Unlike most people I know, I took a liking to the Individual Investor Programme (IIP) the minute I read about it. Anything that blows a raspberry at the twin deities of blood and soil is welcome as far as I’m concerned. If the mockery can bring in some money on the side, all the better.

Like most people I know, I wasn’t too impressed at the Nationalist Party’s charge on the moral high ground of the citizenship matter. That’s partly because political parties do not generally take all that well to moral high grounds. As I write, for example, the PN is busy telling us that personal data are sacred, and that parents ought to resist the Education Minister’s attempt on their children’s private business.

Now data protection is a fine thought. Only the PN is one of at least two Maltese parties that are obsessed with people’s private business, and that are known to actively collect and store information on it. Which is why, should the average data-protected Maltese citizen get out of bed a little later than usual on election day, they are likely to do so to the persistent ring of a telephone. So much for the sacredness of data.

Back to the IIP, I am not against the idea – as long as the Prime Minister steers his rhetoric clear of it. And since we’re at it, Muscat’s rhetoric is insufferable on most topics.

In 2004 I did a stint as a newspaper reviewer for the University radio station. Back then, Muscat was a prospective MEP and wrote a column for l-Orizzont, if I remember well. The pickings were so rich I sometimes spent the entire programme wading through the wordy muck. Ten years and hundreds of thousands of votes later, he hasn’t changed much.

Take his recent address to the Global Citizenship seminar in New York. As reported, he first took his audience through the whole Ġrajjiet Malta timeline (Swabians, Angevins, Normans, yawn). He then told them the temples were older than the pyramids, as if that made them more impressive.

I mean, a flint axe is older than La Pietà, but I know which of the two modified stones I’d want to see first. In any case, I doubt Muscat cares a rat’s ass (as they say in the US) about the temples, or the Swabians.

That’s the acceptable bit. The porter scene came when he told prospective passport-buyers that his government was after their talent, not their money. Had he used the conjunction ‘and’, I wouldn’t have bothered with this column. As is, I must take issue.

There are two possibilities. The first is that Muscat was taking the mickey. It takes a strong sense of humour to relieve someone of a cool million and then proceed to tell them you’re not after their money. In any case, back here in Malta the IIP was sold on the grounds of the money it would bring in. Not enough for us to hold a round of local council elections by the looks of it, but never mind.

The second possibility is that Muscat has a rather strange and limited notion of talent. Let’s assume he’s honest about wanting that quality rather than money. I would have expected government to come up with some kind of test of talent broadly defined. Instead, the only criterion is that of money.

Which means that, for the Prime Minister, talent means the amount of money you have. I actually suspect it means something even narrower, something along the lines of the number of super-expensive flats you can afford to buy in Malta in order to pretend to be living here.

There is, of course, such a thing as a talent for making money. I consider it a competence among others and have no problems, moral or otherwise, with it. Only that’s where the equation ends. There are many types of people who are hugely talented, whose abilities make our lives more tolerable, and who earn very little money in the process. None of them would qualify for Maltese citizenship under the IIP conditions.

It takes a strong sense of humour to relieve someone of a cool million and then proceed to tell them you’re not after their money

Most Nobel Prize winners, and that’s hardly a type that lacks talent, wouldn’t remotely afford the going rate. Ironically enough, neither would those on Muscat’s list of Maltese superstars. The possible exception is Edward de Bono and he’s unlikely to pay for anything. The last time we heard from him he was hectoring government for a free palazzo in Valletta.

Which brings me to another point. Muscat also told his audience that he was ‘after their networks, not their accounts’. The metaphor of the network is both old and one which has much association with Malta. Forty years ago, Jeremy Boissevain used it in Friends of Friends to look at some of the ways in which individuals maximise their gains by forming associations and coalitions.

Networks, in other words, are a kind of resource. Now if Muscat thinks that the kind of people he addressed in New York are likely to hand over that resource for the good of the nation, he must be dreaming. (They’re especially unlikely to do so when they’re being charged a million for their kindness.)

I’m sure he isn’t. Muscat will know that the sort of people who pay big money for a passport tend to be types who hover on the margins of states and who use their networks to increase their net worth. They like to keep their wealth as mobile as possible, which means they can’t really be relied on in the long term by any state. One thing they dislike, very, very much indeed, is paying taxes.

This is not a rant against cosmopolitan riff-raff or some such weary label. I really don’t mind these people and wish them good luck (and godspeed). But I think it’s unfair of any Prime Minister to sing their praises. The real contributors to the Maltese economy are the many thousands of people who might not have stellar talents, but who work hard and pay taxes locally throughout their lives.

I wish government the best for the IIP and the (one-off) windfall it might bring. Only I wish the Prime Minister would stop insulting us, the non-talented non-networked people of Malta.

mafalzon@hotmail.com