Prime Minister breached ethics and again refused to apologise - Standards chief
A promotional government-funded video breached parliamentary ethics, the commissioner said
The Standards Commissioner has reprimanded Prime Minister Robert Abela for refusing to apologise over a video found to breach parliamentary ethics.
The commissioner was acting upon a complaint filed by PN MP Karol Aquilina last September.
In his complaint, Aquilina argued that a short video published as a sponsored post on the MaltaGov Facebook page breached ethics by featuring Abela and several other government ministers in a promotional manner.
The one-minute video featured still images of ministers with text highlighting ten government initiatives.
The commissioner agreed with Aquilina, brushing aside Abela’s defence that the video was factual and non-partisan, and that the video cost under €50 to produce.
In his judgement, the commissioner pointed to ethics guidelines saying that publicly-funded adverts should not include names or images of ministers, even if these images are taken from official events and launches of government initiatives.
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“Other photos from the events could easily have been selected,” the commissioner argued.
Given the video’s low production cost and short running time, the commissioner deemed the incident a minor breach, calling on Abela to issue a written apology.
Abela refused, saying his stance was unchanged from a similar case last year when he was also found in breach of ethics and did not apologise.
That case involved a video of Abela visiting schools in Gozo, which was deemed promotional and in breach of ethics.
Abela refused to apologise, arguing that his rights to a fair hearing were being breached because he was not given the chance to produce evidence.
The matter had eventually reached the parliament’s Standards in Public Life Committee, with all four MPs on the committee agreeing to publish the report.
On Tuesday, the standards commissioner once again referred this latest report to the committee, calling on it to kickstart the process for the ethics guidelines to be codified into law.