No banner but ours

Transport Malta has made one of the most astounding announcements of the year, declaring that, over the past five years, it had received not a single request from any political party to issue a permit for a street banner. Not one.

This begs the question: Are we just hallucinating when the only thing we see as we travel on our roads is political propaganda banners on all sides?

If we’re not, then there is only one conclusion –  none of the multitude of political banners is covered by a permit.

Meanwhile,  Momentum, a small political party that currently enjoys the support of just 2% of the population, was organising a focus group on animal rights called Vision Circle. In August 2025, it requested permission from Transport Malta to hang a banner advertising the event.

It submitted all the documents and forms to Transport Malta. It sought local council approval for its plan, which it obtained.  It proposed affixing the banner at the Santa Venera tunnels or, as an alternative, on Aldo Moro Road in Marsa. Transport Malta requested photos of the proposed site, and Momentum provided them that same day.

Transport Malta told Momentum that it was reviewing its application.  But weeks passed, and Momentum heard nothing from them.

Momentum didn’t give up.  It sent repeated reminders to Transport Malta, seeking an answer on whether they could fix the banner. Transport Malta gave contradictory information and then refused to explain its rules over putting up “political” banners.  Then the Authority simply stopped replying to Momentum’s requests.

The Party assumed that its application was still under review.  In fact, Transport Malta had simply decided not to issue a permit for the banner, but didn’t bother to inform the applicant.

In utter exasperation, Momentum was compelled to lodge a Freedom of Information request – simply to get a basic answer from Transport Malta.  It was only then that Momentum discovered that Transport Malta had decided, in total secrecy, not to issue the permit.

The Authority’s bizarre excuse for its refusal was that erecting a banner advertising a focus group on animal rights constituted a “security” concern.

Frustrated, Momentum filed another Freedom of Information request, as its members couldn’t understand why it was being denied a permit for its banner when the whole country was covered with Labour’s massive political propaganda posters. So, Momentum demanded to know how many permits Transport Malta had issued for political street banners.

Transport Malta’s reply was as shocking as it was unbelievable. It claimed that it had never received a single request to issue a permit for a political banner in the past five years. That’s rubbing salt into the wound.

Understandably, Momentum wasn’t just confused, but absolutely furious.

So Momentum went to the Ombudsman and requested an investigation into Transport Malta’s obstructionism and abuse. It didn’t take the Ombudsman’s Office very long to conclude that Transport Malta had failed ”to adhere to principles of good administration”.

The Ombudsman found Transport Malta guilty of “significant procedural shortcomings”.  The Authority had “failed to clearly communicate the applicable procedures and did not respond to or notify the applicant of a decision”.

The Ombudsman drew up a long list of “fundamental principles of good administration” that Transport Malta had breached: transparency, accountability, efficiency, and responsiveness.  More importantly, the Ombudsman determined that “the complainant suffered an injustice”.

It’s been over a month since the Ombudsman’s conclusions were made public. But nobody has been held accountable.

Leading the Transport Authority is Joseph Muscat’s chief communications officer, Kurt Farrugia. Transport Malta didn’t even bother reacting to the Ombudsman’s tongue-lashing, in the same way it hadn’t even bothered replying to Momentum.

Chris Bonett, the Minister responsible for Transport Malta, didn’t summon Farrugia to demand an explanation for the litany of his failures of good administration that the Ombudsman highlighted.

The Ombudsman was reduced to issuing the most ridiculous and elementary of recommendations to Transport Malta. The most hilarious one of all was “a formal obligation to communicate decisions to applicants, including the reasons behind them”.

This is the pitiful state to which Labour’s cronies have reduced the country’s authorities, where they have to be ordered by the Ombudsman to at least reply to the public they’re meant to serve.

Worse still, this is the woeful situation to which they’ve reduced citizens, where we have to beg the authorities meant to serve us for a reply to our requests.

Citizens have to lodge an FOI request to find out whether Farrugia, who is being paid €12,500 a month to do his job while working on Labour’s campaign, has given them permission to put up a banner.

The most depressing thing is that no matter what the Ombudsman says or does, Farrugia will ignore him anyway. He has been put there for a reason – and it’s certainly not to make it easy for other political parties to spread their message.