The Commissioner for Public Standards has activated a section of the law that creates his office in cases where he finds a breach of ethics by an MP and thinks the MP should face a serious rap and a possible order to cough up some money. This hasn’t happened before because the Commissioner for Public [...]
A radio show of lackeys this morning praised Julia Farrugia Portelli for her BBC interview yesterday. They thought that her invitation to Boris Johnson to go jogging with her amounted to “a mic drop”. Truly a government of the mediocre for the mediocre. https://youtu.be/dXmYW26la2o Julia Farrugia Portelli was an embarrassment on TV yesterday. She [...]
Glenn Bedingfield did not get Robert Abela’s memo yesterday. The party leader was telling the press outside the parliament building that being a friend, a fuck-buddy, a WhatsApp chatter or a business associate of Yorgen Fenech was ok if you stopped doing it the day he was charged with murder. Inside Parliament, Glenn Bedingfield was [...]
We Maltese are peculiar, very odd people although God has been good to us. We go back to around 6,000 BC and we built the first free standing buildings in the world, more than 2,000 years before the Egyptians had even dreamt of the pyramids. Then in AD 60, destiny, or divine action, decided to [...]
That the way the new Police Commissioner was selected was simply a bit of a smokescreen to salve consciences pricked by the Venice Commission’s Report is a given. That the PN MPs forewent their opportunity to grill the anointed one is understandable, if to some minds (mine included) perhaps unfortunate. That the it is up [...]
Robert Abela promised high standards of governance but he’s only getting his ministers to jump over hurdles set about their ankles. They seem to be set that low in case they need to skip with their trousers down. He responded today to journalists’ challenges to ministers after Paul Caruana Galizia’s tweet a few days ago [...]
Listen to the article here or scroll down for the transcript: Emanuel Delia · The Privilege To Fight Privilege Like any good thing parliamentary privilege can be abused. But if it’s taken away, our democracy will die a little bit more. Parliamentary privilege comes up ever so often when someone alleges an MP has abused [...]
Thirteen migrants presently stuck in Libya, represented by Paul Borg Olivier and Eve Borg Costanzi, yesterday filed in court a judicial protest against the government anticipating a possible action under the European Convention of Human Rights. The 13 include 4 women, one of whom is the mother of a two-and-a-half-year-old child. Along with another 38 [...]
A bad government cannot only be called as a ‘bad’ government; the real adjective should be this: Enemy! Yes, bad government is a real enemy for the country it governs, an enemy within! - Mehmet Murat Ildan At the beginning of 2011 few in Malta had heard of Konrad Mizzi. Before entering politics he [...]
The Chamber of Advocates was full of ire and wrath yesterday because this website has asked questions about Aron Mifsud Bonnici’s role in the Montenegro deal. Here’s why we’re confused. Look at this picture from November 2015 of Konrad Mizzi meeting his counterpart in Podgorica, Montenegro. The photo comes with an official statement by the [...]
Three local councils, 10 NGOs and thousands of individuals are giving reasons to the Planning Authority why the ‘revised’ dB tower Pembroke plans ought to be rejected. Those objections are about height, density, waste, congestion, pollution, noise, light, land use: a huge range of planning reasons why the project should not be allowed. But there [...]
Since January 2020, when Robert Abela moved in, Neville Gafà was supposed to be out of the public service. But a mundane albeit angry post by an irate citizen from Ħal Lija suggests Gafà is still 'solving problems' for people. The complainant has been raising concerns about roadworks where he lives for several days. Now [...]
Robert Abela, newly crowned Prime Minister of Malta, must be either a naïve, wet behind the ears politician or a scholar of Machiavelli’s political thoughts. He thinks that by kicking out of the Partit Laburista Chris Cardona and Konrad Mizzi all his troubles just faded away like an early mist when hit by the sun. [...]
In this third article in this series (which starts here), I am writing on some of the key points highlighted in the fourth six-monthly report of the Competent Person, together with my observations. This report was addressed to the Parliamentary Secretary for Financial Services and Digital Economy, on 12 May 2020. I must immediately highlight [...]
The Chamber of Advocates reacted to my recent blog posts where I wrote about Aron Mifsud Bonnici’s triunal roles as Konrad Mizzi’s personal lawyer, as Enemalta’s board secretary and as an advisor on the corrupt Montenegro deal. The representative body of Malta’s lawyers also kick The Shift News because they were the ones to reveal [...]
Read this in-depth report on Belgian news site Mondiaal Neuws by Pieter Stockmans about Malta's conduct in managing rescue operations in its search and rescue area during the Covid-19 lockdown. The report says that Malta is resorting to increasingly extreme methods of preventing the arrival of new migrants. The coronavirus crisis appears to be a [...]
These are the first audited financial statements under the name of Steward Malta Limited, which had changed the name from Vitals Global Healthcare on 16 February 2018. It is a pity that management accounts are not prepared for public consumption, as since 1 January 2019, the indications seem to point to a further deterioration to [...]
On 2 April 2017, The Malta Independent on Sunday ran this story: “Wind farm project in Montenegro taken over by Enemalta ‘clouded by corruption’”. The story was written by Gabriel Schembri and it looked at what it was that Enemalta had bought. The project was mired in corruption since before Enemalta stepped in. The report [...]
Well, well, well. Joseph Muscat thinks he can just slink off into the Azerbaijani sunset and laze around in a hammock for the rest of his days. The Limestone Cowboy wants to hang up his studs, walk off into the Panama sunset and all will be forgotten. It’s that easy, eh? In Malta, perhaps it [...]
Neville Gafà remains one of the enduring mysteries of the Joseph Muscat era. These days we mostly see him flanking Keith Schembri when the corrupt, thieving bastard is dragged to court to answer questions that risk exposing him for being worse than that. I watched Gafà testify in open court before the covid crisis and [...]