In the last year alone Arnold Cassola’s contribution to the fight against criminality and corruption has been by far much greater than the combined efforts of the Police Commissioner and the Attorney-General. While both the Police Commissioner and the Attorney-General have failed to prosecute anyone over corruption, Arnold Cassola has been constantly filing reports to the authorities over corruption and bad practices. Arnold’s latest report was made to the Prime Minister and concerned a government official accused of sexual harassment. Thanks to Arnold’s report this official has been taken to court.
Probably, the biggest coup Arnold made was when he submitted a report to the Standards Commissioner over the Minister of Education’s (Justyne Caruana) corrupt contract to her boyfriend. The Standards Commission inquiry eventually led to the resignation of Justyne Caruana and her permanent secretary and also suggested a criminal investigation – surprisingly Angelo Gafa didn’t act over the Commissioner’s advise. Now, Arnold wants to take the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance to task over their corrupt practice of buying votes by sending €100 cheques to everyone on the eve of the election.
Arnold is a political veteran of the Green Party having contested general elections in Malta for two decades and has been once elected to the Italian parliament between 2006 and 2008 (he’s half Italian). Arnold was once very close to getting elected as a Member of the European Parliament in 2004 garnering up to 23,000 votes.
Today, Arnold Cassola is contesting on the 10th and 11th districts as an independent candidate. Getting him elected to parliament would mean electing a powerhouse guarding public finances against corruption. As Angelo Gafa sleeps on Malta’s collapse of rule of law, people like Arnold are needed more than ever in parliament.
By the way ladies, he is single. He is 69 and has a full-time job as a professor at the University of Malta. As a single male with a good job (probably soon to retire), he probably has a lot of money he doesn’t know what to do with (he is financing his own political campaign) and he is also living by himself, so he is probably good in the cooking skills department. Catch him while you can.
Arnold Cassola has also spent a lifetime researching and studying the Maltese language and literature. During my tenure as head of the National Book Council, Cassola used to be one of our guests at our radio and TV programmes along with hundreds of other authors. You may listen to an interview about his work on the radio programmer we used to run (now shut down) here:
Prosit. Well said