Court criticises son of former education minister in libel judgements

Two libel claims filed by Alessandro Cristina, son of former Education Minister Dolores Cristina, have backfired spectacularly with a court not only dismissing the claims, but also agreeing that his office's suspension of EU education programmes had placed Malta in an embarrassing situation.

Cristina suffered a double blow this afternoon, with two libel cases he had filed: one against the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party Toni Abela, as editor of publication Kulħadd and the other against Josef Caruana, editor of GWU organ l-Orizzont, being decided against him.

Both cases had been filed over articles published within a day of each other in May 2010, reporting the decision by the European Commission to suspend the Lifelong Learning programme due to concerns at the way Cristina was managing them. The articles reported that the Commission had expressed its great dissatisfaction with the way Cristina's office was managing EU funds allocated to it and had decided to suspend the programmes.

Education Minister Dolores Cristina had not called for any resignations in the department, failing to declare her conflict of interest in the circumstances and instead placing the blame at the feet of the Permanent Secretary at her Ministry.

Magistrate Francesco Depasquale noted that Cristina, as a person employed with a public entity managing public funds and as such, was subject to a high level of scrutiny.

At the time the suspension was ordered, the Ministry had been directly involved in the management and implementation of the programmes and that this had clearly demonstrated that the involvement of the Permanent Secretary, who was subsequently asked to resign.

“This situation was certainly a highly embarrassing one for Malta and one which should have led to the resignation of everyone involved in the management of the programmes. In this case, it was only the Permanent Secretary and the head of European Union Programmes Agencies who resigned. The two persons responsible for the entire administration of the suspended programmes, one of whom was the applicant, did not resign.”

In dismissing the case, magistrate Depasuale reaffirmed the importance of journalists' role as “public watchdogs,” holding that the articles in question constituted 'fair comment,' and that it was “amply clear' that they were based on facts which were “substantially true.”