The cable is nazzjonalist

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2023-02-11T07:33:56+01:00Sat, 11th Feb '23, 07:32|

I’m going to go against the grain here, perhaps, but I don’t consider a 45-minute power cut during a storm of the scale we experienced over the past few days as a major national crisis. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the infrastructure to falter under the pressure of exceptional weather conditions that are so [...]

Read this

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2023-02-10T08:07:18+01:00Fri, 10th Feb '23, 08:07|

If you follow the work of Repubblika or this blog, you will have heard us complain that every time we start a process in court, we are forced to prove we have an interest in the case we are pursuing. Interest, in a legal sense, is relevant when you’re going to court because of an [...]

Blurring the lines

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2023-02-08T16:54:40+01:00Wed, 8th Feb '23, 16:54|

There is supposed to be a clear division of labour between the political bosses of a government, and the civil service employees who work for them. The political bosses make policies and drive them forward. The civil service, while ambivalent about those policies, is expected to do its best to put them to work. Whilst [...]

Basic instincts

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2023-02-06T09:58:16+01:00Mon, 6th Feb '23, 09:47|

I wasn’t a witness to the conversations that mattered but I was close enough to hear the whispers. After years of struggle and pointless controversy Malta was on the eve of a referendum that would decide whether the country would join the EU. Those of us in favour of joining had spent little time over [...]

Sadr’s case against Malta suffers setback in New York

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2023-02-04T08:03:24+01:00Sat, 4th Feb '23, 08:03|

A US federal judge has thrown out a request by former Pilatus Bank owner Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad’s Hong Kong company to force the CEO of a US consultancy company to surrender her correspondence with the Maltese banking regulator on recruiting a “competent person” to take over Pilatus Bank. Ali Sadr’s Alpene Limited asked a [...]

The mafia’s professor

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2023-02-03T13:39:12+01:00Thu, 2nd Feb '23, 19:44|

I lost on appeal a libel suit filed against me by Raphael Vassallo who was offended – and a court found he was libelled – by an observation I made that a journalist who gives the false impression that the mafia does not exist would, whether they realised it or not, be helping the mafia, [...]

The unquestioned plot

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2023-02-01T17:45:16+01:00Wed, 1st Feb '23, 16:38|

It’s been almost 2 years since one of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s killers publicly said for the first time that he knew of an earlier plot that came to nothing to kill the journalist. Vince Muscat il-Koħħu was two years ago answering questions from Jason Azzopardi in court where he spoke about driving another one of [...]

On magistrates sending signals

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2023-02-01T14:36:27+01:00Wed, 1st Feb '23, 14:36|

Robert Abela has been pressuring judges and magistrates to hand down harsher penalties for crimes. He’s said people are disappointed by the courts and it is thanks to their lacklustre performance and their lenient attitude that he’s scared to let his daughter walk the streets alone. He said judges and magistrates should stop giving light [...]

My kingdom for a proportionate obscenity

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2023-01-31T15:41:38+01:00Tue, 31st Jan '23, 15:41|

I’ve been told before, that when I feel like using foul language on my blog I should pace around the room for 20 minutes before I look up less colourful alternatives than my intuitive original expression of my fury. It’s advice I find myself in situations like this fucking unable to take. Just a few [...]

Will they ever start caring?

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2023-01-31T10:34:43+01:00Tue, 31st Jan '23, 10:34|

You will have seen reports of the Transparency International assessment that confirms Malta continues to be perceived as corrupt, more so now than even last year. Transparency International gives one clear and simple reason for this. Five years ago, a journalist was killed in Malta for investigating and reporting on corruption. By now, we should [...]

Help us bring the Pilatus gang to justice

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2023-01-31T09:38:04+01:00Tue, 31st Jan '23, 09:38|

Pilatus Bank was set up in Malta in 2014 to launder money for embezzling tyrants and tax evaders. When Daphne Caruana Galizia exposed them, they sued her for $40 million. They threatened every newsroom in Malta who dared write about them. Until the European Banking Agency shut them down. And yet, those responsible, have never [...]

The one who stayed outside the bar

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2023-01-31T07:45:01+01:00Tue, 31st Jan '23, 07:45|

Look at this headline. It says an NGO, a professional association, and a non-Parliamentary party said something about something. That would sound like the beginning of a joke, except that the humour, such as it is in this case, is about one other entity who said nothing. There was a time when the opposition Nationalist [...]

They haven’t started talking

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2023-01-30T14:10:53+01:00Mon, 30th Jan '23, 14:10|

The Chamber of Advocates issued a statement to react to Robert Abela’s comments yesterday about a chat he had with an unnamed magistrate about decisions taken by the judiciary in criminal cases which the prime minister thought were too lenient. I found some comfort in a couple of observations the Chamber of Advocates made with [...]

That was no slip of the tongue

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2023-01-30T07:50:30+01:00Mon, 30th Jan '23, 07:50|

The prime minister said yesterday in his speech that he discussed what he considers as lenient decisions of the criminal court with an unnamed magistrate. Robert Abela worked in the law courts for years. He knows that the idea of questioning a magistrate’s decisions and urging different decisions in private conversations with that [...]

Does Joe Portelli know?

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2023-01-29T11:16:19+01:00Sun, 29th Jan '23, 11:16|

Here’s some free tax advice. If you get yourself registered with the MFA as a football player, whether on a full-time (pro) or a part-time (semi-pro) basis, the money you earn is taxed at an attractively low 7.5%. That’s not just for your salary, mind you. Whatever allowances, bonuses, and special payments you get from [...]

THE SUNDAY TIMES: Blue and green must never be seen

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2023-01-29T07:18:44+01:00Sun, 29th Jan '23, 07:18|

From my article in The Sunday Times: "The strategy document says we will have cleaner air and a “net zero” economy, which means our carbon footprint will be nothing or less. Yet, the document says the government will be looking to increase flights in and out of Malta. "And the document does not say the [...]

“We need believing people”

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2023-01-28T09:53:37+01:00Sat, 28th Jan '23, 09:53|

Do read Kevin Cassar’s article of today where he spots, while apparently the Opposition wasn’t looking – does it ever? – a new law presented for Parliament’s rubber stamp that will remove any doubt, if any still existed, that the Malta College for Arts, Science and Technology is under the absolute control of the government [...]

Repubblika responds to the government’s draft sustainable development strategy

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2023-01-26T10:39:11+01:00Thu, 26th Jan '23, 10:39|

The following is a letter sent today by Repubblika's president Robert Aquilina in reaction to a draft strategy document prepared by the government on a Sustainable Development Strategy for 2050: Thank you for the opportunity to comment on your document. We share your view that any plan for our country’s future must not merely be [...]

Ugh

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2023-01-26T10:35:17+01:00Thu, 26th Jan '23, 10:35|

In a few minutes the radio station owned and operated by Malta’s university is hosting Michelle Muscat, our very own freakish mashup between Imelda Marcos in exile and a hypothetical Evita Peron if the Argentian original had lived beyond her political sunset, to whimper and whine on the airwaves. I have no idea what they [...]

Reversal of fortune

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2023-01-25T10:13:58+01:00Wed, 25th Jan '23, 10:13|

Different times: Jesmond Gatt, standing first left, then chief officer at the Central Bank and soon to be Chairman of MFSA, overlooking Edward Scicluna, then and now Governor of the Central Bank and lowly director on the board of MFSA. Times of Malta reports today that Jesmond Gatt will be replacing John Mamo [...]

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