Magisterial inquiries and political persecutions

Those who are abusing the long-established system of magisterial inquiries (technically known as the in genere in legal jargon) to further their cruel political agendas are arguing that the government wants to restrict the rights of citizens to combat corruption and wrongdoing. False.

Let me cut to the chase and go straight to the point. The blue heroes – that extremist faction within PN – are using magisterial inquiries as a tool for political persecution. No more, no less. Prime Minister Robert Abela made it clear that he wants a stop to this abuse, and the first steps have already been taken.

Our legal set-up, which has evolved over time, provides a plethora of effective structures and legal avenues with which individuals can report alleged wrongdoings.

In all democratic societies, including those which we consider to be trailblazers in the field of criminal justice, the executive police is the foremost institution which is provided with the responsibility to preserve public order, prevent, detect and investigate offences, collect evidence and bring offenders before the judicial authorities. The executive police is and should be the first port of call for those who want to report crimes.

Furthermore, in cases involving politicians and people in public life, individuals can also seek recourse to the Ombudsman, the Standards Commissioner, the Auditor General, or the Permanent Commission Against Corruption. Malta also has a legal framework for whistleblowers in place.

Those legal avenues were either bolstered or created by subsequent Labour governments since 2013. In fact, throughout the past generation we implemented one reform after another, enhancing the independence of prosecutions, increasing judicial scrutiny on decisions taken by the prosecutor, and introducing procedures to safeguard the rights of suspects, such as their right to a lawyer and the right to disclosure. This happened after years of total paralysis during the GonziPN years which had led parliament to declare its lack of confidence in the justice minister of the day.

 I am honoured to have contributed, as minister responsible for justice in the past, to many of these changes and I applaud my hardworking successors – Edward Zammit Lewis and Jonathan Attard for continuing to implement more reforms that improved the justice system.  This hard work was positively noted by the Venice Commission and the European Commission.

Let us not forget that when under a Nationalist administration Nationalist MP Franco Debono proposed a holistic reform of the justice system he was completely ignored – to put it mildly.  Most of the current blue heroes occupied pride and place in the highest echelons of the Nationalist Party at the time.

Last Christmas Eve, the extremist faction that calls the shots within the PN was busy filing legal proceedings and asking for magisterial inquiries to be held on members of the executive, key civil servants and business organisations on the basis of newspaper reports and portal printouts. They were and still are on a rampage trying to wreak havoc against individuals and their families that the extremist faction has decided to target in a cruel and inhumane way.

Today, members of the executive are passing through this cruel calvary, but tomorrow it could be someone else – perhaps it could be people from the other party who do not form part of the blue heroes’ clique or people in business. Basically, it could be anyone, who, those posing as the paladins of the rule of law, decide to target depending on the criteria they set.

This is indeed a very serious matter, particularly when one keeps in mind the lack of credibility of all those involved in this flagrant abuse of the in genere procedure.

We have recently witnessed the case of Cabinet Secretary Ryan Spagnol, who was accused by former PN MP Jason Azzopardi of very serious corrupt practices.

The former PN MP had taken to Facebook and called the cabinet secretary ‘criminal’ and ‘corrupt’, when the latter filed libel proceedings. These allegations have since been withdrawn and an apology has been put forward. But the harm had been done, and I have no doubt that the cabinet secretary and his family went through hard times.

In 2019, I, too, was at the receiving end from the very same person who tried to tarnish Ryan Spagnol’s reputation. On Facebook, he called me a ‘criminal’ and a ‘liar’. I immediately filed libel proceedings, and in 2022, three years later, the person who tried to tarnish my reputation formally retracted his claims in Court. The same thing happened to my colleague, Labour MP Carmelo Abela, who instituted libel proceedings against this very same person. Carmelo went on to win the case.

As I write, these very same paladins of the rule of law are addressing the press, in front of the police headquarters in Floriana, to lash out against a magistrate who ordered the police to investigate how the contents of an inquiry, abusively ended up in their hands. The magistrate said that they should have never been given access to such a sensitive document and that the leaks betrayed a lack of integrity in the officials who chose to share the confidential document.

The government will make the necessary reforms for the sake of a better, fairer and stronger criminal justice system.