Though there have been several protests and manifestations held throughout the country during these past months, the tension felt has been ratcheted up several notches following the protest held in London, outside the gala event organised by Henley and Partners to promote Malta’s cash for passports programme.
Protesters shouted “Shame on you” when the Prime Minister and his wife arrived. Tenor Joseph Calleja was greeted just as coldly when he approached the protesters. They weren’t impressed by his declaring that his fees for singing at the event would be donated to charity. For the protesters he was tainted by his association – however remote – to the citizenship scheme.
According to the protesters, it is a shameful scheme and can open doors to corruption. And that was why they were protesting. They were railing against the concessionaires of the scheme and the politicians who had ushered it in (and the tenor who was singing at the gala event). So far, so clear.
If the IIP is deemed to be objectionable, why isn’t each and every participant and beneficiary being shamed?
What is not so clear is why the same treatment was not meted out to the agents of the Individual Investor Scheme. Why aren’t there similar protests on the doorsteps of those other people involved in this scheme? Because it’s not just Henley and Partners who are raking it in from the scheme. There are 171 registered agents of the IIP Scheme currently listed.
I very much doubt that they are die-hard Labour supporters or fans of the Prime Minister. Why, then, have they escaped the protesters’ ire? If the IIP scheme means tainting by association, social ostracisation and boycotts, why aren’t all the agents equally tainted? If the IIP is deemed to be objectionable, why isn’t each and every participant and beneficiary being shamed?
The fact that “shame on you” is being hurled only against some exponents of the IIP Scheme smacks of double standards. It is this differential holding to account, this difference in treatment of people who are doing the same things, which galls.
Double standards dent the credibility of any cause. Because how can you wail about the vileness of some people benefitting from a scheme but blithely dismiss your friends when cashing in on the very same scheme? If you think that the scheme has serious shortcomings in the transparency department (I can never understand or agree with the fact that the names and surnames of the new passport holders are not published in the same way as those of other citizens are), then it is admirable to protest about that. But selective social shaming is something else. Consistency is the bedrock of credibility.
Double standards can be confusing too. To hark back to the controversy over the Prime Minister’s donation of €5 million to Puttinu Cares, that was criticised because it was being made from the funds of the citizenship scheme. Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi had said that it was insulting to be given the message that we needed to sell Maltese citizenship to the corrupt and the criminal to be able to cure cancer sufferers.
Fast forward 23 days. Azzopardi suggested that the funds from the sale of passports be used to help the band club in the locality of the district which he contests. In the space of three short weeks the funds emanating from the scheme had ceased to be the rancid fruit of sale to corrupt criminals and had become a potential solution for a dispossessed band club.
Clare Azzopardi has written a book which couldn’t be more topical. Castillo is a multi-layered novel about another tension-fraught period in recent national history – the 1980s. The undisputable protagonist of the novel is Inspector Dennis Castillo who solves the typically ‘cosy’ village murders where the number of suspects are limited. He smokes Rothmans Blue and wolves down pastizzi, and his every action is described so well, that I can almost see him ambling down to Perfection.
But Inspector Castillo is the creation of a strong woman – Cathy Penza. And Castillo is her story too, and that of Amanda who looks through the past to try and uncover the truth. In her search she realises that memory is fragmented and selective, that there are many versions of the truth, and that which may seem obvious is not necessarily the true picture.
I loved this book. From the description of Castillo’s beige Toledo which drove me back to my childhood to that of the debris in the aftermath of the bombing of the Sliema police station, it reminds me so much about the various shades of grey, selected narratives and appropriation of the story of a nation.
drcbonello@gmail.com