Tag Archives: civil society

Seize the moment

This article first appeared on The Shift News on 10.12.2019. Sunday afternoon turned out to be quite surreal. As the sun began to set on The Eternal City, I stood at the top of the Spanish steps looking down on a huge crowd of people gathered to follow the Pope’s Immacolata procession. At that precise moment, some […]


(Personal) Space Invaders

Ferragosto or Santa Marija, as it is known in our parts, is the top summer holiday. The heat feels like it is at its hottest and the feeling of living in the most densely populated islands on earth is exacerbated by the manifestations of mass movement that are the villeggjatura and festi. There has not been much […]


Civil Society and its critics

A long read. This post takes a look at the actors and interests in the current debate on the rule of law in Malta.  This afternoon the European Parliament will discuss a resolution on the Rule of Law in Malta. Point 5 of the Draft Resolution reads that “[The European Parliament] Regrets that developments in […]


The Literal Faculty – the rule of law and its critics

  Dr Kevin Aquilina (signing off as Dean of the Faculty of Law) penned an article in today’s Independent. In this article entitled “Demicoli v. Malta – Part two“, Aquilina decides that by calling for the resignation of both the advocate general and the police commissioner, civil society organisations “have taken it upon themselves to […]


The New Normal

  In another guest post, Eleonora Sartori reflects on the messages from yesterday’s demonstration. The new normal In Canto III of the Inferno, Dante Alighieri describes the sighs and piercing cries of woe of “the miserable spirits of those who lived neither infamy nor praise”. These are the so-called “ignavi”, from Latin “ignavus”, i.e. someone […]


The part I don’t take

The list of speakers for tomorrow’s Civil Society Demonstration has been published and readers by now will have noticed that I am one of them. I have seen comments directed at me both on the Times and Independent articles on the event. According to one commentator I was an obvious choice because I wrote “against […]