Who are we?

They are loud, love to gossip, are proud to speak their language, blaspheme and use expletives, always ready to help out, have a remarkable grasp of the idiom and know their village and the villagers inside out. Their eyes fill up with tears whenever a Maltese hero hits the stands. They know the season for thyme, the sound of the lark on a hot summer's day and what a good Maltese loaf tastes like.  They devour pea cakes (even though they cause heartburn) and they love their lager.  They think their homemade wine is great. They value the robustness of the family. They take great pleasure in the little culinary delights, from Ħobż biż-żejt to the Lampuki pie. They love a good laugh, and will give you an arm and a leg to help you out of your misery. 

That was what the Maltese were to me some point in my life.

That, it appears, was once upon a time.

Instead of asking me who the Maltese are, I guess it is best to ask what the Maltese want.

What kind of country do we, who call ourselves Maltese, wish to live in and be part of as good citizens?

In an age of Schengen agreements, global citizens, conflicting sovereignties and national identity, that question returns to haunt me.

Once upon a time we talked of Malta as a nation, now we talk of Malta as part of a community and part of a complex economic structure.

Our conversation, or shall we say our debate, is restricted to what parties say and demand. There is no debate from bottom to top... rather, when it does happen, it is from top to bottom.

There are no intellectuals in Malta, just politicians.

The media - the fourth estate - does not really exist, it is anchored in sand.

As someone who was born in 1963, I have a sense of Malta and the Maltese. But do the new generations share the same perspective?

I feel nostalgic for a Malta that once existed, but not for everything. The simplicity attracted me, but the mediocrity does not. We have been proud to be Maltese, but we did not believe we had a nation to preserve. We pillaged our countryside, destroyed our city centres, robbed our family, fought over our inheritances, crowned the tax evaders and found solace in Church confessions.

Somewhere in all these years, Malta has changed and changed in such a way that the debate, the vision has been overshadowed by four major considerations.

The first one is the way the Maltese have been immersed in the bickering of the two political parties, their egos, their political agendas and their quest for staying in power.  Secondly, the way we have been subservient to the Church and the way the Church has obstinately objected to calibrating itself to societal changes.  Today we still have a Church where an archbishop and bishop still talk of the bad old days instead of emulating the new Pope and opening up.

The long destructive debate over European Union accession is yet another one and lastly, the excuse that the economy is more important than anything else and the justification for everything else.

Unsurprisingly, we are now overwhelmed by the hullaballoo over the citizenship scheme.

The citizenship scheme debate has been restricted to which of the political parties is right or wrong, not to what this is all about.

Could it be that citizenship is no longer the issue?

There has been a lost opportunity here to discuss whether it makes sense to defend our patch to become Maltese.

I would agree, but over the years I have seen citizenship given to people who are not remotely Maltese. 

I am confused to hear people like Helga Ellul - a former manager now a PN MEP -  say they acquired their citizenship through marriage and some few more important and irrelevant points. 

Well I'm not too sure... I'm not impressed by that statement. My first and late wife who, like Helga Ellul, was German, was proud to be German and never renounced her passport or her citizenship. She loved Malta for 21 years, gave more to Malta than most people, still thought like a German, spoke like a German and acted like a German. I on the other hand speak, think and act like a Maltese.

Helga Ellul would understand what I am saying because she is just that: a German who is not really Maltese.

Perhaps our citizenship is no longer an issue, because it is no longer relevant.

Or is it?

Perhaps, the idea of making Europe one big community where borders do not exist and people simply travel and work as they please has made the notion of citizenship less important.

I always like Europe because I wanted harmonisation.

But not all Europe loves harmonisation.

Yes, we have rules for and interpretations of citizenship - some are legal and others biological, sometimes someone who has a remote Maltese connection ends up being given Maltese citizenship (the second-generation Australian who becomes a Maltese is the best example of this). 

As we all know, many Australians, on the strength of their Maltese grandparents, are eligible for a passport. Perhaps this is a good example of how ludicrous citizenships awarded have worked out until now.  Worse still many of those second generation Australians lose no sleep to rush for their Maltese passport and do all that is humanely possible to get their Maltese passport, albeit for only one reason. It's rather obvious that it offers them a fast-track to the European Union.

Many in fact do not even visit Malta, they jump on the first Quantas flight out of Melbourne to travel and roam in Europe on the strength of their Maltese passports.

I cherish my Maltese identity and find the whole concept of dishing out citizenships as sad and bizarre, but that is my heart talking, not my head.

I did not know until a few months ago that other countries in the EU have offered similar schemes for obtaining citizenship.  Probably the EU legal services did not know either, because if they did they would have acted against them.  But they did not. Will they now?

I remember when I did my little part negotiating for the Maltese government before 2003 on the birds directive, I had to remind myself that though Maltese hunters were essentially destructive assholes they could not be deprived of rights other European hunters enjoyed. It was a principle which I fought for and for which I now feel morally obliged to change through a referendum.

In the community of nations, Malta should not be considered as a second-class nation. But it is, by the EU.

Anyone who has any sense in his or her head, should honestly ask themselves whether citizenship against a fee is okay in Austria and Cyprus - and if yes, then why not in Malta?

Unlike Simon Busuttil, I think that all citizenships against payment are wrong, and unlike Busuttil I do not believe that the European parliament have the moral standing to dictate to us how we should distribute our citizenship.

The Maltese scheme is a scary way of making money - something I would rather have never heard or written about - but so are the other schemes available in other EU countries. 

After all this great debate about citizenship, it might be opportune for all of us to start discussing what makes us Maltese, and what Malta in fact is.