Photo: Jonathan Borg The government has no published rules and no independent oversight of its advertising and PR spending. Many other countries have rules that prevent ministers from spending public money on partisan propaganda. Any government is obliged to inform the public of what it's doing. There needs to be money to inform [...]
Too often we find ourselves complaining about the chilling indifference of many, and the outright hatred of some, and how the hateful conduct of the worst among us reflects on all of us. Racial hatred in this country is a glaring reality. Discrimination is both cultural and official. The dehumanisation of Africans is widespread and [...]
Repubblika activists stirred from a rainy night this morning outside police headquarters in Floriana, 12 hours into their 72-hour sit-in calling for action by the police in cases of corruption, particularly the case of Konrad Mizzi who has faced no criminal action in spite of being exposed in the Panama Papers back in 2016. Repubblika [...]
Repubblika activists led by the organisation's President and Deputy Robert Aquilina and Alessandra Dee Crespo are settling down for the first of three nights and three days of protest outside police headquarters. They are calling on the police to terminate the impunity from any consequences of well-documented corruption that continues to be enjoyed by Konrad [...]
Mark Camilleri is bringing up bits of his book to have daily squabbles with Labour false gods on whose clay feet he takes pleasure in pissing. The worst kept secret in Maltese society over the last two years was that Rosianne Cutajar was very close to Yorgen Fenech and if any clothes were involved it [...]
Four years ago today, about 100 women stood on the steps of Castille protesting the evident indifference, if not hostility, of the country’s institutions ten days after Daphne Caruana Galizia had been killed. They would tag their protest on social media #occupyjustice. Daphne’s assassination happened on a Monday. A week later Parliament was due to [...]
Senior CEOs of gaming companies based in Malta warned that if the country remains grey-listed by the FATF, auditors and bankers "will make it impossible to do business in Malta". The warning was sounded at one of the panel discussions at the iGaming Next 21 conference held in Valletta last week. CEOs of a number [...]
A survey shows that around 5,000 school children do not have laptops to follow online lessons. These children will have missed most of their schooling during the covid desert year. And now they’ll be missing on engaging with their educational program falling miles behind their mates, the ones that can google, ask their teacher a [...]
Just five days after Robert Abela was sworn as prime minister on 12 January 2020 incompetent, and since investigated by a magistrate’s order for alleged complicity in crimes, Lawrence Cutajar resigned from his post as Commissioner of Police. Not to diminish his income Robert Abela gave him a consultancy appointment worth €31,000 per annum which [...]
Listed in the Panama leaks of 2016. Exposed by further leaks for setting up a structure to receive bribes. Exposed by the auditor general for direct interference in public procurement. Exposed in connection with the sale of Enemalta stock to Shanghai Electric. Exposed for the Montenegro deal. Exposed for the VGH deal. Exposed trading official [...]
Times of Malta reports that the government spent €1.7 million on a fleet of buses delivered by a company owned by Yorgen Fenech and his family 18 months ago and it doesn’t know what to do with them. They spent more than €200,000 on a direct order from the same supplier to put in charging [...]
Konrad Mizzi is not afraid of the Public Accounts Committee. Fear has nothing to do with it. If he felt fear he’d go there and embarrass himself by repeatedly answering “I choose not to answer” or have his lawyer say it for him repeatedly. He’s been through that once. He knows that way too many [...]
From my article in The Sunday Times today: "The prime minister is head of a dying government but also leader of the party that wants to compete to run the new one. That’s an inbuilt unfair advantage which should rightly belong to no party leader. "Even the UK, from whom we inherited this delightful quirk, [...]
Joseph Muscat is on a long list of witnesses in the criminal trial of Matteo Salvini, leader of the right-wing Lega party in Italy and former home minister, who is charged with kidnapping after blocking for several days a Spanish NGO ship loaded with 147 migrants from entering Lampudesa. Although Joseph Muscat is merely named [...]
Archbishop Charles Scicluna described a “crisis of the feeling of common good” Friday when he spoke at the opening of an exhibition on “People Power” organised by the Dutch embassy in the gardens in the ditch outside the walls of Valletta. The Archbishop complained that in spite of the passing of the colonial experience, Maltese [...]
Sent in by someone known to me. Following the recent outcry on the inappropriate use of the word ‘riċerka’ by a Labour politician, a journalist has managed to obtain a copy of a secret document that is kept hidden at the Labour HQ. Titled ‘Labourspeak – the language of a modern day society’, it gives [...]
There was something chilling about how Ian Borg put it when he argued for the need of a metro: ‘If we do nothing our children will curse us’. I don’t think I can ever remember using a quote from Ian Borg as something I felt any sympathy for. Take it out of the specific context [...]
Our governors do not merely delight in the assurance that their grip on power is being extended for another 5-year term. They somehow feel the need to troll their opponents, a real-word reflection of the “erbgħin elf” followed by a row of lemons that their minions post on Facebook as an irrelevant close to every [...]
The headline Times of Malta takes from Robert Abela’s speech of yesterday is a less ironic version of what I wrote when I strung together the themes of the budget and the opposition’s reaction to it. L-aqwa żmien – the best of times – were just a prelude. The good stuff is still ahead. Robert [...]
After twice skipping invitations to the public accounts committee to answer questions about energy contracts he negotiated, concluded, and signed, Konrad Mizzi yesterday said he would accept the third invitation. The reason he gave for this conversion is that he did not want to let the nationalists – bastards – “distract” people from Robert Abela’s [...]