Frans Timmermans, the Dutch politician tipped to succeed Jean-Claude Juncker, may well turn out to be the liberator of the Maltese people like the Persian King Cyrus who was providentially selected by God to free the Jews from the Babylonian exile.
For we too, like the chosen people, have become exiled but unlike the former who were banished to a distant land, Maltese decent folks have become aliens in their own mother country.
How could this contemporary Cyrus, a Socialist from the Netherlands, free us from servitude? Simple. Although he shares a number of idiocies advocated by our local hapless Cyrus’s bandwagon he does differ in one, albeit crucial, issue. Mr Timmermans is determined to wipe out tax haven economies from the European Union.
Let us admit once and for all that Malta started its inexorable transformation into a successful tax paradise when the Gonzi administration laid the necessary legislative framework. This basis has remained basically unchanged and it was fine-tuned by the present government.
Malta’s metamorphosis from a republic based on work into an international money spinning hub flooded by foreign companies eager to dodge their home countries’ taxes was something we devised from A to Z. Ironically our system unashamedly discriminates against Maltese citizens.
LIDL supermarkets for example, being owned by foreigners pays a puny five per cent tax but PAMA which is owned by locals has to pay a staggering 30 per cent or more in taxes.
Certainly there is nothing remotely linked to Catholic social teaching in all of this. The example of these two supermarkets is enough to expose the inherently unjust and fraudulent essence of our taxation systems, despite all the talk about the Maltese being in our hearts.
This injustice was not forced on us by the EU but we created it to attract foreigners here. It is nauseating hearing politicians rousing Eurosceptic sentiments by blaming the EU for the multitudes of foreigners flooding our country but then have these same politicians sermonise us about the wonders of a cosmopolitan society and the beauty of high-rise buildings to house more and more outsiders.
These same leaders overlook the flagrant human rights abuses experienced by cheap labour workers. Will Malta become like Dubai where blue collar non-locals are blatantly underpaid and live in overcrowded flats sacrificed on the altar of a rich economy? Is not this a subtle form of racism?
What have become of the European values of solidarity and cohesion? Or is it one country stabbing the back of another justlike the kitschy Eurovision?
Why don’t we thrust aside negativity and dare to hope that we can increase our gross domestic product together with our European Union partners in an honest way and not through stealing tax revenue from other EU countries ‘coffers?
Unless we radically change our present economic model the Malta we love will not survive
Just a few months ago European MEPs overwhelmingly approved a resolution labelling Malta as a tax haven and all Maltese MEPs, Nationalists and Labour united in a common front to fend off common EU tax rules.
Money speculation was always deemed with mistrust by mainstream Muslim and Christian theologians who considered it sinful. Indeed the Ecumenical Council Lateran III (1179) went as far as to deny the sacraments and Christian burial to financial speculators and interest rate dealers. Eventually the Jews became the bankers of the Emirs, the Sultan and the Christian princes because the latter wanted to circumvent the prohibitions of their respective religions.
Back to our times. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has over and over revealed how Malta is a tax haven for everything. Lawrence Gonzi was swiftly interviewed on RTK radio by its reverend father chameleon to persuade us that tax planning and gaming are dignified and righteous activities.
Unless we radically change our present economic model the Malta we love will not survive. Take a look around you and see what is happening. Hideous towers and apartment blocks ruining even village cores, our bright young skilled workers and graduates leaving in droves, the industrial output rate crashing and the fertility rate nose-diving. Who cares?
I think Timmermans’ chances of becoming Juncker’s successor are slim. Nevertheless the writing is on the wall. Irrespective of who wins the elections it is only a matter of years until tax harmonisation will be implemented for the French, the Germans and the Scandinavians are fed up.
The Greens and the Socialists are overwhelmingly in favour of eradicating tax havens from the EU.
The end is nigh and perhaps that’s why Joseph Muscat is leaving just in time before the EU forces common tax rules unleash an economic apocalypse.
Our immoral tax paradise will cease and foreign businesses will leave for more lucrative tax havens. Then our economy will disintegrate like a medieval castle burned by Daenerys’s dragons in a blaze of ghastly, cackling glory smouldering the guilty and the innocent alike in one fiery inferno.
Like the phoenix, the Maltese nation will be reborn from the ashes.
This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece