This is not exactly hot off the press. The Sunday Times published this on 31 December and I haven’t uploaded it since. My excuse is I was on holiday.
If you’ve missed it, you must surely have a good excuse. So here it is.
“The European Commission’s 2023 (rule of law) report was scathing enough. It found we had ignored most of the commission’s ‘recommendations’ to us from the year before. I put the word recommendations between quotes advisedly. Malta was told that when the top job in the judiciary becomes vacant, judges should be involved in the choice of their new boss. We ignored that advice. We were told that TVM and its sister stations should be run independently of government control. We ignored that one too. We were told there should be an independent agency to protect victims of human rights. We didn’t do that either. Those were 2022 recommendations ignored in 2023. When they look at things in 2024, they’ll find we’ve still done bugger all.”