What a sad joke this sale of citizenship is turning out to be. As though it wasn’t obvious from the start, when the prime minister gave his press conference announcing that he had conceded to a year of residency for passport applicants but that those applicants “would not actually have to live in Malta for a year though this doesn’t mean they needn’t come here at all”, we now have confirmation that the government has little or no intention of checking up to see how much time is spent in Malta. In other words, it’s not going to give passport applicants any more hassle than they would have had without the year’s residency requirement. They can rent their flat for Eur18,000 a year and buzz off until it’s time to return, take their oath of allegiance and collect their precious European passport courtesy of the nice and easy government of Malta.
Desperate to lend some authority to all of this as the criticism becomes more, not less, scathing and the promise of a billion euros (just a quarter of what the government spends every year) is not enough to silence all but the most idiotic, shortsighted and gullible, the government has taken to wheeling out the Attorney-General for its citizenship-sale press conferences, which makes a change from that sarcastic Henley & Partners man Chris Kalin and his ‘I’ll teach you natives how to run your country’ attitude.
The Attorney-General sat like a silent stone next to Justice Parliamentary Secretary Owen Bonnici when the Ford Escort Mark III legal notice was published the day before yesterday. “It is now time to move on,” Bonnici told the assembled journalists, as though it is any of his business what the electorate and the media wish to talk about and consider important enough to discuss. This government seems to think that it sets the agenda for the rest of us, and that it is for the government to tell the public to move on, rather than the other way round. “This is the final chapter and we now need to start making this programme work for the benefit of all Maltese,” Bonnici said. What an unfortunate choice of words – the legal notice is far from being the last chapter. It is, to quote a famous Hallmark poster from the 1970s, the first day of the rest of the sale-of-citizenship’s life. This is where it all really begins, as we examine the sort of people applying for passports, the due diligence process, the lack of scrutiny of time actually spent in Malta, whether names are going to be published as they are supposed to be, where the money is going, what’s going to be done with that supposed fund “administered like the Central Bank” (what a farcical and inappropriate comparison that is) and the addition of these new Maltese citizens’ names to the electoral roll. The sale of citizenship is going to keep the press busy for yonks, and when the first scandal breaks – as it inevitably will – (“Gaddafi’s dungeon torturer flies into United States on Maltese passport”), it will keep the international press busy too.
Owen Bonnici refused to tell the journalists he had called to that press conference what proof of residence the government will be requiring from passport applicants (and bear in mind that they will get their Maltese identity card as soon as they rent their flat here, and not after they have lived here for a year). He was pressed repeatedly for a clear answer and refused to give one – either because he doesn’t know or, and this is more likely, because the government has no intention of pressing them at all. Instead, he rather stupidly directed those journalists to the pre-existing Maltese Citizenship Act, the law we have had for years which defines the parameters on which citizenship may be granted (nothing to do with this government’s sale-of-citizenship law). He said that the Maltese Citizenship Act carries a definition of residence for the purpose of obtaining citizenship. Indeed it does, and it is rather onerous, certainly not 183 days for which you are not pressed as to proof of residence.
The relevant bit of the law says: “an alien or a stateless person” may be made a citizen of Malta if he gives satisfactory proof that he has “resided in Malta throughout the period of 12 months immediately preceding the date of application” and “that during the six years immediately preceding the said period of 12 months, he has resided in Malta for periods amounting in the aggregate to not less than four years.”
Oh dear. That doesn’t sound at all like 183 days with no hassles about proof, does it?
As our Chinese friends say, may you live in interesting times is a curse, not a blessing.