Presented with a near golden opportunity to re-introduce the once hotly contested secrecy clause to its citizenship-for-cash programme, the government this week instead chose to stick to the moral high ground.

When the programme had been first pitched back at the end of 2013, one of the main bones of contention had been the government’s insistence on not publishing the names of those who had purchased their citizenships.

In so many ways, the notion ran against the grain of the very concept of citizenship of a country, to forming part of one’s adoptive community. No amount of money was enough, many had argued, to offset the fact that Malta will have incognito citizens, whose status as actual citizens of this country is known to none but a very select few.

It was also against the spirit of the decades-old practice of periodically publishing the names of those who are granted citizenship.  At the time the government was proposing two lists of new citizens: one list, which would be published, of all those who over the last year were granted Maltese citizenship through normal channels – i.e. through marriage, descent etc… - and another list of those who purchased Maltese citizenship, which would not be published.

But the opposition, Brussels and even some of the programme’s staunchest supporters viewed the prospect that the names of those people becoming citizens through the Individual Investment Programme would remain forever shrouded in secrecy as wrong on so many levels that the government backtracked and pledged the publication of the names.

And it did so despite the fact that the secrecy clause was one of the programme’s leading marketing enticements.  True, the names are being published - but with a difference. Before the citizenship programme began yielding its first new citizens, the government had always published the list of new citizens alphabetically by surname.  The last time around, which included the first crop of IIP citizens, it published the whole list of all categories of new citizens, as promised, but instead it did so alphabetically by first name.

The obvious ploy was to disguise those who purchased their passports: whole families are rarely given Maltese citizenship in one fell swoop, except for those qualifying under the IIP. 

The opposition leader had also recently requested a list of new citizens at the last meeting of the Security Committee, and he was refused.  When he queried the government’s opposition to publishing the list of those purchasing citizenships separately in the public domain, the Prime Minister said the Attorney General had been consulted and had advised the government that separating the two lists would have been against the law.

Just this week the regulator of the citizenship scheme acknowledged that the publication of the names of new citizens was putting off some prospective passport investors, and he suggested a debate on the publication of new citizens’ names.   He even suggested the list could be made available on a need to know basis.

The government, however, disagreed and insisted that the publication of the names of new citizens would remain in place exactly as it is. We agree completely.

The move is welcome: while the addition of an extra element of secrecy in terms of the names of new citizens would have undoubtedly helped with the sale of passports, the government has considered reversing the secrecy clause as a step too far.

Decades or even just a few years ago, the government may not have found much opposition to changing the rules providing for the publication of new citizens’.  Today, with the advent of the citizenship programme, the publication of the names of all new Maltese citizens is an absolute necessity.