Byron Camilleri did a Joe Giglio on Andrew Azzopardi’s show yesterday. “Repubblika?” he scoffed, fiddling with his tie like Oliver Hardy in a sticky situation. “They’re just an extremist faction of the PN.” Presumably without hearing him, Mark Said writing today in Times of Malta and The Malta Independent, presents Byron Camilleri with a response. [...]
I first started getting properly interested in domestic politics after the 1992 elections. There were two political strands that intrigued me. The first was the government’s plan to secure Malta’s membership in the EU. There was a frenzy of excitement that the EU’s enlargement was imminent. Indeed, it turned out to be with four countries [...]
It was depressing enough to see a magistrate behaving like an infant in front of an open court. Nadine Lia read out her decree from a script, ignored a call from the lawyer of one of the parties to speak, and stormed out of court to avoid any further argument. That was bad enough. It got [...]
Publishing is a business, albeit a shrinking one. Advertising is a business, though its fundamentals are shifting rapidly. Public relations is a business, its future as undoubted as hairdressing and funeral homes. Journalism is not a business. The moment it becomes one it stops being journalism and it becomes publishing, advertising, or public relations. This [...]
A group of over 100 journalists, academics, activists, and artists concerned with free speech have written today to Prime Minister Robert Abela urging him to publish the advice he received from the group of experts he appointed in January to advise him on laws to protect free speech. The signatories of the letter include editors [...]
There has been so much praise for Queen Elizabeth II that one more eulogy is not going to add anything to what you’ve already heard many times. Take recognition of her spectacular work ethic, her diplomatic charisma, and her rare smile in an ocean of frowns, as given. She was all that. None of that [...]
Look at the cartoonist's tweet on his work in today's Times of Malta. A recusal refusal This week's @TheTimesofMalta #cartoon When lawyers are promoted to the bench, not for their legal minds but because of family contacts and governmental friends, nobody can expect to receive a fair hearing. #Justice in #Malta is held to ransom. [...]
Silvio Schembri was asked by 103 interviewer Andrew Azzopardi if he thought the Maltese authorities had any responsibility to carry for allowing a 4-year-old girl to die of thirst in waters under our search and rescue responsibility. As he took pains to point out Silvio Schembri is not the minister responsible for rescues at sea. [...]
Another battle for information is underway this time fought by Times of Malta to acquire a copy of a report Enemalta commissioned to understand why it had paid three times the price for a Montenegro windfarm than the vendor had paid just two weeks earlier. The transaction is nonsensical in and of itself, independently of [...]
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Photos by Darrin Zammit Lupi
I joined a number of journalists, academics, and activists in calling on the Institute of Maltese Journalists (IĠM) to open up to the public their ongoing discussions with the government on reforms to secure media freedom in this country. Five years since Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed, legal and administrative reforms to protect journalism are [...]
President's memo to EU Commissioners: Please everyone wear blues and yellows in solidarity with Ukraine. Helena Dalli: Did you say blue? Viva l-Lejber! Light.
There’s been an odd development in Repubblika’s struggle to get an impartial judge to hear our challenge against the police chief for failing to implement the conclusions of a magistrate’s inquiry into Pilatus Bank. ‘Odd’ because it’s rare, as rare as watching an Accession Council made of perfectly reasonable women and men shouting in unison [...]
Repubblika has been asking Magistrate Nadine Lia for months to call a sitting of the case it brought against the chief of police for not implementing the conclusions of the Pilatus Bank inquiry. She refused, repeatedly, with the same haughtiness with which she refused any and all arguments we brought to persuade her that her [...]
Several free speech NGOs have teamed up with the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation and St John’s Church on the roundabout at Waterloo in London to organise a series of London events in the days leading up to the 5th anniversary of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination. The events: 3 October at 19:00 at St John’s Waterloo: [...]
