Read this report of the arguments brought in court today by Keith Schembri’s lawyers. I’m not summarising it because the issues are very complex and there’s a lot being hinted which is not being explicitly said in all the words here. I don’t want any of that lost in summaries and adaptations. The following list [...]
If Robert Abela really thinks that all politicians are elected to deal out favours to those who vote for it whether they are entitled to these favours or not, then he is a crooked misinformed despot who should not hold office. Absolute monarchs or dictators do exactly that. They choose whom to favour either because [...]
Photo: Domenic Aquilina/ EPA-EFA/Shutter stock That’s what he said was on his mind, when Antonio Costa, until then the socialist prime minister of Portugal,resigned from his post yesterday. “The dignity of the functions of prime minister is not compatible with any suspicion about his integrity, his good conduct and even less with the [...]
Silvio Grixti came out of his cave yesterday. He sent a pointed rhetorical question addressed to Deputy Prime Minister Chris Fearne. Why weren’t publicly known allegations of medical certificates fraud not investigated by the police, he asked? The press tried to reach the disgraced former Labour backbencher to get out of him details about the [...]
This is a statement issued today by the president’s office after a fugitive who turned himself in to the police and told the court he has been working on a construction site at San Anton Palace while the police were looking for him: With reference to reports that are appearing in the media, the Office [...]
Keith Schembri’s lawyers are having none of it. A phone that was held for safekeeping by a magistrate in a case against Keith Schembri vanished for a while only to reappear in another file which was not supposed to be in the magistrate’s office at all. The brief disappearance of the phone is now being [...]
Tristan Farrugia Tedesco is hardly a reliable source of information. He was in court today after giving himself up to the police on his lawyer’s advice yesterday. He’s been on the run for a while. The police told the court they’ve chased him over rooftops at least twice. Turns out avoiding arrest by jumping across [...]
This post will refer to several episodes that happened over the last few days that may at first appear unconnected but are in reality part of a growing trend of erosion of every individual’s right to seek the protection of the court from their government. Consider first this One TV report of a lawsuit brought [...]
The state of the nation The turbulent waves of this scandal-plagued bewildered populist authoritarian government have led to an evidenced and indisputable illiberal democracy roiled by a crisis of legitimacy. The mechanisms of scandalous and criminal history of this government in addition to a political model painstakingly moulded on polarisation and abuse of power and [...]
In this earlier post despairing at the government's intentions about the recommendations made by the OECD to improve transparency and accountability in public life I also made the remark that "the PN is yet to commit that it will implement these measures should it get the chance." As it turns out I was wrong. PN [...]
From my article in yesterday's The Sunday Times: "The inquiry Repubblika started four years ago is, by definition, four years old. It’s bound to wrap up at some point and people, such as a couple of other newspapers last week, have been speculating that it’s nearing completion. It is hard to imagine that an inquiry [...]