Times of Malta today carried a report about a meeting that Simon Busuttil had with a number of academics on Friday. This was a consultation meeting aimed at having the opinion of academics about the new legal notice establishing criteria regulating the licensing of tertiary institutions.

The last two paragraph of the report by Keith Micallef make for very shocking reading. I will quote verbatim from the report:

“The academics present for this meeting declined to make any statements in the presence of the media. One of those present who later spoke with The Times of Malta on condition of anonymity said lecturers were very uneasy to express their concerns in public as they feared a backlash.”

Please, please someone tell me that this is not true.

If it is true that lecturers are afraid to express their opinion on a legal notice regulating the licensing of universities or on any other matter, it means that we have reached a very worrying stage in our democracy.

I thought that when the Labour MP  Marlene Farrugia  said on Xarabank that “the Workers Movement is terrorising people  (iwerwer lin-nies) she was exaggerating. If the report in The Times of Malta is correct then it seems that she was spot on.

If that is the case then we have reached a shocking situation which should gravely concern us all.

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