This set is by Darrin Zammit Lupi.            

The prime minister said on TV today he “was speaking the same language of Repubblika on good governance”. The only positive thing I can see in that statement is that the new government acknowledges the existence of Repubblika which is more than can be said for the government we had last week. Repubblika appears to [...]

This interview was broadcast yesterday on 103 radio as a follow up to Saturday's adoption of Repubblika's manifesto 'New Malta: New Republic". There's some trouble in the first two minutes or so until proper communications were established so you're probably better off pushing to minute 3 or so. https://youtu.be/2eNpWCwdAzw  

Matthew, Andrew and Paul Caruana Galizia have written to the Council of Europe’s monitoring committee that is following Malta after the Parliamentary Resolution from last year to urge them not to drop their guard just because the Labour Party changed the prime minister. Daphne’s sons reminded the committee that “Malta has so far largely ignored [...]

  We have a government with Joseph Muscat, Chris Cardona, Konrad Mizzi, Keith Schembri and Neville Gafà excluded from its ranks. Sure, they’re all lurking there somewhere but their status has been considerably reduced. In the meantime, Owen Bonnici is no longer justice minister and Michael Farrugia is no longer responsible for the police. These [...]

The prime minister should use the time driving home from work tonight reading this piece from the World Politics Review. Its author is Nate Sibley, a research fellow at the Hudson Institute's Kleptocracy Initiative. This guy doesn't get his brief from David Casa. His bio says he co-wrote two Hudson Institute Reports and has been [...]

  Our democracy is in a mess and our institutions are mere ghosts of what they should be. Fixing most institutions will require patient constitutional design. Some of them require that patient design to start in earnest. But no one underestimates the complexity of changes to parliament, to the courts, to the civil service, to [...]

The official story is Chris Cardona has turned down an offer to serve as minister because his economy portfolio has been taken away from him. This is not a million miles away from Neville Gafà “resigning”. Chris Cardona appears to have been kicked out of government and that is unlikely to be because he was [...]

Simon Busuttil has this afternoon been appointed by EPP bigwigs as Secretary General of the European People’s Party. Bully for him. In June 2017 this country chose Joseph Muscat over him as prime minister. That was our loss. By ‘our’ I don’t mean the PN within which I felt entirely comfortable at the time. By [...]

  It looks like there isn't going to be the sort of continuity that Neville Gafà fully expected for himself. The Times of Malta are reporting he "resigned" today. It's not likely that was in his plans. Just yesterday he was strutting like a peacock (maybe enough with the avian analogies) at the swearing in [...]

This was sent today by Repubblika to the new prime minister: Photo: REUTERS/Darrin Zammit Lupi Prime Minister, On behalf of Repubblika, I am sending you a copy of the manifesto that was adopted on Saturday 11 January 2020. This manifesto summarises what we are expecting from our Government and from public life in [...]

The government of a country is not the private affair of its officials. No government official should be allowed to conduct any government business on private email accounts, off-site servers or coded messaging services that cannot be centrally decoded and administered by the appropriate government agency. In other words, no government business should be conducted [...]

Keith Arnaud in court today appeared to be the only one in the country not to notice that the United States government, clearly frustrated for being ignored for two years while the country is lied to by our own government saying the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder case had not yet been resolved because the FBI [...]

It is incredible to me how oblivious the police officers testifying in the various cases related to the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia seem to be to their responsibilities and to the consequences of their negligence. Former police commissioners are lining up in front of the inquiry into Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination to explain, in [...]

In the prosecution of a criminal case it is the judge’s job to be impartial between the cops and the robbers. For us out here we’d always want to root for the cops so they put the baddies in jail and keep us safe. I am not even remotely inclined to help Yorgen Fenech or [...]

Right. First full day as prime minister for Robot Abela and he's already having a pitstop at Joseph Muscat's. If you thought this would be a turning of some page, here's how the book is being written.

              The new prime minister kept an entire country waiting for almost an hour longer than the announced time for his inaugural “address to the nation”. Before he came on, TVM played a soft-porn rendition of the national anthem intended to remind us, as if anyone needed reminding, that [...]

Neville Gafà is guest of honour at the swearing in ceremony of Robert Abela. It looks like the new prime minister will go out of his way to let everyone know Keith Schembri will remain right where he's been for several years now, firmly above the law. Robert Abela should disabuse himself of the impression [...]

Joseph Muscat’s government broke with convention and had his office and the offices of his ministers employ an estimated 700 people from outside the public services in “positions of trust”. Joseph Muscat did not invent employment contracts at the pleasure of the minister for people from outside the service. I always make it a point [...]

This blog started on the 6 June 2017, a couple of days after Joseph Muscat was confirmed as prime minister. The atmosphere of the time was poisoned and frustrated by the government’s manifest intention to use the election to clean its slate and pretend that all that came to be known before that ballot could [...]