Cassola ethics complaint on Abela’s ‘Facebook propaganda’ goes to Speaker

The independent MEP candidate Arnold Cassola has said an ethics breach complaint he filed against Prime Minister Robert Abela, has been forwarded to the Speaker of the House.

Cassola said the report on his complaint, by the Commissioner for Standards, had been forwarded to the Speaker as the chair of the ethics committee in the House. “This means the Prime Minister is guilty of breach of ethics,” Cassola said.

On 5 February, 2023, Cassola filed a complaint on a promotional video posted to the official Malta government Facebook page, featuring Abela on a Gozo visit with minister Clint Camilleri, meeting constituents. The video was musically scored but had no other commentary. Cassola insisted this was “a propaganda video issued by the Office of the Prime Minister.”

“This is nothing but bare-faced propaganda for Robert Abela, paid by the Maltese taxpayer, and which goes against the Commissioner for Standards’ own recommendations on the use of visual adverts and Facebook by ministers.”

The report will now be tabled in the committee for ethics in public life, which is chaired by Speaker Anglu Farrugia.

In 2019, the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life had concluded that the use of public resources to maintain a minister’s personal Facebook page or to produce material for that page represents an abuse of public funds.

Former standards czar George Hyzler came to the conclusion [opens PDF] after considering a complaint by the Nationalist MP Karol Aquilina against former minister Konrad Mizzi, who was tourism minister when the complaint was made. The complaint concerned partisan political content in a Facebook page which appeared to be an official page administered by the Ministry for Tourism.

Hyzler said a clear distinction should be maintained between a minister’s personal channels of communication and the official channels of ministries or departments of government, and only the latter should be maintained using public resources.