This report covers the period January 2024 to April 2025.
Committee Work
During the past 16 months, the Repubblika Executive Committee met 30 times. On average, the Committee meets every two weeks to make the necessary decisions regarding the activities of the organization and coordinate the activities of our volunteers and employees.
In March 2024, Robert Aquilina resigned as President and Member of the Repubblika Committee. A meeting of the Members saluted Robert at a meeting on March 15 of last year. Since then, there have been some other changes in the composition of the Committee. On June 13, 2024, Alessandra Dee Crespo resigned as Vice-President and Member of the Executive Committee. Alessandra had been active since the birth of our organization and an activist who had worked hard over the years for our cause. Even after leaving the Committee, Alessandra continued her work in civil society. We thank her wholeheartedly for the work she has done and will continue to do in the interests of truth and justice.
During this time, two new members, Edward Warrington and Sandro Rossi, also joined the Committee, who brought new energy and new perspectives to the work of the Committee. We wish them many years of work.
On 6 September 2024, a Special Meeting of Members met and confirmed Vicki Ann Cremona and Renato Camilleri in their appointments as President and Vice-President of Repubblika.
Since January 2024, 88 new members have joined Repubblika. We thank them for joining us in this commitment. We know that we have many supporters who are not actually members of Repubblika. Membership in our association is not just a symbolic gesture. It is an important response to those who accuse us of speaking only in our own name, and for us who are at the forefront of representing the views of Repubblika it is important to have behind us in a declared manner the people who encourage us and who share with us views and desires regarding the rule of law in Malta. There is also the financial consideration of the fee which although small makes a substantial difference.
We therefore urge you to encourage anyone you know who agrees with us to join our association as a member.
Repubblika complies with all regulatory requirements. On 27 September 2024 the Office of the Commissioner for Voluntary Organisations certified us as fully compliant with the requirements of the law. After today’s meeting we will be able to make our annual submissions to renew that certification.
In the following sections, the report discusses the six main dimensions of Repubblika’s mission: activism in the courts, civic work, education, public activities, projects and international partnerships.
Activism in the courts
Repubblika continued its work in the courts to, where possible, encourage institutions to fulfill their duty in the fight against corruption and organized crime, to represent the interests of victims, and to protect fundamental civic and political rights, particularly freedom of expression.
As we have reported in the past, we fought hard in the courts regarding the Pilatus Bank case when it appeared that the authorities had buried the findings of a magisterial inquiry so that people suspected of committing serious crimes and who have tarnished the name of our country worldwide would face justice.
We challenged the Police Commissioner in court for not taking action following the magisterial inquiry. That challenge brought about a battle in itself regarding the choice of the magistrate who heard our case. We requested that the Magistrate assigned to the case be changed because we felt she had a conflict of loyalties. The court did not accept our request, and the Magistrate ruled against us in the case we brought against the Police Commissioner. In her decision, she turned her sight, in our opinion unfairly, on the testimony given by our Honorary President Robert Aquilina.
Robert knew the risk he was taking when he showed with his testimony that he knew what the magisterial inquiry was saying. He took the risk on himself and protected his sources with courage and without fear of the consequences he might suffer. He clearly showed that we obey the law faithfully, but we do not allow anyone to hide behind the law to commit criminal offences or to cover up the criminal offences of others.
We understand and agree that there must be secrecy to allow our institutions to work with the utmost responsibility in our name and in the name of justice. But we are shocked when secrecy is instead used to hide criminality.
The Court’s decision not to order the Commissioner to take action in the Pilatus Bank case was confirmed by the Criminal Court which said that it is up to the Attorney General to decide whether action should be taken in the Pilatus Bank case.
We predicted that this would happen. We therefore also took the Attorney General to court, by asking the Court to examine the Attorney General’s decision not to bring the people identified by the magisterial inquiry into Pilatus Bank to trial.
That too was a big battle. The Attorney General wanted the case to be heard behind closed doors and came up with every excuse to plug people’s ears. The Court did not buy her arguments. But before deciding whether we are right or not, the Court must decide whether Repubblika had the right to request this judicial review.
The government argued that we are not victims of the alleged crimes that occurred at Pilatus Bank: therefore it asked what right did we have to complain? We are arguing that although we are not the only victims of corruption and money laundering at Pilatus Bank, like everyone else we are also victims and on their behalf and on our behalf we are speaking and we have the right to speak.
We are still awaiting a decision in this case which, apart from examining what the Attorney General did and did not do, is examining how in practice the mechanism in the law that allows the courts to review the decisions taken by the Attorney General will be allowed to work.
Another long-running case is the one we are doing together with the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation in the case of leaks of personal information of Maltese voters identified by someone as to whether or not they’re likely to be friendly towards the government. We did this case not only because this is a violation of privacy. This is a bigger fight than that: it is a fight against the methods of politics in Malta where a party brands you with prejudice to discriminate against you and favours others over your rights.
Another major effort is underway in the case we did to represent the victims of corruption in the Electrogas case. We argued there that everyone who pays an electricity bill is paying something to go into the pockets of the corrupt people who arranged that contract. In the first Court we lost because the court agreed with the government that we should have gone to different court first to try to be proven right. We appealed and were expecting a decision before this General Meeting but the Court of Appeal told us to wait a little longer.
As you know, we conducted a long campaign against the draft law that effectively deprives citizens of the right to request a magisterial inquiry in cases of well-founded suspicion that a serious criminal offense has occurred. Now that the law has been passed, we intend to open a new case to request a judicial declaration that the law violates the Constitution. We are using an argument established in another famous case we have made in our history that went to the European Court of Justice which had stated that European Union governments cannot lessen the framework of the rule of law in their country.
In the new case we will show how as a result of the law that the government passed through Parliament, our country is deprived of important investigations in serious cases of alleged corruption. Prosecutions are currently underway in the Vitals and Electrogas cases. Both cases have come this far due to magisterial inquiries that took place at the request of private citizens. This window for justice has now been slammed shut in the face of the Maltese people.
While we are talking about the court, we would like to salute and send our solidarity and love to the family of Daphne Caruana Galizia who are going through the ordeal of hearing again the testimonies of the brutal and barbaric murder of their beloved. Their fight for justice has been too long and the end is not yet in sight. We promise them that we will stay with them as long as necessary until they can see that the great injustice being done to them finally stops torturing them.
We salute Robert Aquilina who has continued to take care of some of the court cases mentioned with full commitment. We salute our lawyers who work pro bono and simply because of the sense of civic mission they have. We mention Eve Borg Costanzi, Matthew Cutajar, Andrew Borg Cardona and Therese Comodini Cachia. We salute other lawyers who help us and who for various reasons we do not mention by name. And we salute Jason Azzopardi who is the driving force behind many of the legal actions we take. We truly thank them.
Civic work
Repubblika is very active in promoting our values and views in the hope that our work may one day lead to a fundamental shift in Maltese political culture, thereby bringing about changes in the practice of politics and in the governance of Malta.
A large part of our work focuses on the contribution we make to the European Commission’s annual assessment of the state of the rule of law in our country. Every year we update our position with research and documentation on what is happening and we seek to explain to the European Commission the often grim reality in our country. We work closely with our partners in other civil society groups to prepare joint positions where these help our mission.
Years ago, a forum was created to allow civil society to work with the authorities to improve the state of governance in Malta: this is the program known as Open Government. In December 2023, the government told us that it would make an effort to reactivate this process that had been dormant for ten years. This process, which is carried out with a methodology of cooperation between the government and civil society, includes the establishment of a Multi-Stakeholder Forum that brings both sides together. Together with other organizations, we have shown our commitment to working with the government for the good of our people.
As Repubblika, we had the privilege of having our representative in the Forum, Manuel Delia, chosen by our partners in civil society as co-chair of the Forum to represent Maltese civil society.
Despite our hope and the contribution we made, the government quickly lost interest in the process and after two meetings stopped convening the Multi-Stakeholder Forum. We will not give up. We will not allow ourselves to be used as an excuse by the government for not engaging with civil society. We are always here to engage: it is the government that is holding back.
We seek every opportunity for the government to listen to us despite its constant attempts to avoid us. In October 2024 we went to Warsaw to participate in the OSCE meeting – the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe – which was convened under the Maltese presidency and which was open to civil society. We used that rare occasion to speak to the government in a place where it could not avoid hearing our call for effective dialogue on reforms that protect democracy.
Also in October 2024 we published our Anti-Corruption Manifesto and Strategy which are driving the actions and initiatives we are taking and which we are mentioning in this report.
From time to time we have issued other policy documents which have served as a basis for dialogue with other civil society organisations, with constituted bodies, with the press and with the public.
For this research work we salute the many volunteers, experts in their field, people who either professionally or academically teach us and open our eyes to what can be done and help us write these documents. We also thank the volunteer translators and proof-readers and those who help us in the publicity and dissemination of the research we do.
We are also including in our priorities a dialogue with the institutions of integrity, namely the ombudsman, the auditor general, and the commissioner for standards in public life. On 9 December we commemorated the International Anti-Corruption Day with a constructive session of dialogue with the leaders of these entities. We reiterated with them our commitment to make a valuable contribution to our country’s fight against corruption and reiterated our support for the useful work they do.
This year, among other things, we published detailed positions on the changes made by the government to the law on magisterial inquiries and in response to a call for consultation on volunteering.
Education
In 2024, we reiterated our annual commitment to spreading the values of democracy and civic participation with our program in schools on Active and Responsible Citizenship. The theme of this fourth edition was: “I care”, the idea used by Don Lorenzo Milani in his school in Barbiana.
We would like to thank the volunteers who helped us this year as well, particularly Mario Grech, Mary Ann Camilleri and Marion Pace Asciak.
This year, 143 students from seven different schools, aged between 11 and 17, took part. Students from the Guardian Angel Secondary Education Resource Centre took part with artistic works.
Public activities
On the 16th of each month, together with the Occupy Justice movement, we met in front of the Court to reiterate our call for the truth to be known and justice to be done for Daphne Caruana Galizia, her family, and her journalistic investigations.
In October, also together with Occupy Justice, we commemorated the seventh anniversary of her murder with a Roundtable that discussed the Anti-Corruption Strategy and the screening of a new documentary that we co-produced with Occupy Justice “Untangling the Mafia State”. We had with us the journalist Françoise Laborde who gave a public speech and we were also visited by the activist Tiberio Bentivoglio.
On 19 February 2024 we protested in front of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in protest after the death of activist Alexey Navalny.
On 16 May 2024 we organized a protest with other organizations to insist that justice be done in the case of corruption in hospitals. On 29 July 2024 we protested to demand that the Governor of the Central Bank take responsibility while he is facing criminal charges in court. On 19 February and 2 April 2025 we protested against the removal of the right of citizens to request magisterial inquiries.
Projects
Together with three partner organisations in Italy, Belgium and Romania, we are three-quarters of the way through the completion of the largest project funded by the European Union’s CREA programme to date. Through S-INFO (Sustainable Information), we have provided training, networking opportunities, psychological and other support to independent Maltese journalists. At the same time, we have brought them closer to Maltese civil society activists. We firmly believe that the greatest good we can do for democracy in Malta is to promote truth and independent journalists; civil society activists have the joint mission of bringing the truth to the attention of the public.
In the coming months, this project will be completed with two important outcomes. Firstly, eight journalistic investigations will be completed, two of them by journalists working in Malta, who we have supported financially and with other technical support. The truth will become more widely known. Secondly, we will launch an information campaign with the theme “There is no Democracy without Journalism” which will be based on Manifestos on Sustainable Information. The funding for this project will end later this year. It is our hope that we will find funds to continue this important work.
In the meantime, we would like to salute and thank Mark Wood, the project manager of Repubblika, who worked so well on this project.
This year we also worked on another project funded by the European Union’s CERV programme called RESTART where we conducted research on abandoned or confiscated property in Malta that can and should be used for social purposes.
Meanwhile, another important part of this project will take place next September when we are planning a training programme for young activists to encourage them and give them the necessary tools to work to protect democracy.
Thanks to funding from the European Union’s ERASMUS+ programme, Repubblika works with our partner organisations in the CHANCE network, Civic Hub Against Organised Crime in Europe. Through this programme we coordinate our efforts to communicate with European institutions while also building the relationships necessary to continue attracting funding from the European Union. Last October we hosted the members of CHANCE in Malta for their annual meeting as they joined us in commemorating the seventh anniversary of the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Following the success of a pilot project last year, a European consortium led by the Sortition Foundation, of which Repubblika is a member, was commissioned by the European Commission to select citizens to take part in the European Citizens’ Assemblies that are meeting in Brussels. Through our volunteers, whom we thank from the bottom of our hearts, this year we are sending six Maltese citizens to take part in the running of our European democracy.
Citizens are not chosen because they are our friends. The streets where we go to look for them are drawn by lottery. Anyone who lives on that street or nearby is invited to register. And the selection is made by lottery among those who register. Because we believe that democracy belongs to everyone: regardless of the party they support or even if they have never shown an interest in taking part in politics until then.
International partnership
As indicated earlier, Repubblika has renewed its membership in two European networks that are important for our work in Malta and Europe. We are members of the CHANCE network as well as members of S-COM, a federation of European entities associated in Belgium to promote sustainable communication and information that protects and enhances the voices of the disadvantaged.
New Republic
When you hear them put together, these are a lot of activities, but they are far less than we wish to do. The threat to democracy is real and the resources, will, and stamina of those who want to destroy it are great. Almost all the work we manage to do is done on a volunteer basis. Although we now have two employees due to funding for European Union projects, much of their time is necessarily dedicated to carrying out those projects that are certainly useful, but alone are not enough to achieve the results we desire.
The result we desire is to have a sufficient presence in our community that can bring about the cultural change we aspire to for our country. To this end, we need more money and more arms with rolled-up sleeves.
It is therefore our duty to turn to anyone who tells us to continue with our work in the interest of our children. We adults have lived the best times for fundamental rights and democracy. We all know from what is happening around us that the future is more murky. Do not let this flame that was ignited by the fire that killed Daphne Caruana Galizia be extinguished because we have neglected or given up. Help us build a New Republic for a New Malta.
Done today 9th May, 2025, at the Repubblika Members’ Meeting, in Valletta.