The Prime Minister yesterday issued a royal decree ordering all excavations or demolitions stopped until further review of the rules that according to him are now causing buildings to collapse. Facebook has since yesterday been replete with debates interpreting that decree and trying to define limits around its absurdity. That's why royal decrees have been [...]
The leadership of the PN is drunk on a punch of factional politics. When MPs resort to WhatsApp groups or Facebook posts to express disagreement, subtly or not so much, with the line the party leadership takes that’s officially described as factionalism. It isn’t really. It’s venting of frustration: leaking pipes in a plumbing system [...]
Darren Debono, who has been charged in Italy for smuggling Libyan fuel for Sicily’s Cosa Nostra has been elected to the committee of Premier League club Senglea Athletic FC and now sits on the “technical team” managing the club’s team. A report announcing the news on TVM, the national broadcaster, introduced Darren Debono as an [...]
German public TV NDR ran an investigation this week into links between sports betting shops in Germany and organised crime. The feature interviews the Chief Prosecutor responsible for organised crime in Frankfurt, Noah Krueger, who says his office is investigating whether several dozen betting shops have been used as fronts for operations laundering money for [...]
The Prime Minister ordered all permits for excavations and demolitions issued according to the laws of the land, suspended until he rewrites the law. He looks like “he’s doing something” in the face of a crisis. The crisis is his doing. Avoiding it was not just within his powers. It was his responsibility which he [...]
I sat down to write on the Prime Minister's intervention today after yet another collapse of a building that had the misfortune of being next door to something ironically termed 'development'. I still have some thoughts to add to the below but this guest post sent in by a regular contributor to this site sets [...]
Manwel Mallia was getting ready for battle this morning. But free speech and media freedom NGOs filed their appeal with the heads of government meeting in Malta tomorrow encouraging them to read Pieter Omtzigt's Council of Europe report and learn how Malta is systematically failing in guaranteeing the safety of journalists and upholding the rule [...]
The ‘Competent Person’ appointed by the MFSA to take control of Pilatus Bank has failed in his reporting duties according to law, an article by Godfrey Leone Ganado for this website says. Lawrence Connell, who worked as a financial regulator in the United States in the past, appears to have missed deadlines in submitting reports [...]
Robert Arrigo was not wrong in expressing frustration about some of the stuff people put on Facebook. Messaging in politics used to be a science. You had trained people who thought words through, evaluated them against the data they collected, tested them in focus groups, and exercised discipline and coordinated speakers to ensure the public [...]
The story of Manwel Mallia sending a WhatsApp Group that includes Nationalist MPs the beginning of a conspiracy to “lobby against” a Council of Europe report is only superficially about him revealing strategy in the wrong chat window. This is not about Manwel Mallia typing on his phone without looking who exactly would be getting [...]
I knew Ivan Fenech for many years, never very well. I knew him mostly through what I heard others say of him. That he was smart, funny, kind, patient, civil and principled. And I knew him as everyone else did, one of the most recognisable pens on Maltese newspapers. I got to know him more [...]
Repubblika filed an application in court asking that Ministers Konrad Mizzi, Edward Scicluna and Chris Cardona are ordered to give it a copy of the document they quoted in court proceedings that appeared to be an extract of the unpublished Egrant inquiry. Only around 50 of 1,500 pages of the inquiry were published by [...]
You might say that Adrian Delia’s brief and turbulent marriage with the PN is on the rocks if what you had in mind was the end of freefall from a plane without a parachute. But even now, his limbs shattered, his vision blurred, and blood pouring out of his nostrils, he still looks like he [...]
Konrad Mizzi has withdrawn his second human rights claim yesterday dispatching his lawyer John Bonello who ceded the case the Minister had filed. Konrad Mizzi filed a claim in the constitutional court that the right in the law that allowed Repubblika and Simon Busuttil to ask for an inquiry into the Panama Papers breached his [...]
The Opposition has indicated it will not support the government’s bill to amend the Constitution to split the role of the Attorney General in two, retaining, even enhancing, the control the prime minister has on the institutions that are supposed to have the power to put handcuffs on him. That is welcome news. But only [...]
This is the sixth part of a series arising from an interview with an ex-staff member at the AUM. Part 1 is here. In Post-Truth: The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back, Matthew D’Ancona writes: ‘There is a voice within each of us that resists lies, even if that voice has… been [...]
A Repubblika statement of earlier today: PARLIAMENT SHOULD NOT APPROVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS WITHOUT CONSULTATION Repubblika is concerned about the bill the government is piloting this evening at the House of Representatives to amend the Constitution and calls on Members of Parliament to reject the bill if they are serious about wanting proper Constitutional reforms that [...]
Remarks by the two party leaders yesterday had one common underlying theme, if you look close enough. They both want us to march in their platoon, but it’s really one tune they’re playing. Consider how Joseph Muscat yesterday said he was worried dissent within the PN might mean he would not secure the two-thirds majority [...]
From my article in The Sunday Times today: "The Partit Nazzjonalista has no exoskeleton. Its ability to communicate with the outside world is limited and its efforts to look any better than the blubbery mush we can all see make it frankly more pathetic. "The similarities with the state of the Partit Laburista exceed the [...]
Sent in by a regular contributor to this site: I find myself frustrated. A section of PN supporters I speak to keep on insisting that being critical of the party at this moment is giving Labour an advantage. How’s that for the epitome of heads in the sand syndrome? Wakey, wakey! Labour HAS the advantage.... [...]