Why is the government so hostile to the idea of increasing the number of judges and magistrates? It is facile to say that such a move “wouldn’t solve everything”. Of course, it wouldn’t. Outside a chemistry lab there’s nothing you can add to anything that would change everything about something. Granted some judges are more [...]
Will clumsy functionaries paid by tax payers to make politicians look good on social media, please mind their fingers? I remember as a junior staffer helping out in the organisation of a visit by a Chinese Assistant Deputy Under Prime Minister or something, which from a country of more than a billion people is still [...]
A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you. – C.S. Lewis Prime Minister Robert Abela is a proud man. He said it many a time during his two-hour reply to the leader of opposition’s [...]
A playboy casino owner with links to the underworld, a financial regulator, a gaming lawyer and a staffer for a banana republic’s prime minister walked into the lobby of the Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas ... Sounds like the beginning of a porn parody for a Scorsese classic. But what’s happening here is neither titillating [...]
Let the good times roll, Joe.
If you provide professional advice on financial services, you must work within a published set of rules. You must prove you are trained and qualified to do the job, and if you’re caught acting unprofessionally you can be fined, or your license to provide the service is removed. This is done to protect your customers. [...]
When MFSA boss Joe Cuschieri travelled with Yorgen Fenech to a gaming shindig in Las Vegas in May 2018, he had left the Malta Gaming Authority just a few weeks before. In comments to the press yesterday he made it a point to clarify that he was no longer the gaming regulator when he travelled [...]
You could dismiss this One TV “story” as yet another small-time opportunity for Labour to pick on Jason Azzopardi, someone their people love to hate. But being a political party does not absolve them of their responsibilities to democracy, and we have gone too far down the road of tyranny if we stop worrying about [...]
Joe Cuschieri admitted yesterday that while serving as CEO of the Malta Financial Services Authority he travelled to Las Vegas with Yorgen Fenech to advise him on “regulatory issues”. The financial services regulator told The Malta Independent yesterday he gave his time and advice without payment or compensation. Joe Cuschieri is one of the two [...]
The Malta Gaming Authority licensed a company owned by the Tumas Group, Oracle Gaming Shops Ltd, as a Type 1 Gaming Services company. The licensing was granted in 2020. Employees of Oracle Gaming Shops were told the company was set up to take over the gaming businesses that were run by Yorgen Fenech before [...]
Will every government minister, parliamentarian, regulator, police officer and sundry person who should have really known better who accepted Yorgen Fenech’s hospitality in the last three years or so, been on his plane though they weren’t his pilot, fucked him though they weren’t Mrs Fenech, driven him around though they weren’t his driver, cooked pasta [...]
Manuel Delia · Setting The Date The power of the prime minister to set any date they please within a 5-year term of a parliament to call a general election is another power the prime minister should not have. Rather nostalgically, they call it ‘the prime minister’s prerogative’. A word like prerogative should have no [...]
Photo: Matthew Mirabelli, Times of Malta Look at this Times of Malta interview with Robert Abela from 2 September. It was six months after Miriam Pace, 54, was killed when her Ħamrun house collapsed into a building site next door. Her husband, Carmel Pace, publicly complained that his wife’s death ‘had meant nothing [...]
People use numbers a lot. To measure time and to describe the weather; in school and at work; to count money, measure distances, reach phones open locks, read and flip through TV channels. Engineers use numbers to erect buildings and roll out roads. Doctors count cells and dose medicines. A few years back I wrote an article [...]
Manuel Delia · Go Back To Islamistan A history teacher in France was explaining to his students the true meaning of freedom of speech in a secular world. He showed them cartoons of Muhammad saying he was aware that this was a taboo for Muslims and they’d be offended by it. But freedom of speech [...]
A 15-judge panel of the European Court of Justice heard today arguments from NGO Repubblika in its case arguing that appointments to the judiciary in April 2019 were not in conformity with the Treaty of European Union that requires judicial independence. Three judges and three magistrates were appointed by Joseph Muscat’s government in spite of [...]
I’ll refer here to a Times of Malta letter from Eddie Privitera not because it deserves a response in and of itself, but because in one point he makes he repeats a general line from this week’s hymnbook for Labour spokesmen from across the partisan divide. Eddie Privitera makes the case that Bernard Grech is [...]
Carmel Caccopardo of the ADPD makes a fair point. Robert Abela used to be the lawyer for the Maksars who are suspected of involvement in the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia. They are also suspected of being crime lords in their own right. In any case they’re running free. It seems that the government may [...]
The government continues to ignore calls from the Council of Europe and others to give parliament space to oversee its activities. Co-opting the prime minister’s chief of staff to parliament, while he retains his job, takes to an unprecedented extreme the hijack of parliament. Why do we need a parliament at all? Why do we [...]
Archbishop Charles Scicluna was in quite a mood yesterday. He looked at the camera and wagging his finger he “cursed” profits made from usury: that’s excessive interest made on loans above the legal limit of 8%. He spoke of suicides of people who could not repay payday loans. He looked like he had specific and [...]