There’s something profoundly exquisite in Joseph Muscat speaking of obscure forces in the PN acting in defiance of a democratic decision to have Adrian Delia as a leader. “This betrays a mind-set where democracy is only relevant if you like what the people have decided”.  Just 4 months ago he went on BBC Radio 4 [...]

Fifteen months after Daphne Caruana Galizia was assassinated and we still don’t know whose idea it was. We do know who’s better off since she was killed and we do know they’re still in office. Her death has not served in any way to make us aware of the need to upgrade standards in our [...]

Poland has arrested Huawei’s sales director for espionage a few days ago. Huawei, which vehemently denies being an agency that serves China’s security services, promptly fired that employee saying that it “complies with all applicable laws in the countries where it operates, and require every employee to abide by the laws in the countries where [...]

Turkey’s democracy was always fragile but there was a time when its membership in the EU as a confirmed democratic state was a realistic albeit never a very likely prospect. Over the last few years its democratically elected populist demagogue, Recep Erdogan, shifted from the role of prime minister kept under check by a balance [...]

A request by former Pilatus Bank owner and Chairman Ali Sadr Hasheminejad for more time for his legal team to prepare his defence has been accepted by a New York federal court. The trial was scheduled for May 2019 but US District Judge Andrew Carter agreed that the interests of justice are better served if [...]

I always found the way political parties produce photographs of the crowds that attend their events a redundant, childish and irrelevant exercise. To an extent, of course. Anyone who is communicating an idea to the public feeds on the feedback the public gives them. You may tell yourself you don’t want your restaurant to be [...]

The President of the PN Executive told The Sunday Times a few days ago his committee will be discussing the current state of play in the party, which would of course be a discussion on whether Adrian Delia should remain the leader. In the meantime other newspaper reports suggest that Mark Anthony Sammut has had [...]

Rather than write a guest post in my own words, I would much rather quote and bring to the public's attention the words of Giovanni Bonello from the preface to "Misunderstanding the Constitution". "The very last bulwarks that protect democracy, that assert the rule of law, that foster the ethics of the Constitution, when these [...]

When justice is not granted, it must still be demanded. We can’t just give up. Unlike what the Labour Party and its many bedfellows in the Nationalist Party think the pursuit of justice is not a game. It does not have winners or losers. If justice is not served on criminals because they are powerful [...]

Lawyer and legal blogger Jacques Rene Zammit (akkuza.com) commented on yesterday's Panama Papers decision by Judge Giovanni Grixti. He was developing the argument on an excellent analysis by Twitterer BugM which gives more reasons why what has happened is so wrong. The two remind the court that like murder, money laundering is a crime even [...]

Judge Giovanni Grixti’s decision yesterday is truly ground breaking. For altogether the wrong reasons. Consider how he concludes that the Panama Papers and the documents revealed out of Mossack Fonseca’s servers are a “hack” and cannot therefore be considered as grounds for an inquiry. Judges and prosecutors from all over the world, by Judge Giovanni [...]

You may have not had had the time to read the entire speech by Judge Vincent De Gaetano about rule of law in Malta a few weeks ago. He was speaking about the state of rule of law in Malta and if you take one thing from that speech, make it this choice quote: "Malta [...]

This was posted a short while ago by Italian journalist Roberto Saviano. Sums it up well. My translation is beneath. "Malta is the European gateway for untraceable dirty money coming from all over the world. Italy is the country where the most dangerous and powerful mafie that exist hide, spreading out everywhere for more than [...]

This was sent in by Chris in response to my earlier post on Judge Giovanni Grixti's decision today effectively saying that anyone complaining to the court when the police fail to investigate a crime, must first investigate and prove the crime themselves. It's a good thing that my readers' memories are better than mine. "hardly [...]

This statement was released today by 44 local organisations: People are more important We are appalled beyond words that, after 18 days of negotiations, 49 men, women and children remain stuck on a boat within sight of the Maltese shore. In spite of countless calls for solidarity, European Member States have not managed to find a diplomatic solution [...]

The Appeals Court has revoked an order of a lower court for an inquiry into the findings of the Panama Papers. That order was made by Magistrate Ian Farrugia in July 2017 on a request filed by Simon Busuttil complaining to the court that the Police had not investigated the revelations of the Panama Papers [...]

It is reassuring that Adrian Delia is conscious of his own delusions. Repeatedly in his Times Talk interview with Herman Grech he kept premising his more outlandish claims with the prefix ‘in my mind’. It’s a big leap from ‘stat ta’ fatt’. In his mind indeed. In his mind he’s supported in the party. In [...]

Things may be coming to a head at the Nationalist Party. It is hard to say if this could be the time when Adrian Delia finds he has gone too far and that these last set of revelations end up convincing enough people that he is not fit for purpose. In that now famous WhatsApp [...]

I am reproducing Lovin Malta's statement from their website in its entirety here, with their permission. You can read the original on their own page here. I do so because I think this is the appropriate response from independent media confronted by political parties seeking to slip away from accountability by shooting the messenger. There is no reason to think Lovin Malta's motivation is the service of the Labour Party. If I agreed with everything they wrote, there would be [...]

When a traffic accident happens and people are wounded, the emergency services that come on site do not start by taking out the measuring tape to draw the sketch and determine culpability. They start by doing triage, putting the wounded in ambulances, the most seriously hurt first and making sure the area is not of [...]