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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
In this earlier post despairing at the government's intentions about the recommendations made by the OECD to improve transparency and accountability in public life I also made the remark that "the PN is yet to commit that it will implement these measures should it get the chance." As it turns out I was wrong. PN [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
The government’s statement after the most senior judges of the land ruled that “senior government officials” colluded in a fraud “to pump money from the nation’s coffers to the pockets of VGH” was as flaccid as a cold bath. ‘We didn’t wait for the sentence to take control of the hospitals,’ they squealed apparently congratulating [...]
So the Court of Appeals has pronounced itself on the Vitals/Steward Case, finding that, as everybody with half a brain cell knew, the whole deal was based on fraud. The ruling went further than that of the lower court, finding evidence of active collusion on the part of the Government officials involved. In addition, the [...]
The Appeals Court confirmed a lower court’s decision that Steward Health Care are to be thrown out and Karin Grech, Gozo General, and St Luke’s hospitals are to go back to the Maltese public. The Appeals Court departed from the first court’s decision, saying this wasn’t just a case of private interests cheating idiots working [...]