When Joseph Muscat gave evidence in Adrian Delia’s case against the government yesterday, he said that the notorious €100 million termination clause in the deal with Vitals Global Healthcare – later transferred to Steward Health Care – “was included as a way to guarantee a bank’s loan without violating EU state aid rules”. In saying [...]
‘Investment’ is one of the most twisted terms used by politicians here. It somehow sounds better than spending. Investment suggests there would be a return somewhere down the line. It is a loan you give to fate, fully expecting it to be repaid with interest. Spending on infrastructure can be an investment. If you’re building [...]
Daniel Mercieca is an individual who is claiming on Facebook that he used to work at Construct Furniture. You know the one. That's the guys who hosted Joseph Muscat in their expensive kitchen at the end of 2015, recording a "New Year's Message" pretending to be poor families made good as a result of some [...]
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From my article in The Sunday Times today: "But there’s more to a collapsed house than criminal responsibility. There is political responsibility and the need to learn from mistakes and change rules to make things better next time. That’s what having checks and balances in a democracy is all about. "If we had a half-way [...]
Two days ago Robert Abela told journalists they could ask him 100 times whether he sat on the cabinet meeting that decided on whether to pardon Vincent Muscat, il-Koħħu. His answer would remain unchanged. He’s bound by cabinet secrecy and you couldn’t get the information out of him whether you threw a light on his [...]
Chris Said wrote yesterday on his Facebook page that Gozo General Hospital will return to public ownership in short order in an agreement with Steward Healthcare to quit Gozo’s only hospital. It has been in private ownership since it was sold together with St Luke’s and Karin Grech’s hospital to the obscure outfit VGH in [...]
Yesterday’s podcast was not kind to Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando. It wasn’t intended to be. I wrote that I felt he deserved the humiliation he was served by the people he imagined were his new friends. I wrote that it is the fate of turncoats that the only people who are likely to trust them less [...]
The MFSA this week announced a replacement to US citizen Lawrence Connell who resigned from the position of “competent person” at law to oversee the affairs of Pilatus Bank. The new appointee is Robert Ancilleri, an accountant who is also in business with Kevin Deguara and Jean Karl Farrugia, partners of law firm DF advocates. [...]
My piece in this season's Money Magazine. The world is changing. Do not expect the clock to turn back. The global village has come to pass. We will not go back from that. The far-left first rallied against the injustices of the new times as industry was spirited to where exploitation was cheaper. Then the [...]
Albert Gauci Cunningham was on another 2013 Labour Party billboard telling us that Joseph will bring about much-needed change. How right he was. Joseph made a change, a big one. He changed Malta from a respected member of the European Union to the ‘corrupt island in the Mediterranean.’ We had a respected statesman as a [...]
Robert Abela fancies himself as some sort of chess master, out-thinking everyone, always 7 moves ahead. But the Gavin Gulia situation has landed him in yet another muddy mess he should have anticipated. Gavin Gulia justified the ending of his 5-minute stint in parliament on instructions from the prime minister to stay on as tourism [...]
Manuel Delia · It's Not About 'deserve' Robert Abela appears to have picked the chairman of the commission that protects the interests of persons with disability to fill the seat vacated first by Edward Scicluna and then, in record time, by Gavin Gulia. The gentleman has never been openly partisan though he’s been part of [...]
The Labour government has trivialised the position of Member of Parliament to the point of absurdity and, by logical extension, irrelevance. Consider the series of cynical moves that played out over the last several days. Edward Scicluna resigned from parliament. It was really because he was retiring from or being thrown out of the front-bench [...]
Robert Abela refused to answer questions on whether he recused himself when cabinet discussed and decided to refuse a pardon to Vince Muscat il-Koħħu in exchange for testifying for the prosecution in the case against Daphne Caruana Galizia’s killers and several other cases, including murders. The issue of recusal came up because Vincent Muscat told [...]
This piece has been in print for a while but I missed it when it came out in November. Hopefully it hasn't aged too much. Let’s be optimistic, shall we? If only for the sake of argument the worst of Covid-19 is a memory, and our economy and our way of life can emerge from self-isolation [...]
Repubblika President Robert Aquilina today delivered to Parliament’s Speaker a copy of a document proposing Parliamentary reform. Speaking to the press, Robert Aquilina recalled that this year will be the 100th anniversary of Malta’s Parliament. Though Parliament operates from a new building it is burdened by old-fashioned practices that are out of sync with today’s [...]
Euronews separately interview Carmel Caccopardo and me about if and how Malta has changed in the year since Robert Abela took over. They also asked the government and the Labour Party for interviews but, as ever, "neither had responded at the time of publication". The article is linked here.