Magistrate left caseload of 283 inquiries, but bemoans ‘disgraceful’ court delays

If any proof were needed that the Maltese suffer from a short-term memory, or that they are blind to their faults, the complaints on the courts' delays by Magistrate Carol Peralta - a former freemason - are surely enough.

While Peralta hit out at the "disgrace" of court delays as he took to the Bench for his first sitting in a Maltese court in eight years, little did he point out that he left 283 pending magisterial inquiries when he was appointed in 2005 as an international judge presiding over war crime trials in Kosovo.

While Peralta's complaints were given much prominence in The Times, highlighting the unnecessary delays in the Maltese courts, it turns out that magistrate Peralta was never partial to have his own caseload revealed in the House of Representatives.

Indeed in 2001, then justice minister Austin Gatt told the House that Peralta was one of several magistrates refusing to have his pending caseload of magisterial inquires publicised in the House - something Gatt had publicly criticised.

In comments he gave on breakfast show TVAM today Thursday morning, Peralta said it was "physically impossible" for him to deal with the pending inquiry caseload, because these inquiries were pending further compilation by court experts.

Peralta also played down his former connection with the Leinster freemasons' lodge. "I would not say it is much of an accusation... being part of an association of some four million people, an association that has championed the freedom of thought, an association that has included world statesmen? It's not exactly an accusation."

In 1990, Peralta was revealed in the newspaper Alternattiva - the defunct newspaper published by Alternattiva Demokratika - to have been a freemason.

Peralta's name was listed as the Worshipful Master of the freemasons' Lodge at Villa Blye, in Paola, in an agenda published for fellow freemasons.

In 2001 Gatt reported Peralta to the Commission for the Administration of Justice, for refusing to disclose his pending caseload in response to a parliamentary question.

"It's not the first time this happens," Gatt had told the House. "And it's an unacceptable position... I am sure that the caseload is not covered by the secrecy of the investigations during an inquiry.

"It is disheartening to note that this attitude echoes what the Chief Justice complained about in talking of the responsibilities of the judiciary towards Maltese society. It is intolerable."

In 1992, Peralta had fined 20 Alternattiva Demokratika activists Lm5 each for blocking the entrance to Ta' Cenc hotel during a protest organised against the planned extension of the hotel.

On the day of the blockade, the then personal assistant to the Prime Minister Richard Cachia Caruana was unable to go through the main entrance and had to take a side-entrance. The police were swift to take the particulars of the activists.

The activists chose not to pay the fine and Peralta converted the fine to a one-day prison sentence for three activists - Joe (Peppi) Azzopardi, Mark Borg and myself,
Saviour Balzan.

As a freemason in the Leinster Lodge No 387 at Villa Blye, Peralta was the contact person for the police in case of theft at the premises - although when this was revealed in the press, it was denied by then justice minister Guido de Marco.

A motion to impeach him was presented by then Prime Minister Fenech Adami in August 1990. A year later, the impeachment had not even been discussed. The ever-conciliatory Eddie Fenech Adami softened his position, choosing to believe a declaration by Peralta that he had been acting as an advocate to the Masonic Lodge.

At the time the Labour weekly 'il-Helsien' had suggested, but could not prove, that Fenech Adami's passive withdrawal had been prompted by Maltese and British freemason lobbyists who intended sabotaging the government's EEC application at the time.