From my article in The Sunday Times today: "Since the second rule of law report, the European Commission asked every year a simple question: what progress has Malta achieved in improving things since the last report? They put the question to the government and ministers make colourful presentations proclaiming bold reforms, claims peppered with “unprecedented” [...]
One of the elements of the complex Electrogas scandal was that the promise that the “investors” made that they would bring money into the country to invest in a new power station did not materialise. Their money partner, Gasol, went bust and yet the government didn’t fire them. Instead, the government leaned on Bank of [...]
Yesterday’s court decision to reverse a concession of public land and public property to a private consortium came at the end of a judicial review process provided for in the law governing the disposal of public land. First: how can public land be given away? The answer is through one of two ways. Either Parliament [...]
If Adrian Delia has not done a useful thing in his life – and that, it should be said, is rhetorical – he has today, and in the five years leading up to today’s court decision, done the nation a great service. Even the government must secretly be grateful. But the fact that today everyone [...]
Over the last three years the government commissioned three reports following the violent and untimely deaths of three women. There was the public inquiry that followed the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia which found the state responsible for her death, allowing for a toxic state of impunity to protect senior government ministers and their criminal [...]
That was a strange interview that Raphael Vassallo had with criminology academic Saviour Formosa last Sunday. In some respects, it recalled an interview with another expert discussing traffic congestion on TV some years ago. That expert had said something to the effect that traffic congestion was not real as much as it was a “perception”, [...]
I’m the good news first kind of guy. So, a court yesterday did something which has accurately been described as very rare. It allowed for a tool provided by human rights legislation to be used to stop someone suffering an alleged human rights violation while a court decides whether they’re suffering a human rights violation. [...]
FIAU awakens. After the debacle caused by lack of oversight which caused Malta to be placed on the FATF grey list a lot of backpedalling has had to take place. It is apparent that in the last six months, after having managed to persuade the members of the FATF that our laws have begun to [...]
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The pictures are by Darrin Zammit Lupi. Daphne vigilPhoto: Darrin Zammit Lupi
Alex Agius Saliba voted for an EP resolution supporting military aid to Ukraine for as long as necessary. One other Labour MEP Josianne Cutajar voted for the resolution as well, while Alfred Sant and Cyrus Engerer were not in the room when the vote was taken. This Newsbook report points out that just a few [...]
That’s how we’d put it in Maltese. Mejjet bil-ġuħ. I criticised Robert Abela and his government for changing the law to remove the cross-party consensus requirement to appoint the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life. I called the action anti-democratic, a regression on governance standards that in this country are too low to begin with. [...]
Karl Cini thinks he’s made. He knows all the five rules. He is obedient and loyal, that’s one and two. He’s a stand-up guy so he’s got honour in the bag. And he’ll be damned if he’s not proud of his work. Rule number five for the wise-guy is silence. It’s the sacred oath of [...]
I want to join the chorus of support for the editor of Malta Today, Matthew Vella, who is being bullied by the owners of the Steward hospitals for doing his job as a journalist and letting us know, as best as it is possible to know, who is making money on the back of our [...]
A consultation meeting was held today, called by the Committee of Experts the government appointed 13 months ago to make recommendations on how to implement recommendations by the Daphne Caruana Galizia inquiry to protect media freedom in Malta. Let me just briefly remind you how we got here. Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered on 16 [...]
Joe Borg and Therese Comodini Cachia launched yesterday their latest book, published by MidSea Books, an exercise in completion, gathering in one place the sources that are needed to measure a gap in the regulatory framework that governs the press in Malta, how it falls short of doing the job of guaranteeing media freedom, and [...]
From my article in The Sunday Times: "Holding the Labour government to account feels futile when people who agree it should go can’t imagine themselves replacing it. You will, no doubt, ignore the fake tears of the occasional Labour Party leader bemoaning the poor state of the PN and regretting the harm to democracy because [...]