Inequality before the law

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2023-11-08T10:30:05+01:00Wed, 8th Nov '23, 10:30|

Silvio Grixti came out of his cave yesterday. He sent a pointed rhetorical question addressed to Deputy Prime Minister Chris Fearne. Why weren’t publicly known allegations of medical certificates fraud not investigated by the police, he asked? The press tried to reach the disgraced former Labour backbencher to get out of him details about the [...]

Presidential mediocrity

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2023-11-07T10:24:46+01:00Tue, 7th Nov '23, 10:24|

This is a statement issued today by the president’s office after a fugitive who turned himself in to the police and told the court he has been working on a construction site at San Anton Palace while the police were looking for him: With reference to reports that are appearing in the media, the Office [...]

The vanishing phones of Keith Schembri

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2023-11-07T07:39:49+01:00Tue, 7th Nov '23, 07:39|

Keith Schembri’s lawyers are having none of it. A phone that was held for safekeeping by a magistrate in a case against Keith Schembri vanished for a while only to reappear in another file which was not supposed to be in the magistrate’s office at all. The brief disappearance of the phone is now being [...]

First good citizen

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2023-11-06T13:57:15+01:00Mon, 6th Nov '23, 13:57|

Tristan Farrugia Tedesco is hardly a reliable source of information. He was in court today after giving himself up to the police on his lawyer’s advice yesterday. He’s been on the run for a while. The police told the court they’ve chased him over rooftops at least twice. Turns out avoiding arrest by jumping across [...]

A systemic onslaught on the rule of law

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2023-11-06T09:46:57+01:00Mon, 6th Nov '23, 09:46|

This post will refer to several episodes that happened over the last few days that may at first appear unconnected but are in reality part of a growing trend of erosion of every individual’s right to seek the protection of the court from their government. Consider first this One TV report of a lawsuit brought [...]

GUEST POST: A return to first principles of democracy

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2023-11-06T09:35:57+01:00Mon, 6th Nov '23, 09:35|

The state of the nation The turbulent waves of this scandal-plagued bewildered populist authoritarian government have led to an evidenced and indisputable illiberal democracy roiled by a crisis of legitimacy. The mechanisms of scandalous and criminal history of this government in addition to a political model painstakingly moulded on polarisation and abuse of power and [...]

THE SUNDAY TIMES: Grinding to a halt

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2023-11-06T09:23:22+01:00Mon, 6th Nov '23, 09:23|

From my article in yesterday's The Sunday Times: "The inquiry Repubblika star­ted four years ago is, by defi­nition, four years old. It’s bound to wrap up at some point and people, such as a couple of other newspapers last week, have been speculating that it’s nearing completion. It is hard to imagine that an inquiry [...]

Gathering dust

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2023-10-31T11:39:17+01:00Tue, 31st Oct '23, 11:39|

The OECD’s detailed recommendations on improving standards in public life is less than a week old. The machine hasn’t been switched off yet and I’ve started mouthing the Lacrimosa already. Ask me again in a year which of the recommendations have been taken up by the government and nothing would make me happier than to [...]

THE SUNDAY TIMES: The fog that comes from somewhere

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2023-10-29T08:56:37+01:00Sun, 29th Oct '23, 08:56|

From my article in The Sunday Times today: "Yorgen Fenech will walk, if out of nine jurors hearing his case enough of them allow themselves to be conditioned by inherent prejudices of a regular Labour Party voter. That’s at least half of them. A few of the other half might be politically inclined to wish [...]

Proposed media reform is “disappointing” – activists

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2023-10-29T08:51:35+01:00Sun, 29th Oct '23, 08:51|

The following is a statement issued by the Media Reform Initiative, a group I'm in which is made up of journalists Monique Agius, human rights lawyer and academic Therese Comodini Cachia, and journalists and academics Joe Borg and Natalino Fenech . The Media Reform Initiative affirms that it is very disappointing that the proposals in [...]

GUEST POST: Robert Aquilina, you are not alone

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2023-10-29T08:44:54+01:00Sun, 29th Oct '23, 08:44|

Robert Aquilina has been repeatedly asking, even through his lawyer, for protection for himself and for his family. The Police Commissioner, who has been well aware of the threats Dr Aquilina has been receiving, should have ordered this protection without being asked. And there weren't only threats. There has been an attempt of forced entry [...]

Real and present danger

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2023-10-28T08:30:24+02:00Sat, 28th Oct '23, 08:30|

Repubblika's president Robert Aquilina has today filed his umpteenth plea to have the security of his family protected by the police. For a short while the police provided a watch outside his house at night. And then they didn't. It wasn't because the threats he received diminished. On the contrary. Since he's been left without [...]

It’s only four years

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2023-10-27T09:17:22+02:00Fri, 27th Oct '23, 09:17|

I promised I would let you know when I decided whether to go ahead with an appeal from a court decision not to hear my free speech complaint about an earlier court decision which ordered me to compensate another journalist €1,000 for the way I reacted to his suggestion that the state had nothing to [...]

Did anybody say rule of law?

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2023-10-27T07:55:15+02:00Fri, 27th Oct '23, 07:55|

Times of Malta asked the government to react to a decision of the European Court of Human Rights that found that when the authorities detained a 17-year-old boy for 225 days – a stretch of that in isolation and in inhuman conditions – they breached his fundamental human rights. Read his story here. The government’s [...]

Trudging the streets between Pilate and Caiaphas

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2023-10-26T10:17:47+02:00Thu, 26th Oct '23, 10:17|

Sometimes Maltese idioms rush to the surface, hence the Biblical title. Asked by Times of Malta to react to the ruling of the Appeals Court that apportioned to him a share of the cost of the lawsuit brought by Adrian Delia, Joseph Muscat said that the privatisation of the hospitals failed because of the malicious [...]

Wake Up!

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2023-10-25T09:58:09+02:00Wed, 25th Oct '23, 09:58|

Statement by #occupyjustice: Earlier this evening, #occupyjustice activists sent a message to Police Commissioner Angelo Gafa’ asking him to wake up from his permanent slumber and arrest the true traitors of Malta, following yesterday’s Appeal Court ruling confirming “the suspicion that the intention behind the concession to VGH/Steward was not the improvement of medical services [...]

Everybody wins

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2023-10-25T09:53:57+02:00Wed, 25th Oct '23, 09:53|

When truth is optional, and facts are redundant, everyone can celebrate at the end of a match. Even the fallen boxer, well past the 10th count, can tell everyone they’ve won. It’s incredible how all the parties heartily condemned by the Appeals Court over the hospitals debacle have been congratulating themselves for their heroic failures. [...]

Foreshadowing

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2023-10-24T08:30:19+02:00Tue, 24th Oct '23, 08:30|

There was something Robert Abela said in Parliament when he was reacting to yesterday’s Court of Appeal decision that really blew my top off. Watch this from his speech in Parliament yesterday. I want to transcribe and translate what he said: “If a judge does not decide how they want them to, they and civil [...]

The what and why of dereliction of duty

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2023-10-24T08:32:57+02:00Tue, 24th Oct '23, 08:20|

Yesterday’s ruling was not handed down by a criminal court. The Court of Appeal conceded an argument brought by Stewart that the first court last February behaved as if it was a criminal court or spoke in its ruling in a way that blurred the lines. The Court of Appeal yesterday rubbed out aspects of [...]

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