Political parties do not exist for their own sake. They are an enabling tool for the functioning of democracy. It helps to understand where they came from. Commons elected to Westminster were chosen, not for belonging to this or that party, but for being the favourite representative of their constituency.But in a chamber of hundreds, [...]

On election’s eve, Joseph Muscat, wanted to make sure the justified rumblings among employees and people who economically depend on the gaming industry changed nothing in the outcome he wanted out of the election. Not for him electoral loss because of the economic consequences of the corruption in his government.So he resorted to the simplest [...]

It’s been two weeks to the hour that this blog has been around. It was two nights after the election result and the first morning back to work and the old routine. Everything was the same again but everything was different. I’ve now been away from the local political scene for over 4 years. I [...]

When they had to choose between the obscurantist proto-communist puppets of Libya and western liberal democracy the first time voters of 1981 and 1987 did not have a tough choice. They are 48 to 58 now. When we had to choose between Europe and vaguely described, poorly argued shades of xenophobic isolationism, the choice for [...]

The Archbishop had to intervene to tell us hate speech is not such a great idea. He did so after Tony Zarb came back from his retirement to incite the lynching of David Casa and Roberta Metsola for doing a Fredo Corleone and taking sides against the family. Alfred Griscti then predictably branded the Archbishop [...]

The first electoral appointment for the newly re-configured PN, will be the European Parliament elections in 2019. Naturally incumbents, candidates and aspirants will probably already be thinking how they can position themselves to try to carve a space for themselves in the big blue chamber. It’s also by extension a significant position in the national [...]

There is a vacuum in our political framework and nature, to coin a phrase, abhors a vacuum. Labour is thoroughly invested in the irrepressible and irreversible exploitation of the little space that we have. Economic libertarianism has become the central philosophical precept of the political program of the Labour party and profit has become its [...]

There are two stages in the life of a political party. True life is cyclical so one stage gives way to another over and over again. A political party is either implementing its political program or writing it. A political party does not lose its reason for being when in opposition. All this apocalyptic dejection [...]

I remember I was upstairs in the balcony of the hall of the old Stamperija. It was the General Council meeting of the PN after the 1996 election. I sat with the press because I was not even a signed-up member of the party at the time, let alone a Councillor. But it was a [...]

This one goes out to people who voted Labour understanding, perhaps only privately, the seriousness of what had already been proven with respect to Konrad Mizzi, Keith Schembri and Brian Tonna. You are a big, big, big chunk of the voting population. If 55% of our voting population is too obtuse, ill-informed, susceptible to have [...]

Here's a Facebook post by Frank Psaila capturing the mood of the times in and around the PN. Quite a few people have been speaking about their exclusion or the exclusion of others from the direction of the PN in recent years. Some have been less than subtle in their complaints they themselves or some favourite of [...]

Apart from the political unfairness and criminal illegality of buying votes of entire families by giving unproductive lifetime sinecures to individuals, one should take the time to work out the economic cost of this. We must do this because economic consequences take a long time to bubble up and they give way like quagmire around [...]

Here's the Prime Minister speaking to inewsmalta.com, the online version of the GWU's l-orizzont: “Il-kritika se tibqa’ pero bid-differenza li Konrad Mizzi ġie ġġudikat mill-poplu.” I’m not quoting out of context, selectively choosing a sound bite that distorts the intention of the speaker. This is the highlighted quote chosen by the very friendly interviewer to [...]

My article in The Sunday Times this morning: The election result can be dissected in matters of ideology, presentation, language and methods. The ideological question is whether, given the territory occupied by Labour in the civil liberties space and the economic management space, the PN was reduced to an identity orphan unsure of what it wants [...]

Exchanging votes for jobs and favours is an exercise in mutual contempt of the democratic process. It is also something that anecdotally appears to have been an exceptionally influential feature of the last election. It will not change anything to the outcome but there are lessons to be learnt here. If our democracy is to [...]

They waited until election day in Malta. But they did not wait to be courted personally by the prime minister who rushed to visit their offices before sleeping off the champagne and before even having a cabinet or staff put together. It was already too late. They had waited patiently for the election result to [...]

Ah come on! Really? After all the suspicious dealings with the sale of Enemalta; after all the fishy business with the sale of the hospitals; after all the head-scratching findings on the gas tanker acquisition: was he really the only qualified guy to flog our national airline? Is anyone out there, whether they voted Labour [...]

The Prime Minister will be announcing his Cabinet today. There will be time to analyse his choices but there is one question we are all asking ourselves today. Is he also going to lift Konrad Mizzi on his shoulders, cheer him on as a hero, and reappoint him as Minister in his new Cabinet? Perhaps, [...]