News • 10 November 2002

Eddie rebuked by President

Valletta: In what is being interpreted as a slap in the face for the Prime Minister, the Commission for the Administration of Justice yesterday said it was saddened by comments passed on the Commission and the President of the Republic. On Friday Prime Minister Dr Eddie Fenech Adami was reported as stating that he was grossly disappointed at the Commission’s deliberations over the proposal to appoint Dr André Camilleri to the judiciary.

The PM’s strongly worded comment was relayed in The Times with front page prominence. This led to a swift reply from the Commission, chaired by the President of the Republic Profs. Guido Demarco.

The septuagenarian President who has a largely symbolic function was effectively exiled from hands on politics and appointed President three years back.

At the time the move was interpreted by political observers as one way of allowing the haggling over the accession process to be captained by the Office of the Prime Minister. Profs Guido Demarco was then Foreign Minister.

Yet, his chairmanship of the Commission on the Administration of Justice has provided the former criminal lawyer with a podium and a mouthpiece for some active decisionmaking.

And though the Commission has done little or nothing when it comes to allegations about the judiciary from subjects as wideranging as freemasonry and the business interests in the judiciary it has opted to bare its teeth on the Andre Camilleri appointment.

The Commission’s stand has irked Dr Fenech Adami. The Prime Minister’s thermometer seems to have marked boiling point after a series of events which unveiled the President’s unilateral approach to certain issues.

Notably and not to be forgotten was his secret meeting with Dom Mintoff and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, the two former ageing premiers who met the President some weeks before their meeting in Brussels with Romano Prodi, the EU Commissioner.