Category: Citizenship
-
Freedom
The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
-
I will, in short, dream for a while
Back in 1992, Vaclav Havel was the President of a reborn Czechoslovakia. The fall of the Wall and the crumbling of the Iron Curtain was still fresh in recent memory and Havel’s new republic was making its way towards the ideal of “Western Democracy”. Fukuyama might be standing round the corner proclaiming the end of…
-
In the end there was the Word
Minister Mallia will in all probability not resign. He went on record during the “secret” negotiations regarding the IIP scheme that should a residency requirement be included then he would resign from his ministerial position. We are not supposed to know about it because the negotiations were secret but that secrecy, like virginity, cannot be…
-
BBC World Update on IIP
BBC’s World Update will be discussing Malta’s planned (?) IIP scheme. A post on Facebook announcing the programme has already attracted quite a long string on comments (see post here – Facebook account required). Aside from the ridiculous Labour party accusations that the whole international press attention is some kind of Opposition un-nationalistic concerted attack,…
-
The Hunter outside the Palace
When we decided to change the logo of SDM (the Christian Democrat Student organisation) in the mid-1990s we had decided to include a motto within a design that was meant to portray citizen participation and inclusion. The slogan, taken from Caldera’s tome describing the Christian Democrat principles translated as such “the ideal democratic palace is…
-
Vitrines
My last visit to Vilnius was in 2002. I tend to remember the date of that visit mainly because of the inbuilt “football clock” – there was the Korea & Japan World Cup at the time. That last visit was also for a conference. I was a junior lawyer on the Maltese government’s team negotiating…