Former PN President: I will vote against motion to remove Simon Busuttil
Paula Mifsud Bonnici makes an interesting point. If Simon Busuttil has to resign for asking Joseph Muscat to give account of the corruption his government was and is mired in, then the entire Nationalist Party should. Including many in yesterday's administrative council meeting who called for Simon Busuttil to leave. After all, and this appears [...]
MEP joins polite rebellion together with 6th PN MP to defy Adrian Delia
David Casa joins 6 members of the PN Parliamentary Group to tell Adrian Delia his decision to force Simon Busuttil out of the PN Parliamentary Group is not in their name. We work together, win together, fight together, & when all else fails, take the fall together. Division only leads us down an insurmountable slope. [...]
#notinmyname: 5 MPs so far
After Mario De Marco, Claudette Buttigieg and Karol Aquilina: #notinmyname#strongertogether — Jason Azzopardi (@AzzopardiJason) July 23, 2018
After Mario Demarco, other PN MPs tell their leader: #notinmyname
#notinmyname #strongertogether — Karol Aquilina (@KarolAquilina) July 23, 2018
Civil society activists’ statement: Our country is approaching dark times
Statement by civil society organisations earlier today: #occupyjustice and Awturi are very worried that a political alliance has formed between the government and the opposition. A political alliance that is ensuring the truth remain hidden and that justice isn’t served. Yesterday, this alliance was unreservedly solidified by the declarations of opposition leader Adrian Delia. It [...]
Caruana Galizia family: Joseph Muscat still holds the key to the truth
Here's a statement issued by the Caruana Galizia family after this weekend's events: Malta needs the whole truth and Joseph Muscat still holds the key Fifteen months after Magistrate Bugeja’s inquiry was initiated, the Maltese public is expected to simply accept as fact that we will never know for whom Egrant Inc. was set up. [...]
Mario Demarco: #not in my name
Yesterday I wrote that Adrian Delia has not just put a challenge to Simon Busuttil. He has thrown down the gauntlet to all PN MPs, MEPs, officials, activists, members and voters. They need to decide and can no longer afford to be ambiguous in the interests of some mythical unity. The members of the administrative [...]
THE SUNDAY TIMES: Outside the imagined community
This is my article published in yesterday's The Sunday Times. I handed this in before the Friday deadline. Of course, the people's interest, and mine was elsewhere by Saturday when we were told by the government it was getting ready to tell us what it wanted us to know about Egrant and so on. But [...]
US National Public Radio: Mastermind Behind Malta Journalist Killing Remains A Mystery
"'If someone tried to shut her up, if someone tried to stop her, she'd just fight back even harder,' (Daphne Caruana Galizia's) son says. 'That was her spirit.'" That's from a feature on NPR broadcast this weekend. Here's a link to the broadcast (and a transcript) on the Michigan State University's broadcast service website.
The line is drawn
All those trolls writing for Adrian Delia over the last months warning critics they are bringing about a split of the party are seeing their prophecies fulfilled but not quite the way they expected them. It had to be Adrian Delia to do it after all. He has brought the divisions of the party to [...]
Another speech rehearsed for months
Premature ejaculation appears to be a common affliction among politicians. Adrian Delia’s o-face was all over TV. For a few minutes. Follow the logic: One: The report has not been published in full, and the PN wants it published in full so we can determine the truth. Two: Simon Busuttil must resign. I asked him [...]
One thousand five hundred pages
In a completely controlled setting Joseph Muscat delivered an extraordinary performance this morning. His MPs looked like zombies. They were either nursing a collective hangover after a big late bash last night, or they didn't believe him. But he looked his best. The prime minister delivered a speech he has been rehearsing for 15 months, [...]
Also read this. It’s a long wait anyway.
I wrote this last February. “Confined as he is by constitutional and legal limitations, Magistrate Bugeja is also marked by a stark warning from Muscat, who on television, in an evening that will be remembered as the kristallnacht of this regime, warned him of unspecified consequences should his findings not be to his liking. After [...]
Read this while you wait
“The Prime Minister cheated everyone into thinking he was being transparent when he appointed an inquiry into the allegation he received bribes into a bank account of a secret company set up in Panama in his wife’s name. But the inquiry’s remit is extremely carefully defined and its conclusion will necessarily be limited by the [...]
Are you enjoying your massage, sir?
After a 15 month wait, we heard this morning Magistrate Aaron Bugeja passed on his inquiry report on Egrant to the Attorney General. I got a tipoff around 9 am and the source was neither the Attorney General’s office nor, of course, the Magistrate’s. At Labour HQ they were already patting each other on the [...]
Now it’s the Commission
When Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri realised they were caught red handed setting up a company in Panama they did not regret setting up structures to hide their bribes. They regretted having been caught. Of all the servers in all the legal offices in all the countries in the world, Mossack Fonseca’s in downtown Panama City [...]
Not so artful
Watch Edward Scicluna melt in front of the microphones of the press and a glorified microphone-stand working for the Labour Party. There’s a complete and utter absence of any form of logic in his response. First, the questions put to him did not accuse the FIAU but the police for failure to act on FIAU [...]
GUEST POST: Letter from a reader
I have been following you for a couple of months now. Since the tragic demise of Daphne Caruana Galizia, I struggled to find a newspaper or blog that transpired the real situation in Malta. I read her blog once and since then followed her avidly. She was the only light that in a very dark [...]