OPM aides ring businessmen and tell them not to ask certain questions

In Times of Malta’s print edition today: a report on how businessmen who had booked seats at Michael Falzon’s Gvern Li Jisma session last week were rung up by OPM aides and told not to ask questions about the government’s Property Division.

That is exactly what they had planned to do.

Why exactly do these people fall in line with illegitimate requests like this? If you turn up to a public information session given by a cabinet minister or PS, you ask what you like. The government can’t set restrictions on questions; it can only restrict its answers, though that is a bad idea.

I suppose the businessmen fell in line because of the perceived threat to their own interests: they would have obliged because they feared the business repercussions of not doing so.

And so they told the newspaper instead.