Recently I had a discussion with an academic colleague who was arguing that Malta is not facing a crisis. Let’s consider the situation these past few years. First there were the revelations of the Panama papers and a prime minister who adamantly defended his two closest collaborators caught out with secret offshore companies. There was [...]

The year began with the news that Malta had lost another daughter in the most terrifying and horrific of ways. Paulina Dembska. A young woman with her whole, bright future ahead; attacked, raped, murdered and left on the ground; a woman in the wrong place at the wrong time. The fact that it could have [...]

The Attorney General has so far ignored public calls, including from the Parliamentary Opposition, to justify her decision to cut a deal with a man who eventually admitted his involvement in a daring and violent armed robbery in 2010. Darren Debono did not just try to steal the money. He tried to get away shooting [...]

Oliver Scicluna seems quite disturbed by voters offering him to trade their vote for some favour or other. Though already an MP, by the grace and gift of Robert Abela, Oliver Scicluna now has to go through the grind of canvassing and electioneering to get re-elected, and it seems he’s not enjoying that part of [...]

Photo: Chris Sant Fournier / Times of Malta Prime Minister, it was good of you to attend yesterday’s vigil to remember Paulina Dembska. It was only right for you to share in the public’s horror and anger at what was done to her and her family. As has been said many times over [...]

I’m going to take a wild guess at your profile based only on the mere fact that you’re reading this. You’re appalled by the Labour Party. You probably, though by no means necessarily, have always been. But even if you supported the Labour Party right up till about 2017, you now realise just what horror [...]

I agree with this blogpost by Desmond Zammit Marmarà who expressed disgust on Newsbook at the cynical use of the ‘co-option’ formula to smuggle unelected people into Parliament. He explains the procedure and its misuse well, so read his article for background. I have also commented in the past (here’s a collection) particularly on the [...]

Siemens has been washing its hands of the corruption connected with Electrogas since the Panama Papers came out. Their excuse, repeated this morning in comments to Times of Malta is that Electrogas itself – the company they part own – did not pay any bribes to get the power station contract. They do acknowledge “wrongdoing” [...]

From my article in The Sunday Times today: "If Grima merely shows up to work to twiddle his thumbs, he’d be improving on Labour’s education record just by avoiding corruption, human rights violations and sleazy scandals. He’ll instead be remembered for that one time he lost his cool with Karol Aquilina because he couldn’t find his [...]

In an interview with Times of Malta, Owen Bonnici today says he “genuinely” feels sorry he “might have hurt” some people when he ordered the Daphne protest memorial cleared some 500 times, but “in (his) defence”, he says he was doing it to “keep the calm in our country”. He said he was ordering the [...]

From my article in The Sunday Times today: "A 2019 EU directive introduced higher standards for European whistleblower protection laws. Since then, the government has ignored repeated and public calls for consultation on the changes. They also ignored the ombudsman who publicly complained he was never consulted when the law assigned to his office responsibilities that [...]

In a country so finely ruled under the Rule of Law that even cases against state organisations are tolerated (I quote Mr Speaker’s faithful legal beagle here, who let slip his sublime take on democratic governance while arguing a case on behalf of no less an august institution as the FIAU) it is perhaps a [...]

These images of yesterday's vigil are by Darrin Zammit Lupi.

The measure of a man is what he does with power – Plato Joseph Muscat and Roberta Metsola are perhaps the most prominent politicians of their generation. Joseph Muscat was born in 1974 and at the age of 18 he joined Labour’s One (at the time Super One) Radio. In 1995 he was elected to [...]

I have reviewed the most recent audited accounts filed with the business registry by Electrogas. The audit was carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers and signed by directors Rustam Shomurodov and Paul Apap Bologna on 12 March 2021.  You will see from the facts below that Electrogas is in financial dire straits. Paul Apap Bologna publicly described [...]

I was chewing the fat, duly masked and distanced, with a bloke of sound mind, and similar to mine and we riffed on a theme. We agreed, as blokes of similar minds tend to, that we have no illusion about the state of the PN and the capabilities of Bernard, as they are viewed by [...]

In one of his hopeless attempts at sounding guileless, Evarist Bartolo recently posted that we all have a duty to fight corruption. He didn’t fight corruption when he could have and should have. That’s by his own admission in an interview with Tim Sebastian where he admitted falling far short of the principled objective he [...]

Maria Ressa accepted the Nobel Prize together with Dmitry Muratov on behalf of truth-chasing journalists holding the line. Her opening words are a recollection of journalists killed on the line of duty who could not be there to accept the Nobel Prize because it's never awarded posthumously. She remembered among others Daphne Caruana Galizia. Daphne's [...]

That's how Anthony Agius Decelis was introduced once at a Labour Party event. He needn't have complained because this guy's attention to detail is the worst since the guy surveying the land for the bell-tower of the cathedral of Pisa assured everyone the wet puddle would get dry. Here's Anthony De La Cheese inviting you [...]

The Regional Court of Varna has overturned the decision of a lower court and dismissed a defamation suit filed against this website by Christo Georgiev, owner of the now defunct Satabank in Malta. The case against me was filed in February 2020 over an October 2018 article I wrote when Satabank's clients found their bank [...]