It is rare for a former PN leader to dish out advice to his successor. They’ve been in the job themselves and they know that a meddling retiree is unhelpful, whatever their intentions. I don’t think Lawrence Gonzi’s comments to Times of Malta yesterday were necessarily meant to be helpful, at least from the point [...]
The counting of Local Council votes over three days is like Chinese torture for the PN. You have to admire those volunteers who go up to Naxxar every day. They’re like the Light Brigade, fully aware they are fodder for the roaring cannons. The way Local Council vote counting works gives those perspex-bashing Labour partisans [...]
In a way, the Valletta Local Council only has a symbolic significance. In electoral terms, it is actually not that big of a town and in terms of any influence on national affairs the town council of our capital city is just as limited as all the others. It still rankles though. Ultimately it was [...]
From a report in The Atlantic today covering the Council of Europe's findings on Malta: "If the report had been about any other country in western Europe, heads would roll, governments would collapse, and the international community might consider the country a pariah. Instead, the report was about Malta, the smallest member of the European [...]
Euronews ran this news report of this morning's Council of Europe meeting where Pieter Omtzigt's report on Malta has been adopted in spite of Manuel Mallia's less than subtle attempt at subverting the process with over 50 proposed amendments, all over-ruled. The government this evening issued an iron curtain statement that makes no attempt to [...]
Luigi di Maio didn’t do well in the elections. That’s hardly bad news. If I had a vote in Italy I would have sooner chewed glass than consider voting for his party, never mind the bear that has swallowed him from his right flank. But Di Maio is grown up enough to understand that he [...]
Another old timer who is also younger than you imagine wrote in this Guest Post: I waited a couple of days before I started jotting down my thoughts on last Saturday’s EP Elections. In the run-up, I’ve had the opportunity to meet several people who know me and my active past within the PN. When [...]
Sent in by guest writer known as 'Lake'. As the dust slowly settles, all that remains are the numbers and their subsequent analysis. This previous guest post by a former PN strategist lays down an impeccable explanation of the PN HQ maneuvers and the subsequent PN voter behavior. My previous posts focused on how the [...]
Malta’s government has just been horribly humiliated by the Justice and Human Rights Committee of the Council of Europe that considered and rejected some 50 amendments Joseph Muscat's government presented to change the meaning of a report by a Dutch MP that found systemic failures in the rule of law in Malta. The report by [...]
Martin Bugelli is full of arcane and beautifully fascinating trivia. He counts columns of fields of knowledge in his arsenal that make conversation with him particularly fascinating. Not for the first time, I learn a new word from him. Apparently, or so I discovered today, rabbits eat their own shit in order to survive giving [...]
David Stellini said he resigned his seat in Malta’s Parliament because he was tired of the divisive tribalism of Maltese politics and felt he couldn’t do much good within it. He’s not wrong about the fact that Maltese politics is counter-productive, frustratingly petty and a space completely unsuitable to articulate any materially useful vision of [...]
David Stellini’s resignation from MP (more on that later) creates a vacancy in the PN Parliamentary Group. David Stellini was elected in a by-election when Marthese Portelli renounced the seat after being elected from two districts. This means that empty seat will be filled by co-option which in practice means an MP is handpicked by [...]
International Free Speech NGOs have warned Maltese MPs at the Council of Europe not to try to divert attention from an important report looking into the context and the aftermath of the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia by seeking to discredit its author. The letter signed by Reporters without Borders, Article19, the European Federation of [...]
The Guest Post is written by a former senior PN official known to me. He's younger than you suspect and more experienced than he lets on. The MEP elections have come and gone. Unlike previous elections, I sat this one out. I missed spending hours on end at the Party's headquarters working within ELCOM and [...]
In spite of all the celebrations by Joseph Muscat and his crew that Repubblika’s case in the upper courts demanding judicial review of the government’s manner of appointing judges and infringing on judicial independence was dismissed out of hand, the Attorney General today has asked for leave to appeal the Court’s real decision to achieve [...]
The Attorney General has informed the court he refuses to use the powers given to him by the law to monitor bank accounts of suspects in the VGH hospitals sales scandal. He reminded the court today that the law gives him the power to make such a decision and he owes nobody an explanation if [...]
Guest Post by a PN activist known to me: Let me spell it out for you. Adrian Delia is the biggest disaster the PN has had to face, ever. Roberta Metsola and David Casa's election shows that the vast majority of the PN electorate cares about corruption and, more specifically, the murder of Daphne Caruana [...]
This morning I saw a post on Times of Malta's Facebook page by 'Pierre Portelli' advising PN leaders, partisans, supporters and voters to "stand up and panic". I was too focused on finding the right quip to remember there are two Pierre Portellis in the inner workings of the PN and the one writing this [...]
Adrian Delia has held tight through crises of his leadership in the nineteen months he’s been the leader of the PN. He’s hardly done anything else. Things have been so generally rough for him, he recently appraised the state of health of his leadership by saying, rather forlornly, that he didn’t have to worry about [...]
Joseph Muscat yesterday claimed he had achieved the largest Labour Party majority in the history of his party specifically mentioning having beaten Sir Paul Boffa's previous record. That was before he needed to revise down his party's estimate of the extent of the voting majority his party obtained. But even before that happened Joseph [...]