PN does not exclude referendum on citizenship law
PN leader Simon Busuttil says citizenship law marks black day for democracy.
12 November 2013, 12:00am
Jurgen Balzan
Jurgen Balzan
1 min read
Opposition leader Simon Busuttil said his party would keep up its opposition to the Individual Investor Programme, after the House passed the IIP rules that will sell Maltese citizenship for €650,000.
Busuttil said the approval of the law was "a black day for democracy", saying his party had "stood firm till the very end and the government refused to seek consensus, preferring to steamroll on the opposition."
Busuttil spoke shortly after Joseph Muscat replied to his budget speech, saying the PN would be challenging the forthcoming legal notice in parliament.
Asked whether he would consider supporting an abrogation referendum, as Alternattiva Demokratika has suggested, Busuttil said he would not exclude anything. "Events are still developing and we do not exclude anything, including an abrogative referendum."
Busuttil reiterated that he would repeal IIP passports if elected to government, and that will be publishing the names of IIP citizens using his presence in the monitoring committee that, together with the Prime Minister, will oversee the running of Identity Malta and the IIP. "As things stand, revealing the names is not illegal," Busuttil said. "It's the government's action that is devaluating citizenship."
Busuttil played down the effect of Muscat's budget speech yesterday, saying the prime minister was "a good salesman but not a good statesman. It's what you come to expect of a Super One journalist, and his speech lacked substance.... This budget does not have a serious plan for job creation and Muscat failed to answer my criticism on unemployment and the unethical actions of the police commissioner."
Jurgen Balzan was a MaltaToday reported from 2011 to 2017.
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This time SB and the PN are getting ever more boring if not compulsively obsessive and not realizing they are flogging a dead horse especially given the raft of promising and challenging measures the gov proposed in this budget
The legislation has now passed and it is now the law of the land and let us all get on with turning it into a success story . As time goes on we will be in a better position to assess its benefits and shortcomings and tweak it as necessary based on facts and experience not conjectures, political opportunism or false nationalism. It will anyway in the worst possible scenario take years for the IIP to reach figures which could be in any sense become worrying. In the meantime it seems to me better to gain an proper understanding of naturalisation related issues by perhaps researching the true status of the 7000 to whom we granted citizenship. Perhaps we should also research the 15000 landed irregulars who came here and their current status and activities within our community. Let us create a holistic picture of what is happening as others join us as citizens on this small island or as residents be they EU citizens, naturalized persons or landed irregulars .
joseph mercieca •
What's wrong in being a Super One journalist? You petulant and incompetent. You have the class of a fishwife.
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tghid jaghmel bhal ma ghamel Gonzi ma jaghtix kaz ir-rieda tal-Naggoranza? Jew imur jivvota bil qalb kontra l-interess tal-Poplu?
