The result of the negotiations is that Muscat got more than he wanted in the first place. And the situation is worse than it was, not better.
People tend to hear what they want to hear and not what is actually said. And with this government that is an exercise in stupidity because, most of the time, the prime minister’s real intentions and those of his main men are right there in what they say. You just have to listen, and most people – including journalists, rival politicians and foreign diplomats – don’t bother.
Instead, they take what is said at face value, which you can do most of the time in European politics but these are not European politicians we are dealing with here. This is a different mentality. It is the mentality that used to be described in a pre-political-correctness age as ‘oriental’, in which the aim is to press on regardless with your own narrow interests while making the noises that your real or perceived opponents wish to hear from you, all the while scheming to outwit them and get what you want regardless of the general or long-term consequences.
Those who seek to assess or interpret Malta’s government by European standards of behaviour are going to fail repeatedly and end up caught again and again in Muscat’s trap or wrong-footed by him. To understand his government’s modus operandi, the modus operandi of the political party from which it springs, you have to think ‘oriental’, a wide definition which includes also certain aspects of North African culture. This is just a statement of fact about ways of seeing and doing, and nothing more should be read into it. The reason that Europeans and Americans find it so difficult to do business in North Africa, the Middle East and much of Asia is because of this: the rules are different. I am going to make no value judgement on which sets of rules are better; the point is that they are different. Our present government springs from a culture in which all cards are never on the table, in which more store is set by outwitting those on the other side of the negotiating table, who are perceived as opponents, than by achieving an equitable outcome in the interest of all involved.
Outwitting opponents becomes an end in itself, but outwitting opponents and getting something from them when their aim was to take something away from you is the ultimate objective. This is exactly what has happened in our government’s negotiations with the European Commission: the Commission set out to shore up its position and safeguard Europe’s interests, and instead shored up Muscat’s position and gave him free licence to sell as many passports as he pleases. Why? Because they didn’t understand they were not negotiating with Europeans, but with outliers who think of Europe as the opponent.
The European mindset, unless it is criminal (which is wholly different), is not interested in outwitting opponents and does not get off on it. Negotiations are straight. Discussions aim at consensus. Cards are on the table and if they are not, this is taken to be bad faith and so, a Bad Thing Indeed. Europeans enter negotiations on trust and not on the understanding that the other party is out to pull a fast one on them and so they must always be on hyper-alert.
Unfortunately, there are swathes of southern Europe in which it is the ‘oriental’ and not the European mindset which prevails. Malta, with its two cultures, its two ‘Maltas’, is part of that. The difference between the Nationalist Party and the Labour Party under Muscat is the difference between these two cultures in the same society: the European and the ‘oriental’. Muscat demonstrates repeatedly that the biggest kick he gets is by tricking people into doing what he wants and getting his own way, rather than pulling the communal rope.
It’s a mentality we see all the time in Malta: from shopkeepers and the pre-Arriva bus-drivers who openly cheated tourists out of small change and expected approval from fellow Maltese for being so smart, to outsmarting authority figures just for the hell of it while getting your own way, to scamming or manipulating your way into a government contract you don’t deserve.
Once you get into their mind and their way of doing things (if you are not already that sort of person yourself, that is) it is extremely easy to work out the way the Labour leader/prime minister and his key people think, speak and operate, and therefore to stay one step ahead instead of forever 10 steps behind.
These are not clever people. They are cunning people, which is different. Clever people work within certain generally acknowledged parameters of behaviour. But the aim of cunning people is to outwit those who stand in the way of getting what they want, using all legal means possible even if they are unsavoury and the methods and objectives are undesirable.
If you get into that mindset, it then becomes transparently obvious what will happen next, and predicting their course of action in whatever sphere becomes an exercise in insight into low cunning. Know that nothing is done without a plan. I have heard it said by many over the last few days that the government doesn’t know what it is doing. Wrong. It knows exactly what it is doing. That what it is doing is wrong is another, separate issue.
Both the EU Commission and even the Opposition are making the catastrophic mistake of treating the Labour government as normal Europeans who approach matters in good faith. We heard the term ‘good faith’ repeated by both the EU Commissioner and the prime minister yesterday. It would not normally be necessary to point it out. We have never, in fact, heard reassurances about bad or good faith in similar circumstances involving Malta and the European Commission. They spoke about it because it was on their minds, because there was doubt.
When the prime minister said that the aim of his government’s talks with the European Commission was to persuade them not to interfere, he meant it. And that is exactly what he did. He chucked them a sop of a one-year residency, which means nothing because it is exactly what we had before, the European Commission used this as an escape clause from the hassles of a full-blown law suit or infringement proceedings, and Muscat got exactly what he wanted – the scheme he already had – with the major bonus of EU Commission ‘approval’. And over and above that, he has used his concession to the EU Commission, which is no concession at all, to raise or remove the restrictions on the number of passports he will sell. It is no longer going to be 1,800 families. It is going to be more. So he has kept the scheme he already had, got the European Commission off his back, and over and above that, has used all this as justification to sell even more passports than he told us he would sell.
Far from the negotiations with the European Commission having reached a satisfactory conclusion, the situation is worse than it was before, more dangerous, and the stage is set for slow-burning disaster. The money Malta stands to bring in is going to be as nothing when set off against the damage to the country’s credibility, the weakening of its structures, and the potential for corruption and abuse that is built into the system. Everybody involved may be squeaky-clean now, but somewhere along the line, somebody is going to fall victim to the temptation of a few stray millions and some more passports. There are no checks and balances because too much power is concentrated in the hands of a private company that is answerable to no one except its client, the government of Malta.
Those who say that the citizenship scheme is now a good one because it is tied to residency have lost their minds or were never bright to start with. Or they are spectacularly naive. The government was never going to agree to tie the sale of passports to residency and in fact, it has not. The prime minister said, loud and clear in his press conference yesterday evening, that a one-year residency does not mean the person has to live in Malta for one year, though “it does not mean that he won’t come to Malta at all”. He also issued a warning salvo to the European Commission: “The European Commission agrees that residency is a matter of national competency,” he said. In other words, we define residency, and ruddy well stay out of it if we decide that a person who is resident in Malta for a year need only spend a day on the island.
The prime minister said that the passport applicant’s residence status will begin as soon as he rents a flat or buys one in Malta, whereupon his Maltese ID card will be issued. He can fly right out again and never return to that flat and after a year, exchange his Maltese ID card for a Maltese passport and citizenship.
Exactly how is this different to the situation before negotiations with the European Commission? It isn’t. But most people don’t bother listening. All they do is hear the noise and join in.
The situation is worse than it was before, not better. Only a fool can’t (or won’t) see that.