Ministers yesterday needed to somehow emerge as winners after a court ruled that they had behaved in a way that does not fit anyone with the country’s interests at heart. (That’s what the court called them, using a descriptor for a dictionary term the court could have opted for: fucking traitors). Ministers needed to live [...]
For two hundred and eighty weeks we have had to go on without the benefit of your presence, without your unwilling leadership, without the trust you enjoyed of people who knew what was happening to us which you repaid with your life. You would have chuckled at the irony of the events of the last [...]
The following is a statement by #occupyjustice: Today, #occupyjustice inaugurated a monument to commemorate the sole contribution to the people of Malta of the Oxley Group, Vitalis/Bluestone, Vitals Global Healthcare and Steward Healthcare in collusion with the Maltese Government and its operatives. It is a representation of the only investment that was made out of [...]
There’s a lot of chatter, which I have sought to ignore, about people taking credit not due to them or refusing to give credit where it is due when talking about Friday’s massive court decisions. I think a discussion on credit is secondary to the substance of the matter and as readers of this blog [...]
Chris Fearne doesn’t want to go down in this storm. This is not just the desire for power or the fear of losing it. It is also because he is absolutely convinced he is innocent of the Steward catastrophe even if everyone else within smelling distance of the health ministry is guilty as a dog [...]
It would be amusing had the consequences not been so serious, to see Steward’s reaction to a court decision that found they extorted money that did not belong to them, they enriched themselves unlawfully at the expense of citizens, that their behaviour is worthy of condemnation, that they showed contempt for their obligations, for the [...]
The government is in crisis. They feel the pull of gravity, the weight of Joseph Muscat around their ankles, the free fall into perdition that is in their future. They are clutching at proverbial straws and ditching metaphorical ballast. Robert Abela, Byron Camilleri, Silvio Schembri, Aaron Farrugia, Ian Borg, Clint Camilleri, Julia Farrugia Portelli, Clifton [...]
From my article in The Sunday Times today: "Since the second rule of law report, the European Commission asked every year a simple question: what progress has Malta achieved in improving things since the last report? They put the question to the government and ministers make colourful presentations proclaiming bold reforms, claims peppered with “unprecedented” [...]
One of the elements of the complex Electrogas scandal was that the promise that the “investors” made that they would bring money into the country to invest in a new power station did not materialise. Their money partner, Gasol, went bust and yet the government didn’t fire them. Instead, the government leaned on Bank of [...]
Yesterday’s court decision to reverse a concession of public land and public property to a private consortium came at the end of a judicial review process provided for in the law governing the disposal of public land. First: how can public land be given away? The answer is through one of two ways. Either Parliament [...]
If Adrian Delia has not done a useful thing in his life – and that, it should be said, is rhetorical – he has today, and in the five years leading up to today’s court decision, done the nation a great service. Even the government must secretly be grateful. But the fact that today everyone [...]
Over the last three years the government commissioned three reports following the violent and untimely deaths of three women. There was the public inquiry that followed the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia which found the state responsible for her death, allowing for a toxic state of impunity to protect senior government ministers and their criminal [...]
That was a strange interview that Raphael Vassallo had with criminology academic Saviour Formosa last Sunday. In some respects, it recalled an interview with another expert discussing traffic congestion on TV some years ago. That expert had said something to the effect that traffic congestion was not real as much as it was a “perception”, [...]
I’m the good news first kind of guy. So, a court yesterday did something which has accurately been described as very rare. It allowed for a tool provided by human rights legislation to be used to stop someone suffering an alleged human rights violation while a court decides whether they’re suffering a human rights violation. [...]
FIAU awakens. After the debacle caused by lack of oversight which caused Malta to be placed on the FATF grey list a lot of backpedalling has had to take place. It is apparent that in the last six months, after having managed to persuade the members of the FATF that our laws have begun to [...]
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The pictures are by Darrin Zammit Lupi. Daphne vigilPhoto: Darrin Zammit Lupi