Passport robber barons financing anti-Ralph campaign

By Unity Labour Party

The issue

The robber barons overseas who are itching to make multiple millions of dollars in the selling of our patrimony (our citizenship and passports) are financing, and ramping up, the campaign against Comrade Ralph and the Unity Labour Party (ULP) as the 2025 general elections draw nearer.  In this venture they are in league, locally, with the following, among others: (i) Favoured lawyers, accountants, passport agents, wannabe members of Cabinet, and wannabe influential state officials who are lining up to the prospective trough to make loads of money from the sale of our passports and citizenship; (ii) Hand-picked “journalists” and “commentators” on newspapers, online publications, and radio stations who are being paid to carry anti-Ralph and anti-ULP stories, oft-times masquerading as “objective journalism and commentaries”; (iii) the opposition forces in SVG who are thirsting and hungering to get rid of Ralph and the ULP, and who are salivating for the opportunity to sell our citizenship and passports; and (iv) allied political/diplomatic operators in two nearby countries who want to get rid of Taiwan from SVG and who intend to profit from the proposal by the robber barons to sell our citizenship and passports.

The ULP government, for sound reasons, is opposed to the breaking of relations with Taiwan and the establishing of diplomatic relations with mainland China; and we are opposed also to the sale of our patrimony (citizenship and passports).  The assorted amalgam of self-seekers against Ralph and the ULP will not succeed.  We do have evidence of their perfidy.

No selling of our patrimony

The ULP is unalterably opposed to the selling of our citizenship and passports on the grounds of principle and practicality.  We must assert, as a matter of principle, that the office of citizenship is the highest in our land; higher than that of Governor General and Prime Minister; it is not a commodity for sale.  The passport is the outward sign of the inward grace of citizenship, and that, too, is not for sale.

Secondly, as a matter of practicality, the selling of our citizenship and passports is wrong for the following reasons: (i) It is well-nigh impossible for a small country to screen properly the large number of purchasers of citizenship and passports; assorted vagabonds and undesirables slip through creating undue security and reputational problems for our country; (ii) Countries to which our people largely migrate such as United States, Britain, Canada, and European Union member-states are opposed, on various grounds, to the selling of citizenship and passports; thus, sanctions against our country and our people ranging from travel restrictions to the cutting of corresponding banking relations will be on the cards; (iii) selling citizenship and passports is not sustainable; thus to opt for it as a principal revenue measure for governments is reckless; it is akin to the ongoing consumption of cocaine by an addict; (iv) the selling of our patrimony (citizenship and passports) breeds official corruption; (v) the ongoing sale of citizenship and passports empowers more and more the overseas merchants of this trade, and stores up democratic challenges in circumstances where the passport holders want to control our political democracy, directly and indirectly; (vi) the trickle-down from the sale of citizenship and passports into the hands of public servants (for example, an extra month’s salary for public servants, and in other ways) is immediately spent on the importation of foreign goods which are oft-times not really needed; (vii) this dastardly selling  of our patrimony devalues our citizenship and our passport to the detriment of our people’s welfare, overall.

The NDP trumpets that there is a pot of gold at the end of the selling of our citizenship and passports.  But there is not pot of gold there.  Even if, such sale was truly a game-changer in terms of bringing money to the country, where do you stop in your selling?  Do you set up a State-sponsored whore-house on the ground that its operation will be lucrative?  Surely, there must be limits to this kind of selling of our souls for a mess of pottage.  Why do serious countries such as Barbados, Bahamas, Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago refuse to sell their citizenship and passports?

SVG-Taiwan relations

SVG and the Republic of China (Taiwan) established diplomatic relations in August 1981, nearly 44 years ago.  These relations have been excellent and have benefited SVG and Taiwan significantly.  There is no sufficient reason to alter this relationship. On this the ULP government is firm!

First, as a matter of principle, SVG avers that no country ought ever to persuade or bully us against our people’s will to cut relations with one country (Taiwan) and establish links with another (People’s Republic of China — PRC).  The government of SVG does not accept bullying on international relations, neither from the west nor the east.

Secondly, the government of SVG accepts that both the ROC (Taiwan) and the PRC hail from one Chinese civilisation; but as in all civilisations, there exist, and can exist harmoniously, more than one legitimate political expression organised as a State in any civilisation.  Thus, both ROC (Taiwan) and PRC as legitimate state expressions can be, and are, separate within the one Chinese civilisation.

Thirdly, as a matter of historical fact, Taiwan has existed for all practical purposes as a separate, independent State entity since the 1949 defeat of the nationalists led by the Kuomintang (KMT) at the hands of the Communist Party of China of Mao Tse Tung.  In 1949 the KMT fled to Taiwan consequent upon its defeat and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on mainland China.

Fourthly, it is the PRC which sets a pre-condition for establishment relations with SVG.  That pre-condition is that SVG breaks its diplomatic relations with Taiwan.  The government of SVG does not accept, as a matter of principle, that any country, however large and powerful, can set, or be permitted to set, any such pre-condition for SVG.

Fifthly, SVG works amicably with the PRC in a number of regional and global institutions including the United Nations and its agencies, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Non-Aligned Movement, the G-77 Group, the Caribbean Development Bank, and the Community of States of Latin America and the Caribbean.  We in SVG do not pick any quarrel with the government of the PRC even as we are aware that many of its citizens and companies interfere in our country’s internal affairs by blatantly funding an anti-Ralph, anti-ULP campaign.

Sixthly, SVG, in all its actions globally in relation to the PRC and ROC (Taiwan), emphasises peace across the Taiwan Straits and a non-violent, non-aggressive approach to the solving of any problems between Taiwan and the PRC.

And seventhly, the people of SVG overwhelmingly support the maintenance of diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Further, our people overwhelmingly oppose the severing of relations with Taiwan and the establishing of relations with the People’s Republic of China.  Our people accept that Taiwan has been, and is, a force for good in SVG and globally.

The power of passport sellers

In a fascinating book entitled The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen (2015) and authored by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, a journalist formerly at Al Jazeera and currently at The Nation (New York).  In this book, she discloses conversations with Christian Kalin, the so-called “King of Passports” of Europe, resident in Switzerland.

Kalin dismisses the ongoing relevance of citizenship through the traditional ways of birth, blood, marriage, or naturalisation.  Kalin emphatically supports “citizenship allocated in exchange for contributions to a state”.  In short, he supports upending the constitutional bases upon which our founding fathers grounded citizenship.

Because of Comrade Ralph’s strong stance on upholding the traditional bases of citizenship, Kalin opportunistically and ludicrously denounces the Comrade as “an old far-leftist”; he is right though, that Ralph will “never be convinced” of selling citizenship and passports.

Abrahamian describes one encounter with Kalin, thus:

“I met Kalin in St. Kitts one evening after the country held elections.  His phones were ringing off the hook. ‘We’ve been working with them for so long that we know where everything is and how everything works’, he told me, excusing himself to take yet another call from a future or former official. ‘When the new cabinet can’t find something, they call us’.”

Wow!  Do you understand what the ULP means when it addresses the arrogated power of these passport sellers?  Kalin is described by Abrahamian as “brilliant, impenetrable, and a little arrogant”!

The folly of the glitter

In one Caribbean country which depends heavily on selling their passports and citizenship, and the consequential building of apartments and the like with passport money, one astute commentator avers:

“It’s a textbook real-estate bubble.  What happens in ten years when there are 2,000 ‘luxury’ priced one-bedroom and/or studio apartments and no one to rent them?  People make below-poverty wages.  The rental market does not exist — For a lot of developers it’s a race against the clock.  Let’s get this built on cheap and easy financing, on the backs of citizenship investors, and then we’ll have a fancy hotel.”  Who then gets it?

Consider this fact: There are six countries in the OECS; all except SVG have gone to the International Monetary Fund for a fiscal bail-out.  Has the selling of passports/citizenship made them better off than SVG?  The answer is no!

Lazy-minded NDP

Selling passports, as proposed by the NDP, is a policy for the lazy-minded, the uncreative, the anti-developmental. Selling passports and embracing mainland China will bring grief to the people of SVG.  And our people know this to be true.  For these reasons, among others, the NDP will again remain in the opposition.

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