Here's a Facebook post by Frank Psaila capturing the mood of the times in and around the PN. Quite a few people have been speaking about their exclusion or the exclusion of others from the direction of the PN in recent years. Some have been less than subtle in their complaints they themselves or some favourite of [...]
Apart from the political unfairness and criminal illegality of buying votes of entire families by giving unproductive lifetime sinecures to individuals, one should take the time to work out the economic cost of this. We must do this because economic consequences take a long time to bubble up and they give way like quagmire around [...]
By Aeacus:Muscat’s single most important objective now must be to retain power by averting and / or neutralising the effect of the corruption allegations levelled at him (Schembri and Mizzi) during his first term. He needs to deal with, at least, four fronts:§ The courts of law: Here he will probably rely on the natural [...]
Here's the Prime Minister speaking to inewsmalta.com, the online version of the GWU's l-orizzont: “Il-kritika se tibqa’ pero bid-differenza li Konrad Mizzi ġie ġġudikat mill-poplu.” I’m not quoting out of context, selectively choosing a sound bite that distorts the intention of the speaker. This is the highlighted quote chosen by the very friendly interviewer to [...]
My article in The Sunday Times this morning: The election result can be dissected in matters of ideology, presentation, language and methods. The ideological question is whether, given the territory occupied by Labour in the civil liberties space and the economic management space, the PN was reduced to an identity orphan unsure of what it wants [...]
Exchanging votes for jobs and favours is an exercise in mutual contempt of the democratic process. It is also something that anecdotally appears to have been an exceptionally influential feature of the last election. It will not change anything to the outcome but there are lessons to be learnt here. If our democracy is to [...]
The following was sent in by someone known to me but who must remain anonymous because of their line of work. It is an interesting comparative analysis with some recommendations on what alternative methods could be useful in responding to the popularity of the cult of our own strong man:Four years ago, I was disappointed [...]
They waited until election day in Malta. But they did not wait to be courted personally by the prime minister who rushed to visit their offices before sleeping off the champagne and before even having a cabinet or staff put together. It was already too late. They had waited patiently for the election result to [...]
Ah come on! Really? After all the suspicious dealings with the sale of Enemalta; after all the fishy business with the sale of the hospitals; after all the head-scratching findings on the gas tanker acquisition: was he really the only qualified guy to flog our national airline? Is anyone out there, whether they voted Labour [...]
The Prime Minister will be announcing his Cabinet today. There will be time to analyse his choices but there is one question we are all asking ourselves today. Is he also going to lift Konrad Mizzi on his shoulders, cheer him on as a hero, and reappoint him as Minister in his new Cabinet? Perhaps, [...]
On 29th May I reacted to an editorial from l-orizzont that in the heat of an electoral campaign screamed for the heads of journalists who dared question the unstoppable greatness of Joseph Muscat and his Labour movement. That was not one of the usual rants about how Daphne Caruana Galizia makes the Nationalists look bad [...]
The author is a University student with an obvious savviness for politics and contemporary communication. He sent me his observations in response to my earlier observations on the PN's loss at the polls.What we are forgetting today is how fast the world and society had progressed and shifted towards an age of social media, likes, looks [...]
Eulogies are for dead people so this is not one. The party activists whose emotions had been pent up since 11am on Sunday had finally found the release and there wasn’t a dry eye in sight. On Sunday afternoon at the counting hall there were many critical words whispered privately in the inner rooms where [...]
First published on my Facebook page on 25th May the day after Joseph Muscat blamed the Russian Secret Service for the Egrant story and when I stopped laughing and started realising Muscat was on a winning strategy:Sober up. I too spent yesterday splitting my sides. But having slept on it and having read what the [...]
First published on my Facebook page on 29 May:I’m not one to lose much sleep about the rants of l-orizzont’s editorials. Today though it is essentially, though not necessarily consciously, synthesising the true agenda of the criminal gang that has taken over the mind of the zombie that was once the Labour Party.L-orizzont today argues [...]
First published on my Facebook page on 30 May towards the end of the general election campaign:Towards the end of a PN-term in government -- I have been a small part of four of those -- the word ‘arrogance’ becomes mainstream. You know the drill. Nationalists think they have some divine right to rule. They [...]
Reflections at the end of the 2017 general election campaign I first posted on my Facebook page on 1st June:When all is said and done there are a few things that we will always hold true. If the boat is sinking, women and children first. That sort of thing. Some of us jump queues but [...]
Daphne Caruana Galizia first published the following piece I wrote when the polls closed last Saturday and before the election results were out:Alea iacta est
Oh yes it hurts. It especially hurts when you’re still convinced you’re right but are now branded arrogant and self-serving to continue to think so. That you’ve learnt nothing from the lessons the democratic process has attempted to teach you. Clearly the outcome of an election determines the choice of government and parliamentarians and therefore [...]