“Names do not impress me. They never did and they will not now. I have always believed that I am in the force to serve. I am not going to fear anybody. Under my leadership, I will not look at any faces.”
“The [police] commissioner confirmed to us that the police are not investigating the case… He told us he will not open a police investigation until the magisterial inquiry is done.”
The first solemn pledge was made by Angelo Gafà in his first press conference just days after assuming office as police commissioner in late June 2020.
The second was a statement by Nationalist Party leader Bernard Grech shortly after meeting Gafà last Tuesday to ask him to investigate following the previous day’s damning appeals’ court judgment into the hospitals’ deal.
The commissioner certainly need not be reminded that the police is the only institution empowered by law to conduct investigations. Police investigations and magisterial inquiries, he surely knows, are not mutually exclusive. They serve different purposes.
If anything, the findings of a magisterial inquiry or a court judgment can only strengthen the hands of the police and push them to switch from passive to active investigations.
Even if the attorney general has the last word on whether to prosecute or not, that decision depends on whether the police investigate and how thorough such an investigation is, unless, of course, other sinister considerations come into play.
Still, we now learn from Gafà himself that the police force does not appear to be investigating the Vitals/Steward hospitals scandal.
If that is indeed the case, then why did police officers search Joseph Muscat’s home in January 2022 within the ambit of the magisterial inquiry into the hospitals’ fraudulent concession?
The police are quick to proceed against the small fry and look in every nook and cranny of the island to weed out irregular residents
Surely, the police chief recalls what he had said late last year when asked about the search at the former prime minister’s house. He had refused to refer to specific cases, “especially if they are at the investigation or prosecution stage”.
This inquiry, it bears recalling, started in 2019, triggered by NGO Repubblika that was concerned about police inaction over government corruption.
Gafà is being accused of failing in his duty as the country’s topmost law enforcement agent when faced with such a scandal that cost the country so dearly. He is accused of doing nothing when the auditor general made it amply clear something was very rotten in the hospitals’ privatisation deal.
He is accused of doing nothing when, last February, the civil court declared the hospitals deal is null and void, even establishing it was fraudulent. He is accused of not acting when, last Monday, the court of appeal confirmed that decision and remarked there was collusion between senior government exponents, representatives of State entities and Vitals/Steward.
This raises concerns knowing that the police are quick to proceed against the small fry and look in every nook and cranny of the island to weed out irregular residents.
After a litany of failed commissioners, there was a lot of hope when Gafà was appointed as police boss. But there is now good reason to fear that he is giving more weight to his political master’s wishes than the substance of his oath of office.
When he applied for the post of police commissioner he must have known that his duties – and, indeed, his powers – would be far removed from being the force’s chief executive officer.
Law-biding citizens are expecting him to act with integrity and to stop “looking at faces”.