José Herrera (September 9) writes deploring the practice, introduced by stealth over the years, of the Government sanctioning the setting up of intra-departmental inquiries in cases where serious deficiency on the part of the Administration is suspect and a magisterial inquiry is already in progress.
He rightly claims that this perverse practice is aimed at shielding the Government from any charge of abuse in the public sector that may result from the judicial inquiry.
I have been drawing public notice to this ‘official’ device for perverting the course of justice for many years.
In July 2008, I had pointed out that the defence by the judicial assistant and legal secretary in the Office of the Chief Justice – in relation to the fact that the existence of about 1,700 pending ‘so-called magisterial inquiries’ was of no great import because these inquiries were merely ‘an additional safeguard’ – was an unacceptable slap in the face of the judicial process.
This downgrading and disparagement of the magisterial inquiry at the hands of our highest organs of State, that the Ministry of Justice and the Office of the Chief Justice represent, is an anomaly that should no longer be tolerated.
The laws of Malta in their wisdom put the magisterial inquiry as the central, independent, public and regulated investigative instrument in cases of grave mishap and this should be respected.