A referendum on the citizenship scheme is the last thing the country needs. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the idea of referring divisive matters of a fundamental nature to a referendum. But in such a highly polarised society as ours in Malta, referring the citizenship scheme to a referendum would be almost on a par with having an election.

The country cannot afford to go into election mode at this moment in time. Therefore, ideally, rather than toying with the idea of referring the issue to a referendum so soon after an election, the two major political parties ought to put their heads together to see how they can make the scheme acceptable to each other, the public and to governments abroad.

The government should have sought consensus on this from the very beginning, not when the negative public reaction to it escalated to a level that left it with no room within which to manoeuvre.

There has been no formal commitment on the government’s part to hold a referendum but remarks by the Prime Minister in Parliament last week were taken to mean that the government was prepared to take the issue to the people directly if talks with the Opposition failed.

Joseph Muscat would now like to see a balance being struck between the stands adopted by the two parties, something that ought to have been done when the government first presented its amendments to the existing citizenship law to incorporate the scheme in it.

The government has already climbed down a bit by pledging to remove the secrecy clause but the scheme is still considered unacceptable because citizenship is not tied to investment and residency.

Home Affairs Minister Manuel Mallia insists that the amount to be paid for the passport, €650,000, is an investment. However, the minister is clearly wrong on this. It is the price set for a passport.

It has now been revealed that the government will be using half the €30 million it expects to net from the scheme next year to plug a hole in the Budget. Astonishingly, the minister asked on Times Talk where could the government get the €15 million from if the scheme were to be dropped.

It looks that, with the European Commission breathing down its neck over the deficit, the government panicked and resorted to a quick way of raising money. But it did so without foreseeing the repercussions of the move, particularly the cost of the damage to the island’s reputation which Malta’s two previous prime ministers worked so hard to establish.

Labour MPs argue that those ridiculing the scheme abroad may have a vested interest or they may have been instigated by the Nationalists. This is an unconvincing and puerile argument. We cannot bury our heads in the sand.

The fact that the Sri Lanka Commonwealth meeting agreed to hold the 2015 summit in Malta does not mean that no damage has been done to Malta’s reputation abroad, as Dr Muscat implied in his remark on this point. Heads of government and influential people in key industries do not necessarily move in the same political orbits.

It is important, therefore, that a new scheme is worked out without any loss of time. When this is done, it should be widely publicised to repair the damage done.

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