You’ll be right to scoff at me for fussing over something relatively unimportant considering the major issues we must deal with. But it’s my blog and I’ll moan out of all sense of proportion over my own pet peeves if I want to. Times of Malta reported today that Ta’ Pinu Basilica has a new [...]

As a politician I expired before I was born so this is not a self-serving argument. The way people speak about people in their 40s and 50s who have been in politics for a decade as if they were senile vegetables grazing beyond the age of utility would not be acceptable in any other profession. [...]

The Labour Party’s decision to co-opt to Parliament on a Tuesday someone who didn’t go through the bother of contesting on a Saturday demonstrates unprecedented contempt for the ordinary power people enjoy of choosing their preferred from candidates presented to them by political parties. We have co-options because we cannot have proper bye-elections in a [...]

ADPD is pointing out that the number of first preference votes obtained nationwide by its candidates is greater than what the quota to declare a candidate elected on the first count would have been had there been no electoral districts. That’s because the mathematics of the quota as they are applied are that a candidate [...]

Political parties are required to sound humble, to speak as if they’re keen to “listen” to the messages sent to them by voters. This election brings Maltese participation rates in elections closer to European averages where voting is not compulsory and anything between 40% and 80% of the voting public casts their vote. Pundits have [...]

Sent in by someone who calls himself I M Out. A lot is being discussed about what the PN should be focussing on in the next few months. Some are well-intentioned comments. Most advice is coming from those who wish for the dissolution of the Party. It will be a headache for the future PN [...]

Winning the election is not enough for people who want more than political power. People who want to get away with their crimes need to get rid of the people they perceive as their enemies. The 2017 playbook crafted by Keith Schembri is being played out again. In 2017 the mission was to get rid [...]

I hadn't seen this one when I wrote this post this morning. Meantime, remember the Żejtun incident where a wife and son were hospitalised after the husband accidentally set them alight when he fired a flare in their car? Turns out the wife was out celebrating Labour's win while positive for Covid. And [...]

A few days before the election I had the audacity to write an article analysing Malta's compliance with international standards for free and fair elections. Here's the link. In response, a senior government official who heads the government's science council published this. That's in case anyone thinks that journalists are free to do their work [...]

I don’t begrudge fans of the Labour Party a day and a half of celebrations. The coffins and the donkeys are silly but there’s nothing wrong with being silly once in a while. God knows I was out there after the 1998 elections, and again in 2003. I was of that age when a street [...]

There’s this guy, Joe Camilleri from Siġġiewi known as tal-putri. Every day, without fail, he photoshops posters full of hate featuring a short list of people he particularly despises. Look at this post from a few days ago which should give you the idea. Near permanent features of nearly all his posts are Repubblika’s president [...]

There must have been loud sighs of relief at PN HQ when they read Adrian Delia’s and Joe Giglio’s responses to Times of Malta to the question as to whether they planned to contest their party’s leadership. By saying they wouldn’t, they allowed the party leader to feel secure in his job. If – and [...]

Meet Nikita, a 10 months old boy, who travelled with his mother and two other members of their family all the way from Chernobyl. They say there is absolutely nothing left of their city. The team picked them up today from the border and brought them back to the shelter. They will be taking a [...]

Some people are quick to accuse others of being elitist when those others point out how their predictable response to stimuli plays out just as expected. While recriminations and lamentations over the election results pile up, coming from people apparently unembarrassed to admit their surprise at the results, the notion that, of all people, the [...]

It was never about who would win or lose the election, was it? Although, in spite of all the surveys confirming each other, some people still managed to develop false hopes. It was always about whether Robert Abela would succeed in his mission of holding and beating Joseph Muscat’s numbers. He succeeded. He played most [...]

Another post by my wife from the Polish border with Ukraine. It only takes a few days of observation to understand that humanitarian help to millions of Ukrainian refugees here in Poland has just been a miracle. Millions have crossed the borders, and have been helped to find temporary shelters, accommodation and transport to other [...]

“In a democracy, the people end up with the government and leaders they deserve." - Joseph De Maistre As predicted, Labour is again in power with a bigger majority. In spite of all the scandals and sleaze, the majority of the Maltese voted for continuity of corruption, of shady deals with known criminals and for [...]

From my article in The Sunday Times today: "While the PL finds ways of surviving its coming internal turmoil, understandably confident given that they survived the crises of end-2019 and emerged stronger from an ordeal, which should have rightly devastated their political chances, and while the PN’s church walls rattle and threaten to undermine the fresh [...]