Minister urges injustices tribunal to boost number of decided cases

Justice Minister Austin Gatt complained in parliament yesterday that too few cases were being decided every year by the Tribunal for the Investigation of Injustices when compared to the first hall of the Civil Court. He augured that this number would increase this year so that the tribunal would be able to clear the cases before it by this year or next year.

The minister was speaking when the House of Representatives debated a motion to renew the term of the tribunal by a year. The tribunal was set up for a four-year term in 1997 and was given another one year extension last year.

The motion was moved by Dr Gatt and seconded by opposition justice spokesman Anglu Farrugia.

In his introduction, Dr Gatt recalled that the tribunal was set up to consider alleged cases of injustices which took place between 1987 and 1995. The then Nationalist opposition had been against the setting up of the tribunal for two main reasons. It had argued that rather than a tribunal which followed the same procedures as the courts, one should opt for the Ombudsman system, which made for faster proceedings. Time was proving the PN right and many cases before the tribunal had therefore dragged on for years.

The then PN opposition had also argued that the tribunal`s term should not be limited to four years. Indeed, the term of the tribunal had since already been extended by one year and was now being extended for another year. Indeed, he was sure another extension would be needed next year, although he hoped this would not be the case.

Although it had disagreed with the setting up of the tribunal, the PN government, in the interests of continuity, had made sure the tribunal had all the resources it needed for its proper functioning. Indeed, it was among the first institutions to have judicial assistants.

Dr Gatt said that a total of 1,337 applications had been submitted to the tribunal within the prescribed period, of which 350 were surrendered, withdrawn, deserted, adjourned sine die or given up, leaving some 1,000 pending cases to be heard in the original four-year term of the tribunal.

The tribunal started functioning in the last few months of 1998. By the end of 1999, 191 cases were decided. A further 95 were decided in 2000 and 161 cases last year. That meant that in three full years, 447 sentences were handed down, an average of 145 per year. This was obviously a low rate, with 532 cases remained pending at the end of last year.

Matters had improved this year. In the first four months of this year, 91 cases were decided, 137 cases were awaiting sentence and 69 were in their final stages. Some 200 cases were expected to remain pending for next year.

Justice had to be done and seen to be done, and that had to be done within a reasonable time. The former Labour government had set four years as that reasonable time and set the term of the tribunal accordingly.

Unfortunately the number of cases decided by the tribunal was lower than in the first hall of the civil court. While it could be argued that the presiding judge also had some work in the first hall, it had to be said that only nine cases were assigned to him last year, along with a very small number of appeals. He was therefore working full time in the tribunal where the number of decided cases was far lower than in the courts where an average of 220 cases were decided by each judge in the first hall every year. His appeal, therefore, was for the number of cases decided by the tribunal to rise to at least that level, if not more, given that the cases in the tribunal were generally similar. Indeed, the performance of the tribunal in the first few months of this year indicated that nearly 300 cases could be decided this year.

One could not have cases pending before the tribunal for ever, not only in the interests of justice but also because the judge was needed in the civil court. He calculated that the operations of the tribunal would be concluded seven years after its setting up.

Dr Gatt observed that when the Labour government was set up, the Labour government determined that when the tribunal upheld a complaint by an applicant, the tribunal had two choices, either to provide redress in kind, bearing in mind the laws in force and the estacode, or it could order the payment of compensation.

There had been cases where the tribunal ordered redress in kind, such as in the case of promotions, while ignoring other laws, such as the constitution. As a result, some of those recommendations could not be implemented by the prime minister because the last word in such cases was not his own but the Public Service Commission`s (PSC), which decided matters such as promotions.

It was unfair, therefore, for the opposition sometimes to accuse the prime minister of not implementing the tribunal`s recommendations. The prime minister had no power to issue directives on matters such as promotions without the approval of the PSC. In cases when the tribunal knew that the prime minister could not provide the redress which the tribunal had recommended, the tribunal should have awarded financial compensation.

The problem, clearly, was in the wording of the law governing the tribunal, which ignored the problems which could arise when the Public Service Commission decided it could not provide the redress the tribunal recommended.

Another problem was that the police had decided that the tribunal was not competent to hear cases involving the corps as it was therefore challenging its recommendations. This was not uncommon in other courts. Even the competence of the constitutional court had been attacked in some instances.

Concluding Dr Gatt again complained about the low number of cases decided by the tribunal. Welcoming the upturn of cases decided in the first months of this year, he again appealed for a higher number of cases to be decided so that the tribunal could conclude its work this year or possibly next year.