How to get people on side: give them a cut of the takings

Some weeks ago, a journalist from The New York Times rang and asked whether I would speak to her – she would be in Malta the following week to work on a piece about the way Malta is selling European Union citizenship.

When she got here and had done the rounds, she rang again to say that she couldn’t find anybody who is against the sale of citizenship.

All the lawyers, accountants and real estate agents she spoke to are very keen on it, she said, and she was surprised to find that so are members of the Opposition.

To which my response was: “Well, they would be, wouldn’t they? They’re all keen on it because they’re all making money off it, or trying to make money off it, and so when you ask them about it, that’s all they see. They’re not going to be discussing the principles of the thing, or what it means for Malta in the big picture. When the government first made its plans known, they were all against it. As soon as the government brought them on board, gave them a cut and had them share with Henley, they changed their minds and were all for it. So it wasn’t the principle of the thing that bothered them; it was the fact that Henley was going to get all the money. Either that, or money changed the way they looked at the principle of the thing.”

As for the members of the Opposition, I pointed out, they are primarily lawyers and accountants and quite obviously their day-jobs come first here. They’re hardly likely to fight against the sale of citizenship or argue about how wrong it is when their offices are making money off it.

It doesn’t help, either, when people coming in from the outside don’t know how Maltese people are connected. The New York Times journalist wouldn’t have known that the Hyzler immigration sales office she quotes so extensively in its enthusiasm for selling passports to Chinese millionaires belongs to the brother-in-law of Mario de Marco, the Opposition MP who she quotes as being vocally against the plans when they were first made known – but who is silent about the issue now.

Of course, what this sordid story illustrates most strongly is just how weak Maltese democracy is and how disenfranchised Maltese people believe themselves to be in between a five-yearly vote in general elections.

The journalist from The New York Times could not understand how the sale of citizenship was introduced without a popular vote or popular consent – we were talking a major culture clash here. Can you envisage a scenario in which Obama woke up one morning and said that the United States is going to start selling American passports and then went ahead and did it?

Would it happen in Britain or France? No, because in the strongest democracies in the world that kind of thing is impossible.

The fact that it happened in Malta highlights the weakness of Maltese democracy and how easily it can be undermined by money when the right people are bought off with a piece of the action.