Labour supporters are getting to choose the next prime minister of Malta. But ‘prime minister’ is a serious understatement as a description of the role. There’s also the annoying detail that our prime minister – whoever happens to be holding that office – is effectively an elected absolute monarch, a bit like a pope. He [...]
Allegations of fraud in internal party elections have become habitual. It is frightening that this can happen. Although party elections are theoretically internal to the party itself, it’s clear that the implication is national. Therefore fraud in party electoral processes is cheating the entire country of the correct outcome of an election. Think of [...]
This set is by Robert Agius
Bella Ciao is an Italian ‘canto popolare’. It tells the story of a ‘partigiano’ who offered his life, not exclusively in times of war, for his country’s freedom or liberation. In years, it developed into a protest call against forms of dictatorship and oppression. It was revived when Italy was struggling to overwhelm fascism. This ‘canto [...]
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This set is by Jon Borg.
From my article in The Sunday Times today: "They expect us now to walk away and stay home as they go on as if nothing ever happened. We’re not doing that. Our aspirations for a new Republic are clear and legitimate. We are not demanding the impossible. We are not anarchists. We believe in the [...]
European politicians are starting to have to regret having been seen with Joseph Muscat. European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans has faced criticism in his native Netherlands for standing by Joseph Muscat during his last months as Maltese premier even as he was covering up the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia and of the corruption [...]
Swiss air traffic controllers refused permission to Air Malta’s plane flying yesterday morning from Malta to London forcing it to turn back into Italy and fly around Swiss air space to continue towards its destination. The plane was carrying Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and his family who were travelling with their family friends Karl and [...]
Yesterday Jason Micallef came down like a ton of bricks on an artist who decided to take the stage on Sunday and join the protest against corruption. Why her in particular? Because she has a regular slot on a program shown on TVM. They have something to threaten her with, a consequence she'd have to [...]
At a time of year epitomising a secular conscience of faith, hope and trust, deliberations on on-going socio-political instinctive exploratory ventures are the embodiment of a well-meaning political society manoeuvring without a sense of direction. The culmination of political cautious imperatives towards a penumbra of righteousness. Indecisive wishful determination for which the bibles offer a [...]
Someone to claim us, someone to follow, Someone to shame us, some great Apollo, Someone to fool us, someone like you, We want you Big Brother, Big Brother. From "Big Brother" by David Bowie (1973).
At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 2019, we found ourselves at what may very well turn out to be the beginning of the end. We were in Magistrate Axiak’s court, into which a couple of hours earlier, Keith Schembri had strode, flanked by his pretty high-powered legal team, [...]
We’re finishing 2019 but we’re half way through the most intense, most critical chapters of the history of independent Malta. A wrap up of the news at the end of the year sounds hollow. When one is half way through something it hardly feels the right time to be looking back. This 'Top 20 posts [...]
Labour’s leadership hopefuls are busy letting us have the benefit of their wisdom about everything under the sun. They carefully calibrate their sublime utterances with an eye to the electorate that will be elevating them or casting them out into the wilderness, where there will be weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. Or some such [...]
The forces of decency are slow to anger, but if you do manage to piss them off their power is awesome to behold. Despite the grim, continued bleakness of our current national crisis it has at least been gratifying to see the old, the young, the ‘I-don’t-care-about-politics-but-this-is-too-much’ brigade, all expressing their anger at the corruption [...]
On the 19th December the Slovakian Republic began the process of healing itself after the cold blooded double murder of Jan Kuciak and his girlfriend in 2018. The court case against the murderers and the mastermind who ordered it and the ministers involved begins. Listening to the commentators both from within Slovakia and from outside [...]
If there’s to be change, we must perceive the difference. What the crooks have done to Malta over the past 6 years is a horrible crime against our history, the respect we used to enjoy in the rest of the world, our own self-awareness as a nation and a society ‘based on work’ rather than [...]