The year that was about this big

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2022-12-31T07:45:31+01:00Fri, 30th Dec '22, 13:55|

2022 and a second and a third man have been convicted for killing Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017 this year. Their conviction followed their freely given admission in court which is as close as it is possible to be to a certain and definitive conclusion to their case. Let’s hope so. The man accused of hiring [...]

The junior minister with the big bum

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2022-12-30T15:36:31+01:00Fri, 30th Dec '22, 13:46|

First Arnold Cassola and later The Shift News commented on information from inside a packed flight to London earlier this month where Air Malta relocated passengers with pre-booked seats so that parliamentary secretary Chris Bonett could sit with his kids in coach. Ten people had to make way for his sorry arse. A few weeks [...]

Stick a tail on it and call it a weasel

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2022-12-30T11:59:03+01:00Fri, 30th Dec '22, 11:58|

Someone working the PR office of state-owned Enemed is one of two things: a witty Blackadder fan with a naughty subversive streak or someone who drops phrases they heard without knowing exactly what they mean. Baldrick!

The blindness of racial prejudice

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2022-12-21T07:42:38+01:00Wed, 21st Dec '22, 07:42|

It is a small miracle that we even know of the case of a Bangladeshi journalist who sought refuge in Malta from violent retribution for reporting on election fraud in his native country. The 23-year-old man filmed bosses from the ruling party stuffing ballots and broadcast them on the TV network he worked for. For [...]

THE SUNDAY TIMES: Robert and Roberta

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2022-12-19T06:46:05+01:00Mon, 19th Dec '22, 06:46|

From my article in The Sunday Times: "To say it is ironic that Abela criticises anyone else for taking time to implement the advice of ombudsmen, and of independent institutions to avoid corruption, is to suggest that we can afford to chuckle at the thought. He ignored the Venice Commission, except to the limited extent forced [...]

Court rules Jonathan Ferris’s human rights breached but decision is nowhere near what he deserves

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2022-12-15T17:41:23+01:00Thu, 15th Dec '22, 17:41|

Judge Toni Abela ordered the state to pay Jonathan Ferris €20,000 in compensation when it discriminated against him and rejected his application to re-join the police force around the time of the 2017 general elections. Jonathan Ferris had resigned the police force in 2016 after he was approached to join the Financial Intelligence Agency, the [...]

AUM accreditation in owner’s home country withdrawn

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2022-12-15T08:50:35+01:00Thu, 15th Dec '22, 08:50|

Jordan, the home country of the owner of the American University of Malta Hani Salah, has warned its citizens it no longer recognised qualifications from the AUM. A notice sent by the Jordanian Embassy to Malta, based in Tunis, says that “the Ministry of Higher Education and the Committee for Accrediting Academic Institutions Abroad have [...]

Telemintoff

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2022-12-14T15:33:35+01:00Wed, 14th Dec '22, 10:23|

There’s a debate on after the press reported that PBS, the national broadcaster, cancelled a four-part documentary on Dom Mintoff. We don’t know much about what the documentary says but this Times of Malta report says that board directors were concerned that Nationalists wouldn’t like it. Today's Malta Today editorial (not yet available online) comments [...]

But I didn’t shoot no deputy

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2022-12-14T09:08:28+01:00Wed, 14th Dec '22, 09:08|

The second most senior post in the police force is empty. It’s the job of the cop heading all centralized police units which means crimes and issues that are above the pay grade of your local beat cop. The incumbent, Alexandra Mamo, is quitting, by all accounts, in tears. No one wants her job. When [...]

Presidential chitchat

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2022-12-14T08:51:12+01:00Wed, 14th Dec '22, 08:51|

I have officially given up we’ll ever have a Constitutional Convention to discuss the rules of the game. Labour promised it in 2012, ten years ago. They’ve been kicking the can for so long the people looking ridiculous now are the ones still daring to hope it would ever happen. I’m the silly bugger. Of [...]

Embassy bullying investigation

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2022-12-14T07:28:26+01:00Wed, 14th Dec '22, 07:28|

An internal investigation is underway in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs over alleged misconduct by Malta’s ambassador to Ireland Giovanni Buttigieg. Female employees of the Dublin embassy have testified to an internal board to consistent bullying tactics and mismanagement by the ambassador in his running of the office. Witnesses told the board that they’ve been [...]

Military law

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2022-12-09T09:30:05+01:00Fri, 9th Dec '22, 09:30|

In April 2020, in the midst of the paranoia at the start of the COVID outbreak, the existence of Repubblika, then formally more than a year old, was finally recognised by Prime Minister Robert Abela and his government. He was never publicly heard to pronounce the organisation’s name before then. It was as if it [...]

The madness of polarisation

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2022-12-06T14:26:47+01:00Tue, 6th Dec '22, 14:26|

I was careful in my two posts (this one and this one) about the abortion debate not to throw myself behind either side of the argument. And yet, certainly by the time I wrote a second article criticising aspects of the line taken by the Opposition, comments came in telling me that the absence in [...]

How it could be done

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2022-12-06T09:20:28+01:00Tue, 6th Dec '22, 09:20|

You will have seen reports (see here and here) of yesterday’s marathon court sitting that heard, from beginning to end, all the evidence brought by Repubblika and by the State in the case brought by Repubblika complaining its rights were breached by Nadine Lia’s refusal to recuse herself from hearing Repubblika’s complaint against the Police [...]

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