Farrugia Sacco loses Constitutional case

The Constitutional Court has not upheld an appeal filed by Former Judge Lino Farrugia Sacco, in his case against the Prime Minister, the Attorney General and the Commission for the Administration of Justice.

In a mammoth 141-page judgement, the Constitutional Court in its appellate jurisdiction, presided by Judges Joseph R. Micallef, Tonio Mallia and Noel Cuschieri held that no breach of Farrugia Sacco’s rights had taken place when the Commission for the Administration for Justice had ruled that, following the evaluation of his first impeachment motion tabled in parliament, a re-evaluation of the evidence was not necessary in the second, identical impeachment motion.

It held that there had been no changes from the first motion proposing his impeachment which had been presented by Lawrence Gonzi, then Prime Minister before the change of government. As there were no changes, said the court, there was no need to re-evaluate the evidence.

On both prior occasions, the commission for the administration of justice had held that it had been presented with prima facie evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Farrugia Sacco, who had refused its demand that he resign from his post of President of the Malta Olympic Committee.

Farrugia Sacco had previously testified that at the time of his appointment to the Bench in 1997, there had been no restrictions of any nature on the judiciary in place. He argued that his conditions of work had therefore been altered without his consent. He claimed that at the time of his appointment, there had been no official Code of Ethics for the judiciary (it being first published in April 2000). To the contrary, he said, several ministers, the President and the Prime Minister would regularly urge him to bring more sports conferences to Malta and to bring the Small Nations Games to Malta.

He had claimed that his right to a fair hearing and his right to freedom of association had been breached by the way the parliamentary motion was presented to it by the Speaker of the House. The initial motion was killed off by the dissolution of parliament at the end of the last legislature, but the subsequent government had proposed its revival. No ad hoc provisions existed that could revive a motion tabled before a parliament that had since been dissolved, he argued. Furthermore, said Farrugia Sacco, the subsequent court proceedings had not granted him an opportunity to summon the President and former Attorney General Dr. Peter Grech as witnesses. The case had been rushed and had not provided him with the necessary space to prepare himself.

The Commission for the Administration of Justice, however had argued that the right to a fair hearing proceedings had to be seen as in the larger context of the judicial process as a whole and not halfway through proceedings. “Otherwise it would be permitting that a party could sabotage judicial proceedings with impunity simply by claiming a breach of his right to a fair hearing – in so doing breaching that same right pertaining to the other party.”

In its final judgment, the court found no wrongdoing on the part of the Commission, who had continued its investigation process after the dissolution of parliament, in the absence of instructions to the contrary. The Commission was also right in refusing to allow him to summon “irrelevant witnesses.” In addition, the speed with which the proceedings had been held had placed him at an advantage, held the court, as he had all the time in the world to prepare his case before filing it. No evidence of him having suffered any prejudice as a result of this expeditiously-heard case had been presented.

The code of ethics for the judiciary had been substantially updated in 2004, noted the court and no judge or magistrate had signed this version.

Finally, with regards to the freedom of association, the court held that this was untouched as Commission had only objected to his executive post within the MOC, which it felt to be incompatible with his post as it could undermine public faith in the judiciary.