Standards commissioner Joseph Azzopardi has taken Owen Bonnici to the cleaners over his rushed legal notice intended to gift Norma Saliba her new job. Azzopardi pointed out the bleeding obvious to the shameless Bonnici – the head of the Maltese language centre should never have been appointed by the minister.
Only the Council for the Maltese Language, according to article 14 of the Maltese Language Act, has the legal authority to appoint officials and other employees to the council. “The fact that the Centre for the Maltese Language is an organ of the council means that this clause applies also to officials of the centre, including Mrs Saliba,” the commissioner declared.
Bonnici didn’t have the legal authority to appoint Saliba. So, he changed the law, through a legal notice. That legal notice, according to the commissioner, created “a conflict” with the pre-existing law. That’s putting it nicely.
Another legal expert, law professor Kevin Aquilina, put it more bluntly in an article in The Malta Independent last September: Bonnici’s legal notice “does not enjoy a shred of legality”. He went further. He predicted Bonnici will be “judicially and publicly humiliated, first in the court of first instance and then at appellate stage”.
Bonnici was so desperate to find a new post for Saliba that he broke the law and attempted to protect himself by drawing up an “illegal” notice giving himself the power to appoint her head – power the law denied him. That power belonged to the Council for Maltese Language.
In his mad rush, Bonnici messed up his “illegal notice”. Azzopardi wasn’t kind. He meticulously listed the catalogue of errors in Bonnici’s notice, humiliating the minister. Bonnici got even the most basic things wrong. His legal notice refers to regulation 7(3) and (4). But those regulations don’t exist.
In point 10 of his report, Azzopardi comments: “It is not clear what regulation 4(3) is referring to because the regulations on the Centre for the Maltese Language include no regulation 7(3) or 7(4).” It seems nobody bothered to proofread the legal notice. Bonnici just published a botched first draft.
Bonnici even got the name of the centre wrong. The Act on the Maltese Language refers to a ‘National Centre for the Maltese Language’. Bonnici’s legal notice and Saliba’s loan agreement refer to the ‘Centre for the Maltese Language’.
“These are anomalies that should be avoided in drafting of laws and legal documents,” the commissioner rebuked.
On August 16, Bonnici informed Times of Malta that Saliba was employed with the Centre for the Maltese Language. On September 5, Bonnici told The Malta Independent that she was still a PBS employee. What was gong on? Hadn’t she resigned from PBS to take up her new post?
The problem was that Saliba’s headship was only temporary. So, she decided to keep her job at PBS as fall-back. At the end of her headship, Saliba can simply slip back to her PBS manager post. Saliba didn’t just want her cake, she also wanted to devour it.
On August 10, 2023, PBS entered into an agreement with Bonnici’s ministry to loan Saliba on unpaid leave.
The very next day, August 11, 2023, Bonnici issued his “illegal notice” and Saliba signed her contract as executive head with “the National Centre for the Maltese Language”. Not so fast, Azzopardi admonished.
The commissioner noted that there were “inconsistencies between the loan agreement and the employment contract”.
Owen Bonnici’s legal notice ‘does not enjoy a shred of legality’- Kevin Cassar
The loan agreement could be extended to a maximum of six years while the employment contact had no such restriction. This, the commissioner noted, “raises doubts about the information provided by the minister to my office”.
Not even the commissioner believes Bonnici. “Minister Bonnici failed to address the inconsistencies between the loan agreement and the employment contract,” the commissioner noted.
“This office expresses similar concerns regarding other administrative and legal anomalies that emerge in this case,” Azzopardi stated.
In the same sentence in Saliba’s contract, her employer is listed as the ministry and later as the ‘National Centre for the Maltese Language’.
“This creates ambiguity as to who is actually employing Saliba in her new role,” the commissioner commented.
He went on to chide the minister. The council is a legal entity and, therefore, “logic dictates that the council should have been party to the two agreements instead of the ministry”.
The commissioner reserved his final point in the report to scold Bonnici for his petty partisanship.
I asked Azzopardi to investigate Bonnici’s apparently inconsistent replies to reporters about Saliba’s employment.
Instead of answering the commissioner’s questions, Bonnici attempted to discredit me and impugn bad faith by repeatedly referring to me as “the failed PN candidate”.
Seven times in his communications with the commissioner, Bonnici referred to me as the former PN candidate: “Prof. Kevin Cassar, who contested without any success whatsoever with the PN.” He attacked the “media that the ex PN candidate Kevin Cassar loves to write in”.
“The former PN candidate Kevin Cassar got certain ideas into his head and it later resulted that what he got into his head was wrong,” Bonnici wrote in his official letter to the commissioner.
Sadly, Bonnici is not only manifestly unfit for office but disgraces the office he occupies. Aquilina gave Bonnici some wise legal advice: “Political maturity dictates that he accepts fault, apologises to the council for his abuse of power and arrogant behaviour, sincerely and honestly admit that the consultation procedure was legally and administratively flawed and…. revoke the legal notice that does not enjoy a shred of legality.”
Aquilina had even wiser advice for the council: “The council should not only sue the minister in his official capacity but also personally so that… it will be the minister (not the state advocate) who will have to fork out the expenses incurred.”
Kevin Cassar is a professor of surgery.