About Charles Schembri

This author has not yet filled in any details.
So far Charles Schembri has created 28 blog entries.

GUEST POST: Malta, through a glass darkly

By
2022-02-15T14:12:34+01:00Tue, 15th Feb '22, 14:12|

A portrait of Malta’s indecisive society? It is only those in good health and free from suffering who can live looking towards the future. The rest - weak and in extreme suffering - just lie there, in the middle of the road, without certainties, without conviction and even now, at least in part, victims of [...]

GUEST POST: PN’s return to first principles

By
2021-11-04T08:13:01+01:00Thu, 4th Nov '21, 08:13|

Even if against all odds, as polling surveys consistently premise, the Partit Nazzjonalista could still be an enlightening intermediary institution for our democracy and society at large. Bernard Grech, like his predecessors, may be the renaissance of his party and the country. The electoral political programme on its own focusing on improving people’s lives, proposing [...]

GUEST POST: A Call for Civil Peace

By
2021-03-26T09:14:28+01:00Fri, 26th Mar '21, 09:14|

The present evidenced dysfunctional democracy has led to a dysfunctional society. The prognosis of the islands’ maladies overlaps from the functionality of government onto the people. In an absence of a credible alternative, citizens opted to conform with the regime in exchange for mass consumerism that some describe a trickling economy. All in the name [...]

GUEST POST: Revisiting representative democracy

By
2020-12-22T08:24:34+01:00Tue, 22nd Dec '20, 08:24|

Here are my reflections on how participatory and deliberative measures across political society could complement a revisited representative democracy in our country. Modern democracy could be termed as a “government by discussion” when public speaking and voting for representatives are the only direct formal rights adult citizens are entitled to. Paradoxically, the only moment the [...]

GUEST POST: Dysfunctional Representative Democracy

By
2020-11-12T09:06:51+01:00Thu, 12th Nov '20, 09:06|

Malta is experiencing a dysfunctional representative democracy. It started, unintentionally, prior to 2013. A Partit Laburista in government has institutionalised this faltering political system during the last seven years. It was its clandestine roadmap to gain power, expediting more wealth to the wealthy elites irrespective of costs and illegalities and coercing citizens to the bondage [...]

GUEST POST: While Castille burns

By
2020-09-28T12:34:38+02:00Mon, 28th Sep '20, 12:34|

While Castille is on fire, the ill-defined civil protection defences of a free and autonomous people keep marking time. Paulo Coelho’s famous warrior of light believes the path is treacherous. Imponderables discourage the formation of alliances. Pride, mistrust, arrogance and an absence of credible leadership of opposition clusters have over time become the party in [...]

GUEST POST: The concert of fragile destinies

By
2020-08-26T11:40:46+02:00Wed, 26th Aug '20, 11:40|

A parable that speaks volumes on the people of Malta’s individual and collective human and political behaviour; it metaphorically landscapes our islands’ fragile destinies across all sectors of society and the polity. All this will be further compounded by socio-economic problems unless we all, as an equal yet heterogeneous people, resign ourselves to begin “living [...]

GUEST POST: A PN renewal

By
2020-08-18T09:25:52+02:00Tue, 18th Aug '20, 09:25|

The main issues and points of divergence clogging the re-emergence of the PN as an alternative government amount to party renewal. This needs to be the prevalent theme of the leadership campaign. An electorate would not place its trust in a party that for long years has been plagued with its own internal disputes revolving [...]

GUEST POST: Adrian Delia is after absolute power

By
2020-08-01T16:47:17+02:00Sat, 1st Aug '20, 16:47|

Time of essence. I humbly just ask the reader to focus and draw their own conclusions from what the following would aspire to convey. The individual’s personal thinking is much more relevant that one’s reading itself. On a number of occasions, I had through literature concluded that the current impasse of the Partit Nazzjonalista is [...]

GUEST POST: Group-19, a coherent homogeneity

By
2020-07-29T10:13:43+02:00Wed, 29th Jul '20, 10:13|

Political parties, like presumably most other organisations, associations and groups, are not homogeneous entities. They are made up of individuals each and every one of them with different socio-economic, educational, religious and cultural backgrounds and hence with different opinions and ideas. They seek membership of such groups because they share the principles, the objectives and [...]

GUEST POST: Deliberation or submissiveness at the PN

By
2020-07-23T10:02:58+02:00Thu, 23rd Jul '20, 10:02|

The Executive Committee of the PN, composed of some 70 accredited individuals, convenes this evening to discuss the party current situation. It is reported that the party leader will be proposing a strategy towards a way forward. This initiative, on the advice of his persons of trust, is however eclipsed by a remarkable threat; side-lining [...]

GUEST POST: Of faith and politics, a heuristic approach

By
2020-07-07T09:39:22+02:00Tue, 7th Jul '20, 09:39|

This is not an academic critique on the recently approved changes to the Partit Nazzjonalista statute; certainly not a reproachful exercise of an otherwise highly deliberate, researched and pragmatic political instrument focussing on party structure and rules of procedures. It is an attempt towards a dialogue on the relevance of faith in a post-modernist party. [...]

GUEST POST: The Power of the Powerless

By
2020-06-22T10:13:47+02:00Mon, 22nd Jun '20, 10:13|

Is Malta, a presumed democratic nation-state, employing a mix of capitalist-neo-liberal economy that thrives on the entrepreneurship of influential elites co-opted with government; an ambience that generates aggregated high profits to the “powerful” while dispersing abstract material wealth leading to mass consumerism that has fabricated excessive corruption – what the French poet Louis Aragon had [...]

GUEST POST: Of Politics and Religion – the Treaty of Lisbon

By
2020-06-03T10:38:59+02:00Wed, 3rd Jun '20, 15:00|

The so called 2016 “equality bills”, being debated in Parliament, are in conflict with the European Union Treaty of Lisbon. In a 2016 position paper, cited by Tonio Borg in this Times of Malta article, the Church expresses concern that the transcribing of this EU Directive “will apparently be used by the Maltese government to [...]

GUEST POST: Sacrificing ‘consociational democracy’

By
2020-04-27T08:10:43+02:00Mon, 27th Apr '20, 08:10|

Arend Lijphart in a variety of contributions discusses the notion of a "consociational” or “consensus” democracy relating to or denoting a political system formed by the cooperation of different social groups on the basis of shared power. In his seminal 1999 treatise “Patterns of Democracy” he establishes a distinction between what he calls alternately “majoritarian” [...]

GUEST POST: PN Leadership Issues

By
2020-03-02T09:28:23+01:00Mon, 2nd Mar '20, 08:51|

The crisis is virtually open. There is no need to declare it formally. There are facts that prove it. Already during past weeks, political analysts, party activists, newspaper commentators and party parliamentary deputies have aired their concerns that the party reform programme, initiated by the PN leader himself, was being postponed if not also sabotaged. [...]

GUEST: Can there be a solution for the PN?

By
2020-02-12T19:57:18+01:00Wed, 12th Feb '20, 19:57|

A desperate situation is when one is on the verge of despair. This is the situation with the Partit Nazzjonalista. A cancerous syndrome diagnosis is not yet pronounced. But is felt encrypted in brain cells of most; a condition that could indicate severe psychosis that could lead to suicide. He who contemplates suicide is a [...]

GUEST POST: Can the PN be a solution?

By
2020-02-05T09:07:48+01:00Wed, 5th Feb '20, 09:07|

Continues from the first part of this article, linked here. Louis Galea’s recent indicative outline of his party reform proposals, that distinguish him as a creative political practitioner, and Claudio Grech’s intelligent version that complements same, could be a flow of fresh air were it not for the concomitant numerous disturbing and worrying publicly expressed [...]

GUEST POST: Can the Partit Nazzjonalista be the solution?

By
2020-01-28T15:25:08+01:00Tue, 28th Jan '20, 15:24|

“Circumstantial evidence” confirms that the highest hierarchies in government for long had abetted and themselves engaged in evil acts. One cannot but judge the current Labour government as morally and politically illegitimate. In accordance with Christian faith and the natural law a similar structure that for long years has developed its political action on mass [...]

GUEST POST: Bella Ciao II

By
2020-01-06T08:30:35+01:00Mon, 6th Jan '20, 08:30|

Bella Ciao is an Italian ‘canto popolare’. It tells the story of a ‘partigiano’ who offered his life, not exclusively in times of war, for his country’s freedom or liberation. In years, it developed into a protest call against forms of dictatorship and oppression. It was revived when Italy was struggling to overwhelm fascism. This ‘canto [...]

Go to Top