A lot has been made about the billboard wars at the start of the European and local election campaigns of the political parties. Why write a thousand words about it when James Debono says all that needs to be said in 20 words? Sums it up, doesn’t it? I will limit myself to the crap [...]

The Constitutional Court today opened for business in spite of the Easter holidays to hear an ‘urgent’ plea by Konrad Mizzi filed 15 minutes before the court registry closed last week for the term break. Konrad Mizzi does that. Fifteen minutes before the last Christmas break he filed another of his grand claims to protect [...]

Repubblika and Simon Busuttil filed a note in Court this morning with Magistrate Doreen Clarke whom they had asked to open an inquiry into the Panama Papers. The note followed Konrad Mizzi’s request to the Magistrate not to open the inquiry as he was filing a Constitutional Court case saying the law that allowed Repubblika [...]

How effective is Malta's constitution? How has it developed? What are its weaknesses? Which of these are now urgent concerns? Ought we to speak of 'constitutional reform' or 'constitutional development'? What are the next steps? These topical questions have been circulating ever more urgently during the past few years. They are the subject of a [...]

Do you know someone who will decide who to vote for on the basis of whether they get a figolla from them or not? If you do, tell them they deserve the Councillor that treats them to the dubious bait. Certainly Mr Dominic Grima does not think his needy voters will get many figolli to [...]

Update 22/04/2019 13:42 Adds Malta Football Association Statement Forty-two year old Italian resident of Malta Antonio Ricci was arrested today by the Maltese police on the request of the Italian authorities in a Mafia investigation. Antonio Ricci was named last November by the Reggio Calabria prosecutors along with 18 other people in an organised crime [...]

Konrad Mizzi, as usual, tries to blow up illusory successes to his advantage, perhaps to boost his chances of becoming the next Prime Minister, which would mean the first Prime Minister in the European Union who, as a Senior Minister, had opened a secret company in Panama held by a Trust in New Zealand for [...]

Owen Bonnici has written a piece about culture.  Or so he claims. In actual fact, it’s an advertising promo for Heritage Malta’s Heritage Passport and this is the only example of ‘culture’ he alludes to throughout, trumpeting its success with the words ‘let me remind you’. How could we forget when only two minutes ago, [...]

Sent in by someone known to me: If only I was Police Commissioner Laurence Cutajar. I would have interviewed Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri the day Panama Papers exposed their suspect newly formed and undeclared trusts and money laundering companies offshore. But I didn't. I could have got in NexiaBT’s Karl Cini to explain to [...]

As anyone would, I have my views on an inter-island tunnel.  But that’s not what this blog post is about. As you might expect I have strongly held views on transport but because I worked in transport policy for some time I would rather avoid risking mixing issues here. This blog post is about what [...]

REUTERS/Darrin Zammit Lupi This Reuters photo by Darrin Zammit Lupi of the vigil last Tuesday was used by a number of publications as the appropriately accompanying piece reporting on the Reporters Without Borders review of the current state of play in media freedom -- and how Malta's ranking has toppled since it became [...]

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Tuesday evening -- 40 hours before this post was written -- a vigil was held at the feet of the Great Siege Memorial in protest demanding truth and justice, 18 months after the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia. Our intrepid public cleansers have been since twice to wipe clean any hint of that protest. But [...]

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Call it authoritarianism, autocracy, dictatorship or just a rule of law in disguise; all members of the same family consistently gaining ground globally from the Americas to Europe to Asia. Orban, Erdogan, Maduro, Zuma, Duterte, Trump to mention a few. And yet Sheri Berman, a political science professor at Barnard College, opines that even in [...]

It’s a funny old world where Magistrates-in-waiting feel the need to do some PR. But if you’ve been showered in consultancy contracts since the sun rose over Malta (to use a local idiom) in March 2013 you need to remind the world you exist beyond Chris Cardona’s grace and favour and your father-in-law Paul Lia’s [...]