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Karl Schembri
His conspicuous absence at the Republic Day conferment of honours triggered a lot of talk about a possible snub but Judge Giovanni Bonello holds no grudges against President Eddie Fenech Adami.
Suspicions arose about the medal granted in his absence to the Maltese judge on the European Court of Human Rights on 13 December, when the day after he was in Malta launching his latest volume of Histories of Malta.
“There was nothing of that,” he said when asked afterwards if he was snubbing the ceremony in which he was granted the honour of Companion of the National Order of Merit. “I just had a mix-up on the air planes so I arrived in the evening instead of in the morning. It was nothing except that.”
Judge Bonello made a name for himself defending human rights cases in the eighties under the Labour government but was sidelined in the appointment of judge at the Strasbourg Human Rights Court under Nationalist governments.
In fact, when he was prime minister, Eddie Fenech Adami had appointed former Chief Justice Giuseppe Mifsud Bonnici despite expectations that Bonello would get the post. Ironically, Bonello was then appointed in the Strasbourg court under Alfred Sant’s Labour government in 1998.
Richard Cachia Caruana was also granted the medal of Companion of the National Order of Merit last Wednesday by the man to whom he was Personal Assistant for 15 years before he moved on to head the negotiations for Malta’s EU membership.
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