The controversial Commissioner for Voluntary Organisations, Anthony Abela Medici, has just been confirmed in his post by the government for another 3 years. A notice in the Government Gazette today gave the news. Recent decisions by Anthony Abela Medici have raised the ire of several NGOs as new rules restricting voluntary donations to NGOs have [...]

That is how Robert Abela described the Passport Papers. He’s right of course. Long before these leaks, we understood the government was lying about “talent attracted to Malta” by this scheme. Everyone had figured out the passport-buyers pretended to live here but didn’t. Most had heard of the links with Cambridge Analytica and voter manipulation. [...]

Robert Abela said today it’s “worth having the debate” on whether the law on the commissioner for standards in public life should be changed to rule out a former MP. This sounds like a theoretical discussion but it really has a simple purpose: giving people a reason to discredit George Hyzler because he falls short [...]

Michael Falzon announced today the government is dishing out €50 million among 5,000 people as compensation for an “anomaly” from 1979. On average these guys will be picking up a €10,000 cheque. The minister stood in front of a banner headline “insaħħu lill-ħaddiem” (trans: strengthening the worker). It’s a slogan right of the DDR circa [...]

Joseph Muscat’s 2013 ‘roadmap’ was planned way before the day of the election that year. Joseph and his parrots kept repeating ad nauseam that they had a roadmap ready but they never gave details of where it was going to lead. The people learnt about it soon after Labour took power. A bright light-house on [...]

It is not unreasonable to have doubts about an economic activity built on vice, but the gaming industry is today a major economic player, a large employer, and one of the very few economic activities that proved essentially covid-proof. The callousness with which the government is treating the industry is staggering. While vice-minister Alex Muscat [...]

Carmelo Abela is defending himself for full-page adverts taken out in newspapers last year. Half the advert amounted to a picture of himself. The other half was made of vague and empty slogans. The intent was clear: improve his profile and PR. The cost was paid by taxpayers because he’s a government minister. Carmelo Abela’s [...]

From my article in The Sunday Times today: "For this, journalists have been branded traitors and liars. When a committee at the UK House of Commons quoted an investigation published on my website when it analysed the relationship between Henley & Partners and Cambridge Analytica, the Maltese government reacted angrily. It issued a diplomatic note [...]

Dutch MP Pieter Omtzigt who authored the report that led to the Council of Europe’s resolution forcing Malta to open an inquiry into the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia has filed a complaint today with the body’s ethic committee about the conduct of Rosianne Cutajar. When the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly debated Pieter Omtzigt’s [...]

Read this Times of Malta report about hunters trespassing private property shooting at birds within metres of people working the fields. I was struck by a bit in the report that said the farm hands rushed out to ask help from policemen who happened to be nearby. They asked for their help because a bully [...]

Four new judges were sworn in today. The prime minister and government ministers were not involved in any stage of their selection. Except for Anna Mallia, who seems bothered that she wasn’t sworn in as a judge today as well, no one in the legal profession had any adverse comments about today’s appointees. Anna Mallia [...]

Aaron Farrugia begged his mummy to stop embarrassing him in front of his friends. He sounded like the chic geek whose mother follows him to school to snap at people she believes are being unkind to her precious baby. Aaron Farrugia's mummy had a lot to be flustered about lately what with her son being [...]

A new “Volontarjat Action Group” was launched today to challenge regulations published last year that make it impractical for NGOs and charities to raise funds to conduct their operations. A press conference this morning was led by Richmond Foundation’s CEO Stephania Dimech Sant who said the action group wanted to make it clear to the [...]

Another one of the “corruption” campaigns led by the Labour Party and its media while Joseph Muscat was opposition leader has fizzled out completely as a permit withdrawn in 2009 has been granted without any changes last Friday. The controversy was over an application for an extension to an old farmhouse in the Baħrija countryside [...]

‘Lil din l-art ħelwa, l-Omm li tatna isimha’ the first line of L-Innu Malti ‘Patriot - a person who loves their country and who is ready to defend it against an enemy’ Oxford Advanced Learner’s Online Dictionary I would hesitate to define myself as a patriot. Unfortunately, in recent years the term has become [...]

Watch these comments given to the press by Ian Borg announcing that his adviser’s daughter has resigned from her job in the government agency that he oversees. Ian Borg explains he had no idea about the fact that Adreana Zammit, daughter of his assistant Jesmond, got over €100,000 worth of work commissioned directly from her [...]

I’m trying to follow the testimony of Brian Tonna to Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee. It is painful listening. People with sympathy for him must be in agony hearing him contradict himself, fudging and slipping. I have no sympathy for him. But I have sympathy for his supporters’ embarrassment for his inability to string a sentence [...]

The Commissioner for Standards George Hyzler has had to respond and defend himself from an onslaught by Glenn Bedingfield. Glenn Bedingfield was criticising George Hyzler for finding that Carmelo Abela breached ethics rules when he used public funds to take out full-page ads for personal propaganda. Glenn Bedingfield accused George Hyzler of hypocrisy. 'He overspent [...]

Ivan Hallett from Floriana was handed a suspended jail term today and fined over €75,000 today for smuggling alcohol in 2015. A third of the fine will be paid to customs for the tax he avoided paying when he smuggled the bottles of vodka, whiskey and other drinks from Sicily. Ivan Hallet is a long [...]

Minnesota yesterday secured the conviction of Derek Chauvin a former police officer who killed George Floyd on 25 May 2020. It was an important trial because the homicide needed to be seen in the context of the relationship between the black community in America and the rest of American society. It was about police brutality, [...]