Former minister Carmelo Abela was on Thursday expected to continue testifying in libel proceedings against former Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi but a “fundamental problem” concerning court transcripts got in the way. 

Abela was back in court on Thursday to continue where he left off at the previous sitting one month ago, ready to take the witness stand in the suit he filed over a Facebook post by Azzopardi linking him to a botched armed robbery at an HSBC bank in 2010. 

Back then, Abela was a senior insurance and statistics officer at the bank, before being promoted to a managerial rank. 

Azzopardi’s public comment had triggered a prompt reaction by Abela who filed a late-night application to institute libel proceedings to rebut those allegations.

But when the parties turned up for Thursday’s hearing, Abela’s lawyer, Pawlu Lia, pointed out that his client’s previous testimony had not yet been transcribed. 

That transcript would help when putting further questions to the witness, avoiding unnecessary repetition and eliminating perceived inconsistencies.

Since that transcript was not yet available, Lia advised his client not to testify. 

Azzopardi’s lawyer, Joseph Zammit Maempel, stated that they had no issue with that stand, pointing out that, “after all, it’s his case”.

Obviously, the issue concerning transcripts was not the court’s fault, observed the lawyer. 

“This is a fundamental problem,” said Magistrate Rachel Montebello, explaining that the courts were having to contend with this issue on a daily basis, while keeping up with a voluminous caseload. 

There were not enough people to transcribe court testimonies and it was usually the magistrate’s own staff who had to source the necessary manpower to handle this task.

All work relative to her case list had been allocated and was currently being done, pointed out Magistrate Montebello.

One way of tackling the transcripts pile up would be to allow a longer adjournment between one hearing and the next.

But, on the other hand, the court was to ensure that there was no backlog of cases and moreover, such libel cases called for particular expediency. 

Having said that, the court adjourned the case to next month by which time the requested transcript should be available.