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Matthew Vella
The Constitutional Court appears to have finally put to an end former premier Dom Mintoff’s claim for a constitutional remedy against the Water Services Corporation, which he claims damaged both his property and health after suspending his water supply for just one day.
Chief Justice Vincent De Gaetano, and judges Joseph Camilleri and Joseph Filletti, denied Mintoff’s umpteenth appeal, this time against a court of constitutional jurisdiction which threw out his case against the WSC, after judge Geoffrey Valenzia ruled that Mintoff had recourse to an ordinary remedy.
The WSC suspended Mintoff’s water and electricity for just one day, after the former prime minister refused to pay a bill tallying over seven years.
Enduring confidant and former premier Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, paid the Lm1,230 bill himself, against Mintoff’s will, to have the water service reinstated.
The Constitutional Court has now declared that Mintoff’s demands to have the WSC repair damages to his property because of works carried out by the corporation some time before the suspension of his water supply, “was a purely civil matter for which there are ordinary civil procedures”.
The Court also said Mintoff’s original plaint before Judge Valenzia, consisting of various allegations unrelated to his claim against the WSC, “were uniquely intended to colour his initial application” against the suspension of his water service.
At his first sitting before Judge Valenzia, the reclusive former PM claimed his health had been jeopardised by the tampering (tbaghbis) with his telephone, mail and computer. He even said the guards outside The Olives, his residence in Tarxien, were accusing each other of sabotaging his car.
In a paranoid plaint, Mintoff claimed in court he had disagreed with Malta’s accession to the European Union, and former prime minister Eddie Fenech Adami’s decision to become President of the Republic.
He claimed that under such circumstances, he could not accept “the Gieh ir-Repubblika from Fenech Adami”, referring to Malta’s foremost honour.
But it turned out that Mintoff had been conferred the Order of Companion of Honour, and not the honour he created in 1975 which has only been awarded Libyan leader Muammar Ghaddafi and North Korean tin-pot dictator Kim Il Sung. The award has so far remained uncollected by Mintoff, since first being informed of the honour in 1990.
In the penultimate judgement, Judge Valenzia had said the Constitutional Court was not intended to be inundated by unnecessary cases.
Mintoff was assisted in court by both Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, and constitutional lawyer Profs Ian Refalo, dean of the Faculty of Laws.
Valenzia said the suspension of the water service for one day could not have seriously endangered Mintoff’s health, as alleged by the former PM himself. “Perit Mintoff himself brought about this situation, by never paying the pending bills for the water and electricity he availed himself of.”
Valenzia also ruled there was no breach of Mintoff’s right to his peaceful enjoyment of his property. “Water and electricity are not the applicants’ property,” Valenzia said. “In order to enjoy these utilities they also had the obligation to pay for them, or else contest the amount owed. In the meantime, the property in question was still the applicants’ and they could therefore still enjoy it.”
mvella@mediatoday.com.mt
Links: www.maltatoday.com.mt/2006/04/02/t1.html
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