If you watched the Council of Europe session this morning you will have seen Owen Bonnici play his act again of the benevolent absorbent of any criticism cheerfully and indecently agape like a Venus flytrap. ‘We are a reformist government,’ he tells people in the audience who have written or at least read the reports [...]
When Adrian Delia asked for the Greco report to be debated with “some” urgency in Parliament, Chris Fearne told him his side would be happy to discuss money laundering any time. Of course the Greco report was not about money laundering. That’s the Moneyval report and that’s still a few months away. But it didn’t [...]
Listen to this recording of a meeting held today in Strasbourg on the margins of the plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The meeting was headlined “Impunity in Malta” and discussed the state of play 18 months after the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. The meeting is chaired by Thomas [...]
Jacob Borg's tweet is factual and elegantly sarcastic. Turning up with a begging bowl outside 17 Black owner's office does not hurt PN's fight against corruption, Opposition leader thinks https://t.co/Dl0UYmwSqu pic.twitter.com/9C1C1QzGIj — Jacob Borg (@BorgJake) April 8, 2019 But you know, Jacob? Adrian Delia is right. There's nothing Herman Schiavone or Kristy Debono or frankly [...]
Sent in by someone known to me: The more I think about this, the stronger is my belief that this country is politically (for lack of a better term) fucked. PNPL or PLPN are more and more morphing into the same arrogant, filthy, greedy, corrupt, assholes - who instead of fighting for the common good [...]
Read first this rundown on The Shift News of the aftermath of a speech given by Matthew Caruana Galizia at the Perugia journalism festival. The story itself includes a link to the speech. La Repubblica described Matthew Caruana Galizia as the great discovery of the journalism festival. “Bel lavoro, Daphne”. Another job well done by [...]
The attempt at clemency on grounds of naivety in an effort to explain Kristy Debono and Herman Schiavone’s meeting with Yorgen Fenech revealed by this morning’s The Sunday Times is itself naive. Nobody is that stupid. This was not some clumsy faux pas. Herman Schiavone in this Facebook chat with party stalwart Boris Xerri said [...]
Sent in by someone known to me. Sitting in an airport on my way to Malta I noticed one thing in my recent weeks of travel. We are so poor, we are such a poor country, and it has nothing to do with wealth, it has nothing to do with the money we have in [...]
Daphne Caruana Galizia was methodical in her work. As a seasoned investigative journalist, she knew that when something appeared suspicious there was often a mound of rot behind it. She felt that it was so important to inform her readers in a timely manner that sometimes she published her intuitions as soon as she observed [...]
Adrian and Robert Farrugia The anti-mafia trial starts on Tuesday of local veteran football managers Robert and Adrian Farrugia who along with several others are charged with match-fixing and corruption in the Calabrian town of Lamezia. Adrian Farrugia resigned from the role of Mosta FC team manager after the “Dirty Soccer” investigation named [...]
St Paul, or so the story goes, arrived in Malta in 60 AD. Blown by the shipwrecks of fate, it’s widely believed he brought Christianity to these shores. Good job he arrived before he’d have been jeered off the island with taunts of ‘Go back home to your own country!’ We should be grateful, too, [...]
The new President, George Vella, sent an interesting signal today on his thoughts about Constitutional reform. “In spite of the fact that there’s a feeling we need to make changes to the Constitution without delay, I believe we must proceed with caution. Whilst being efficient, it is important for us to avoid undue haste." It’s [...]
When Michelle Muscat waxes melodramatic about her miserable fate, she truly asks for it. The best I could do yesterday was "insipid, solipsistic, self-indulgent, sob story whose idea of music is no better than Jason Micallef’s". Ryan Murdock writing for The Shift News this morning was far more elegantly succinct. He called her "The First [...]
Press Release REACTION BY REPUBBLIKA TO THE GRECO REPORT At the request of the GRECO committee, the Government today released the findings of the Group of States against Corruption, known as the GRECO report. Malta joined GRECO 20 years ago. During that period, it has received 4 reports. Each time it has received recommendations for [...]
The government will be told by Greco today that it has exploited conflicts of interest and the shady past of its appointees to make sure public agencies are run by cronies that serve the corrupt interests of Joseph Muscat. And there goes the government rushing to prove Greco right once again as if Greco hadn’t [...]
I confess I’m utterly perplexed at the schizophrenic way the PN is dealing with the storm of criticism coming towards the government of Malta from institutions outside it. The way they bashed Green MEP Sven Giegold in the last few days “condemning” him for calling for the European Commission to start Article 7 procedures in [...]
The Council of Europe ‘group of states against corruption’ (Greco) wanted to leave no ambiguity. “Malta has on paper an impressive arsenal of public institutions involved in check and balance” and to prevent corruption against ministers and senior government officials. BUT: “their effectiveness is being questioned as the country was confronted in recent years with [...]
Photo: Mission Lifeline There was some legal discussion about the incorrect use of the term “piracy” in the case of the El Hiblu 1 rescued passengers who got the captain of the ship to sail towards Malta. The term was wrongly used by the Maltese armed forces and by Matteo Salvini. In simple [...]
One of Zuzana Caputova's first acts as President-elect of Slovakia was to visit the street memorial for Jan Kuciak and Martina Kusnirova and join the people's demand for truth and justice for an assassinated journalist and his fiancee. She lit a candle there. https://www.facebook.com/projektn.sk/videos/1190569297777364/ It makes sense of course. Slovakia elected a civil rights and [...]
