From my article in The Sunday Times today: "The prime minister now warns 18-year-old voters that they must find a minister to fix their driving test for them. Because that’s the way politics is done in Malta and the prime minister said he would disagree with any other way. I don’t think that’s a recycled [...]
The Constitutional Court turned down a case I filed, complaining that a court decision finding me responsible for libel breached my right to free expression. The case goes back some years. I wrote a post about how Malta should have an anti-mafia law. In that article I was explaining the meaning of omertà and said [...]
The industrial tribunal, chaired by Anna Mallia of all people, found Jonathan Ferris was unlawfully fired by the FIAU. He was dismissed during his probation period just days after the general election of 2017. People think that during probation they can fire someone with impunity. It’s not like that. You cannot fire someone during probation [...]
This is going to feel like a cop-out though it’s not meant to be. I think the government is right to provide incentives, even monetary incentives, to encourage students to choose academic programs that yield a greater return to the economy. There are, no doubt, more reasons than merely wealth that should go into deciding [...]
Special edition of PEN Malta's podcast ahead of Monday's book launch. To attend the launch register on [email protected]
We've been on this campaign for 6 years. And as one of us was called to the police station today to be interrogated merely for speaking, you may be reminded that what we set out to achieve when Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed is, at this point, still an ambition. We want a fair society [...]
Someone at police headquarters appears keen to persuade Repubblika’s Robert Aquilina they are far more effective at law enforcement than he is in the habit of suggesting. Today he was called in for questioning and cautioned that everything he said could and would be used against him in a court of law. The funny thing [...]
Perhaps no other statement by Robert Abela before his remarks of today better represents the depth of anti-democratic populism in his politics and the politics of the ruling Labour Party. Coldly and cynically, he shattered any hope or any dream a child might ever have of being inspired by his example and motivated by his [...]
Robert Abela yesterday agreed to publish a white paper with legislative changes to the laws regulating the media before taking them to Parliament. It wasn’t something he wanted to do. In fact, there are draft laws already in front of Parliament. They’ve been there more than a year, frozen, after the shock of the international [...]
This statue stands outside the Parliament building. It will be there for the next two weeks as we remember the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia 6 years ago. Its maker, Gerald Moroder, moulded the statute with materials collected from the debris of the explosion that killed Giovanni Falcone in Capaci, Sicily, 30 years ago. The [...]
Using words like “shocking” or “scandal” is incorrect. No one is shocked or scandalised to read that Labour Party loyalists are placed in strategic positions in government to ensure they discriminate in favour of Labour Party supporters (and against others) or use public services as currency to secure voter support. People need to stop pretending [...]
Tomorrow we'll be announcing events marking the 6th anniversary since the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. The battle for justice is not over. And now we need you more than ever before.
https://youtu.be/-gr0qiuM4eI?si=bJWYxS5XFRZXC0ur Speaking for someone’s right to put up a meme that makes light of Down’s Syndrome is an unenviable job. They say that if you want to be funny punch up, not down. Mock those more powerful than you and you’ll get a laugh out of us. Mock the less powerful and nobody, apart from [...]
If there’s any advice I should ever find myself giving, that would be not to take my advice. I have no illusion of knowledge or life experience that could endow me with any confidence I might foresee a tsunami before it drowns me and everyone else. Also, I’m acutely aware of my inconsistencies, attitudes that [...]
Eddie Fenech Adami often repeated the phrase that ‘politics is a service’. He meant it in the Christian sense that politicians should remember that the power they are given is not for their reward but for the benefit of others. The more powerful you are, the more you need to remember that your function is [...]
You’d have missed this comment because it was uploaded yesterday under this blog post from April 2021. In that post I wrote about how slow the Maltese judicial process can be. Lassan Cisse was killed for sport in April 2019. Two soldiers were charged with his murder and were released on bail while waiting trial. [...]
Joseph Muscat told the Public Accounts Committee the European Commission knew all about the agreement his government had made with Azerbaijan’s gas company. The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation fact-checked that and the Commission told them it wasn’t true. Confronted by the Commission’s flat denial, Joseph Muscat pivoted. He could no longer say the Commission knew [...]
The government’s response in court to the challenge from the Council for the Maltese language is truly disgusting. Quick sum-up for background. In a press statement the government announced the creation of a new entity and appointed former TVM editor Norma Saliba to head it. With the announcement came a legal notice that said that [...]
From my article in The Sunday Times today: "Fraud and forgery are part of any society outside Utopia. Neither element suggests there is something particularly evil about the governance of this society. But limiting the analysis of this scandal to fraud and forgery takes our eyes off the real motivation of the perpetrators of this [...]
