In the space of 24 hours, three European organisations came out with the same assessment of how far Malta has come since they first started looking closely when a journalist was killed by car bomb here. What Malta has done is nowhere near enough. Let’s be fair to Robert Abela. He has taken the issue [...]
Photo: REUTERS/Mark Zammit Cordina A committee of MPs in the Parliamentary Assembly of Europe’s highest human rights body found that “Malta faces important challenges to the function of its democratic and rule of law institutions, which, if left unaddressed could affect the level of democratic consolidation in the country.” The warning came with [...]
A civil servant regulates an industry. In the process she establishes a working relationship with the major investors of the industry. It should be clear that she doesn’t work for them. They have their own staff. She works in the public interest, administering the laws that regulate the behaviour of the economic players in the [...]
This is not going to be a popular one. New MP Julie Zahra brought her four-year-old daughter with her to do her homework (or whatever it is that passes for homework in the curriculum of a 4-year-old) in the Parliamentary chamber. She munched on a packed lunch as she scanned the chamber with her big [...]
Malta has scored abysmally in a Council of Europe evaluation on the implementation of recommendations to fight corruption. Of 23 recommendations Malta has only reached a satisfactory result in two and nine recommendations have not been implemented at all. Rapporteurs for the Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO) said “further progress is necessary to demonstrate [...]
The following was sent in by Christian Abela as a right of reply to my article of earlier today. Mr Abela specifically asked that his reply is not edited so I am reproducing it here as he sent it. As usual comments are not published beneath posts as a right of reply. B'risposta ghal artiklu ippublikat [...]
I hope you have been following Repubblika's social media posts during the visit of my colleagues Robert Aquilina and Alessandra Dee Crespo to Palermo as guests of the organisers of the memorial events marking the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Giovanni Falcone. That day in Capaci the mafia also killed Falcone’s wife Francesca Morvillo [...]
UPDATED: Christian Abela wrote in a reply to the below article. Click here for his reply. New minister Jo Etienne Abela, a Gozitan medical doctor running the active ageing ministry, has lost his chief of staff 3 weeks into his term. There is no official reason for the resignation of former head of secretariat Alex [...]
From my article in The Sunday Times today: "Like the dawn of every new year, a new parliamentary term is the excuse to start afresh and forget about the past. The government members are behaving like re-invented virgins beyond reproach, even beyond the inconvenience of recollection. Tough luck. Here are outstanding issues hanging over from [...]
Your remains will soon be flown back to your home country where your mother and your family will be able to say goodbye and bury you. You came here for them. You left your home and your family so that you could send them some money and make their lives a little bit better. Two [...]
To borrow an Orwellian metaphor, it grates to see these pigs sleep in beds, even without sheets. Senior public officers are not allowed to campaign in general elections. The reason for that is expressly defined in the public service management code last updated earlier this year. “Ministerial and public confidence in the impartiality of the [...]
This is Ian Borg with his wife on a Ryanair flight to Turin this afternoon. They're not flying on a private break. Ian Borg is accompanied by some of his staff and heading a work delegation there. Italian law requires all passengers of flights terminating in Italy to wear an FP2 mask. The legal requirement [...]
See this comment by Anton Refalo to Times of Malta who pressed him over the milestone marker from Victorian Malta that’s been ripped out of its unspecified original location and erected in Anton Refalo’s private garden instead, for him to admire while bobbing in his pool. Part of the reason Anton Refalo continues to get [...]
In a way Byron Camilleri is partly right. The criticism addressed to the Maltese military about the way they treat migrants struggling in our waters is unfair on (most of) the soldiers themselves. Ordinary soldiers have no role in deciding whether a group of migrants should be rescued or allowed to bob in the water [...]
Oliver Scicluna had a very brief career in politics. He was co-opted to Parliament in January 2021. He captured the headlines a year after that with a Facebook post expressing his disgust at a political system where voters appear to expect personal favours in exchange for their vote. He failed to get elected in March [...]
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Photos by Darrin Zammit Lupi