(Photo: TOLGA AKMEN/AFP/Getty Images) The family of Daphne Caruana Galizia has today called on prime minister Joseph Muscat to establish a public inquiry into whether her assassination in October 2017 could have been avoided. This request is supported by a legal opinion prepared by European Human Rights law experts Caoilfhionn Gallagher QC and [...]

  Few people will ever transact a quarter of a billion euro. At that level numbers no longer make sense to most people. It’s not being simple or mathematically challenged. It’s just that those values have no experiential context for most people’s reality. It’s like an astronomer trying to explain to me how far is [...]

Justin Schembri is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Even in a drawer of spoons. The image of his article in-Nazzjon (see below) is making the rounds and your eyes inevitably fall on the highlighted bit where he says “Maybe the Nationalist Party should get closer to the Labour Party and imitate it in [...]

This Egrant thing is a sideshow. A question was asked fifteen months ago the answer to which could not but have been no. And it has been answered. Joseph Muscat did not order inquiries on whether Keith Schembri or Konrad Mizzi broke laws. He also knows the answer to that question and the prime minister [...]

A statement released earlier by #occupyjustice: Despite #occupyjustice’s repeated pleas, the Malta Police did not act on the FIAU reports that exposed Konrad Mizzi’s and Keith Schembri’s money laundering crimes. However, the Malta Police seem to be very keen to chase after people, like the former Inspector Jonathan Ferris, who have fought for the truth [...]

The European Commission has finally expressed its concern about passport sales programs. Commissioner Vera Jourova gave a striking quote yesterday: “We don’t want any trojan horses in the EU”. When something is made to look like something else, it inevitably raises suspicion. Malta’s passport scheme is made to look like an attraction for investment to [...]

If the balance is tipped; if the scales are fixed to favour a side; if the blindfold on justice is removed and the sword wielded in the interests of someone against the other, justice becomes injustice and law becomes delinquency. In and of itself there is nothing outside the limits of the law for the [...]

  When an idea is packaged as dogma and a group of powerful people go about ramming it down people’s throat insisting no questions are asked, someone somewhere is bound to ask questions. Threats of or material accusations of heresy make it even more inevitable that at least some start to wonder if something is [...]

Well not really. It’s a tale on how TVM, the national broadcaster covered statements by Standard & Poor’s and Fitch. First a disclaimer. Joseph Muscat has legitimised the logical fallacy of tu quoque. Being told in retort that I too covered the two statements differently does not hold water. I am not a news service. [...]

This Facebook post by Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando is remarkable. Firstly, of course, it relies on the idea that every time people go to bed, they wake up the next morning like goldfish, with no memory. Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando accused David Casa of treachery and of knowingly speaking untruths to harm those around him. Perhaps, for [...]

The Malta Today results corroborated the earlier Lovin Malta survey that used a different methodology and got very near results on the voting intentions front showing a gap between the PL and PN of something between 94,000 and 100,000 votes: meaning that for any person intending to vote PN, two would be voting Labour. That [...]

In a short radio interview yesterday morning Adrian Delia continued with his self-immolation tour. He said the PN “lost its credibility and is not managing to show it renewed itself”. It has and it isn’t but not for the reasons being spun by the leadership of the party. There’s an attempt to give the hallucinating [...]

There is a significant logical gap in something Adrian Delia told The Sunday Times yesterday. “There is nothing in the 1,500 pages of the Egrant inquiry report, which has not been published so far in its entirety, which may alter its crystal-clear conclusions.” It’s never difficult to understand whose side Adrian Delia is on. To [...]

From my article in The Sunday Times today: "Fraud and forgery were a mainstay of Mossack Fonseca. It was their USP. Was this evaluated in the inquiry? ... Even if, for argument’s sake, the outcome of insufficient evidence to prosecute may be the right one, the Attorney General should consider exercising his discretion at law [...]

… said the wannabe diva. The soul-crushing climax of the Saviour Balzan interview with Michelle Muscat was, of course, the exhumation of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s remains for a crazed Sabbath dance choreographed by the interviewer and the interviewee. Then, with blood still dripping from her fangs, she went on to express surprise not everyone falls [...]

The government has been pushing the boundaries of its power for sometimes. During the last 8 months it has moved with unseemly haste to remove banners and posters of protest on baseless legal pretexts. A pair of such banners were raised by Daphne Caruana Galizia’s sons and husband asking “Why aren’t Keith Schembri and Konrad [...]

  Not that it would ever occur to me to attend, but the misnomered August Moon Ball is on again tonight. And the odd tradition founded by President George Abela of dodging the August full moon to comply with the Muscats’ holiday plans continues. As the name implies, the idea initially was to have the [...]

Joseph Muscat visited the tomb of Francesco Buhagiar a predecessor of his in office who has been dead for 84 years. Nice little ceremony.  The photographer had enough of an angle to picture the prime minister standing in front of the tomb but, oddly the prime minister stood on it to pay his respects. Quite [...]

It is only right that when Standard & Poor’s expresses concern about Malta’s banking sector, people in the financial services industry prick their ears. They should not be surprised. They have been close witnesses of what has been going on for some time. People who have to hunt every month know that the markets have [...]