In an earlier post, I wrote about Keith Schembri declaring himself governed by the ethics of a tax avoider and applying that as a justification, as he sees it, for his conduct in public office. That wasn’t the worst bit of the character evidence he gave on his own behalf yesterday at the Daphne inquiry. [...]

There’s more to take out of Keith Schembri’s testimony yesterday. None of this is necessarily new as such. And these specific observations may not make an enormous difference to the inquiry’s search for any share the state may have had in allowing Daphne to be killed. But Keith Schembri’s testimony is also an eye-witness account [...]

Let’s see how Magistrate Charmaine Galea feels about this. “You better stop your dirty business. If not, we will be stopping you.” In case of doubt, ‘you’ is ‘you, Magistrate Charmaine Galea’. Do you feel threatened, ma’am? Or do you think that given the way you have expressed yourself, I have a sacred right to [...]

Here’s another take-away from yesterday’s testimony by Keith Schembri to the Daphne Caruana Galizia inquiry. Keith Schembri recalls the time when he had been diagnosed with cancer. He emailed his resignation from the post of PM’s chief of staff. “I had cancer,” he told the inquiry yesterday. “If it were for me I would have [...]

The Daphne Caruana Galizia inquiry Board reminded the prime minister that only they can decide when they’ve heard enough evidence to fulfil their terms of reference. In a decree by Board Chairman Judge Michael Mallia, the Board responded to repeated calls by Prime Minister Robert Abela to shut down the inquiry by tomorrow because, the [...]

  In a moment of flagrant disloyalty to his “friend” and former boss Joseph Muscat, Keith Schembri told Jason Azzopardi at the Daphne Caruana Galizia inquiry this morning, that he knew the 2017 election would be held in June by March. Just because he said that I’m not going to dismount from my suspicions that [...]

Ever so often this keeps coming up. Keith Schembri, whose testimony is to be taken with extreme caution, said something about someone today, we’ve often heard before. This is the exchange with Therese Comodini Cachia as reported on Times of Malta: 'Lobbying' journalists  3.02pm Schembri is asked about meeting with journalists. He says some were closer [...]

Do you remember the mantra ‘Malta tagħna lkoll’? It was the positive slogan to represent Labour’s pre-2013 key campaign message that the country was being run by a clique, an establishment, an elite of blue-eyed and blue-voting cronies, that you needed to be a ‘baron’ or a ‘friend of a friend’ to get ahead in [...]

Freedom of conscience, of education, of speech, of assembly, are among the very fundamentals of democracy and all of them would be nullified should freedom of the press ever be successfully challenged. - Franklin D. Roosevelt The Malta Labour Party, today Partit Laburista, has a long history of aggression against the free media. This goes [...]

Every so often, in the gaps between stories about COVID-19, the latest corruption and impunity scandal and Brexit, we get chunky headlines about how the court has stopped a nurses’ strike or allowed a nurses’ strike or a pilots’ strike or non-strike. Industrial disputes, especially when they risk inconveniencing a wider range of people than [...]

Yorgen Fenech did not make a legal move on the inquiry into the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia. Sure, he hired lawyers to write a long letter, quoting laws left, right and centre and a lawyer to sign it with a flourish. But the letter was sent to a host of individuals, none of whom [...]

Repubblika has warned Members of Parliament that should they adopt the draft law they are currently debating to “regularise” persons of trust in the public service, the NGO will challenge the new law in the constitutional court. Repubblika said it has legal advice that the draft law is in breach of the constitutional rule that [...]

I find myself once again retching, reading Simon Mercieca’s blog and peering inside the sick mind of Yorgen Fenech on whose behalf he writes. Like the Christ-killing libel against the Jews, Simon Mercieca digs up the old chestnut that Matthew killed his mother. He quotes an interview Matthew Caruana Galizia gave to my colleague Carlo [...]

“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” - Abraham Lincoln Robert Abela thinks that he can foresee the future, and he keeps firing from the hip. He was proved wrong many a time. Take covid-19. He had predicted that all would be fine by Christmas. He was wrong and he has [...]

I’ve brushed shoulders with Anton Rea Cutajar once before. It was last Easter when Repubblika dared complain that acts by the government that Repubblika argued were illegal had, amongst their consequences, the death of 12 people at sea. That’s when I had coined the moniker Tiger King, or, more properly, Tiger Kink. I had borrowed [...]

Jacob Borg of Times of Malta followed up with the local police who confirmed they’re looking into press reports that a Calabrian accountant, Roberto Recordare, used two Malta companies as part of a plan to launder billions of euro for mafia associates. Roberto Recordare denies any wrongdoing, though he has not reacted to press reports [...]

Pieter Omtzigt’s mandate launched and renewed after the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia, now expires. The government of Malta has managed to sit tight and wait out his assiduous insistence that Malta needs serious reforms if it is to climb out of the pit of horrors where the killing of a journalist uncovering the government’s [...]

Like Agamemnon and Menelaus, Joseph Muscat and Robert Abela jumped the ring ropes as a macho tag team in their assault on the independence of the Daphne Caruana Galizia public inquiry. Joseph Muscat asserted his imaginary prerogative to define what the inquiry can and cannot inquire on. And Robert Abela is asserting his imaginary prerogative [...]

Breaking news. Several ex-Presidents of the USA, President-elect, anyone who’s anything, known to anybody, Homer Simpson and even Elvis Presley are lining up to be injected with a Covid-19 vaccine in front of the world’s media. Why? Because it looks like it will satisfy anyone who is “not too sure” about how safe these vaccines [...]