The first day (4): The former leaders

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2022-02-21T12:21:40+01:00Mon, 21st Feb '22, 12:21|

Both main parties are not quite as cohesive as they’d like us to believe. The PN is giving Adrian Delia a platform nearly guaranteeing his re-election to Parliament and, should he have the wit to take it, an offer of a prominent seat in the next Parliament’s shadow cabinet. That presumes a defeat for the [...]

The first day (3): Campaigning makes a difference

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2022-02-21T12:56:55+01:00Mon, 21st Feb '22, 12:16|

The polling gap between the PL and the PN is a yawning chasm. Although the margin yawned wider in the chaotic interregnum of Adrian the Inadequate, the PN never in all the time since the 2017 election, polled better than the PN. Incidentally the PN has almost never polled better than the PL since sometime [...]

The first day (2): The leaders

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2022-02-21T12:10:37+01:00Mon, 21st Feb '22, 12:10|

It is a cliché of domestic political analysis to say our elections are presidential ballots crushed into a parliamentary system. Dom Mintoff was the prototype of the post-colonial demagogue. Eddie Fenech Adami’s profile started small. He was depicted in cartoons in the Labour press as a swaddled baby, an infant in comparison with the pipe-puffing, [...]

The first day (1): The game is afoot

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2022-02-21T12:05:30+01:00Mon, 21st Feb '22, 12:05|

  We are now formally in an election campaign, though the change in the national atmosphere is only formalistic. The campaign is far longer than its last 33 days. Since 2017, since Joseph Muscat, election dates are no longer announced in sober statements delivered by an outgoing prime minister on the way out of the [...]

GUEST POST: It’s not a government. It’s a crime syndicate.

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2022-02-21T11:16:41+01:00Mon, 21st Feb '22, 08:52|

These aren’t my words. This is the title of a piece Daphne Caruana Galizia wrote in February 2017, 8 months before she was brutally assassinated. In this article, she writes: ‘Malta is governed by a crime syndicate, and the first thing that crime syndicate set about doing, when it achieved its suspiciously-funded objective of getting [...]

Why Victoria’s mess can’t be cleaned up

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2022-02-18T14:41:14+01:00Fri, 18th Feb '22, 14:41|

I’m seeing online comments assuming that, or wondering if, the 20 years struck off the appropriate penalty for Darren Debono it-Topo as a result of his bargain with Attorney General Victoria Buttigieg can be put back now that it’s clear he won’t give evidence against his accomplices in the 2010 HSBC heist. Aren’t pardons to [...]

CONTINUOUSLY UPDATED: The delightful glamour of electioneering

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2022-03-24T16:48:33+01:00Fri, 18th Feb '22, 08:37|

@dainefarrugia♬ original sound - Diane ta Bormla Give us this day our daily panina Ugh @mintixziggViva l-lejber♬ original sound - Mintixzigg @bobbybawbaw When you have a no nonsense Archbishop 👏 #malta #fy #fypシ #fyp #xyzbca #viral #viralvideo #maltatiktok #maltafunny #maltacomedy #malta🇲🇹 ♬ Unstoppable - Sia https://youtu.be/EMAnsgvqCHA   Click [...]

Protest this evening

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2022-02-21T08:53:36+01:00Thu, 17th Feb '22, 16:37|

There's no point hoping Victoria Buttigieg will come to her senses of her own accord. She needs to be told to resign. You need to tell her. Here are the reasons. Repubblika, Occupy Justice and this website are calling a protest for this evening outside the Attorney General's office in South Street, Valletta. The protest [...]

Victoria’s mess

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2022-02-17T16:02:31+01:00Thu, 17th Feb '22, 15:57|

I don’t suppose Attorney General Victoria Buttigieg will consider resigning now. Last year, Vince Muscat il-Koħħu admitted killing Daphne Caruana Galizia. The Attorney General agreed with Vince Muscat to ask for a reduced sentence for murder (15 years instead of life) in exchange for evidence against his accomplices. His evidence strengthened the state’s case against [...]

Yorgen Fenech loses court case against me

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2022-02-17T10:41:27+01:00Thu, 17th Feb '22, 10:41|

The court dismissed a lawsuit brought against me by Yorgen Fenech, the man accused of complicity in the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia, finding he had no grounds to complain that I rejected his request to publish a letter he sent me claiming it was his right to reply to an article I had published [...]

Just don’t do it

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2022-02-17T09:57:29+01:00Thu, 17th Feb '22, 09:57|

However important you think you are, and however important you think your work is, however much in a hurry you may be, and however much you are willing to rationalise your actions in your own mind, leaving your bloody car on a parking space reserved for people with mobility problems must be, to my mind, [...]

Collective chronic hernia

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2022-02-17T09:49:00+01:00Thu, 17th Feb '22, 09:49|

The following are the concluding sentences from a post on the US website on international affairs, the International Policy Digest: The tumour of corruption in Malta has grown too large for the government to perform self-surgery particularly as the ruling elite have had a major hand in the descent into sleaze. As foreign owned businesses [...]

Background noise

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2022-02-16T14:39:22+01:00Wed, 16th Feb '22, 14:39|

We only see what we’re allowed to see. We can only try to figure out what happens in the background, behind closed doors. I’m going to give you 6 things you’ve seen the front of these last few days and ask you what lingers in the vast blackness behind them. Consider the Steward's decision to [...]

GUEST POST: I will not forgive Labour

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2022-02-15T14:18:50+01:00Tue, 15th Feb '22, 14:18|

Notwithstanding the reversal of the decision, I will not forgive the Labour government for giving away a large area of countryside at Żonqor for development in May 2015. Labour and its then-leader Joseph Muscat gave away an area of 90,000 square metres (equivalent to 18 football pitches) of Outside Development Zone land to the American [...]

GUEST POST: Malta, through a glass darkly

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2022-02-15T14:12:34+01:00Tue, 15th Feb '22, 14:12|

A portrait of Malta’s indecisive society? It is only those in good health and free from suffering who can live looking towards the future. The rest - weak and in extreme suffering - just lie there, in the middle of the road, without certainties, without conviction and even now, at least in part, victims of [...]

Strasbourg rights commissioner reports on Malta

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2022-02-15T11:01:27+01:00Tue, 15th Feb '22, 11:01|

Watch this video which summarises the report of Human Rights Commissioner Dunja Mijatović after her October 2021 visit to Malta. Commissioner for Human Rights's Report on Malta 2022 from Council of Europe OP Services on Vimeo. The full report is linked here: CommDH(2022)1_ Report on the visit to Malta_EN

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