect campaigning machine. That’s why it’s a complete shambles when it has to go from that to governing. A referendum would play straight into their hands.