Ombudsman suggests 'right to good administration' in the Constitution

The Ombudsman, Joseph Said Pullicino, proposed yesterday that the Constitution should include an article recognising the right of the people to good administration.

Dr Said Pullicino told the House Business Committee that in a letter to the Speaker he had proposed that this right, which was acknowledged and defined both in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and in the treaty establishing the Constitution for Europe, should be included in the Bill currently before the House, which will introduce the Ombudsman in the Constitution.

"The recognition of this right in the Malta Constitution would not only strengthen the right of the individual to a just and transparent administration but would also motivate and justify the decision of the House of Representatives to entrench the Ombudsman institution as a guardian of this right."

Dr Said Pullicino added that both the EU Commissioner for Human Rights and the Council of Europe were actively promoting the notion that national and regional ombudsmen should take on a positive human rights dimension.

They were envisaging the setting up of a network of ombudsmen to assist the Commissioner in his work. For this purpose it was being proposed that it should be mandatory for ombudsmen to have an explicit human rights mandate.

Justice and Home Affairs Minister Tonio Borg said that this proposal would be considered.

Dr Said Pullicino said that the Bill currently before the House was wider in scope than the original which had been communicated to him. It would allow the function of the Ombudsman to be extended by an Act of Parliament to include the investigation of administrative acts by bodies that were not government controlled or in which the government did not have a controlling interest but which were considered to be providing a public service.

This was very much in line with the trend in other EU member states that sought to contain the possible negative impact of privatisation on the quality of service and the measure of accountability to which the citizen was entitled in areas that were more properly in the domain of public administration.

This was all the more relevant in respect of the provision of essential services.

Discussing aspects of the annual report, which the Ombudsman had tabled earlier, Dr Borg noted with satisfaction that the number of complaints which did not need to be decided because a settlement was reached by the Ombudsman's mediation had increased.

Dr Borg pointed out that the Ombudsman's decisions were only recommendations and their execution was not a legal obligation. Had this been otherwise, the Office of the Ombudsman would be a super ministry. However, few decisions were not implemented.

Labour MP Helena Dalli said that the opposition agreed with the entrenchment of the Ombudsman in the Constitution but it also believed the House should see what it could do for all the Ombudsman's recommendations to be taken up, without turning the office of the Ombudsman into a super ministry.

Nationalist MP Mario Galea pointed out that in most cases, recommendations were not taken up by the government because it did not have executive power since the cases involved local councils.

Dr Borg said he did not know what more could be done. For it was natural that a few of the thousands of recommendations were not taken up. In such cases, there could perhaps be an explanation as to why the decision was not implemented.

Mrs Dalli insisted that even if there was just one case where discrimination was proven, a remedy should be given.

Dr Said Pullicino said that the percentage of cases where his recommendation was not accepted was very small and the administration could not involve itself in some of the decisions.

However, ombudsmen abroad had the opportunity to take a case to a tribunal if they suspected that their recommendations were not being implemented because of something that was not in order.