Standards Commissioner rejects Cassola complaint against PL MPs
MPs had blocked a request to summon the Film Commissioner to appear before the Public Accounts Committee
The Standards Commissioner has dismissed a request by Momentum chair Arnold Cassola to investigate four PL MPs sitting on Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, saying the case lies outside his jurisdiction.
In October, PL MPs Alex Muscat, Naomi Cachia, Amanda Spiteri Grech and Ramona Attard blocked a request for Film Commissioner Johann Grech to appear before the committee to give a full account of €7.2 million in payments on the Film Commission’s books.
During the sitting, the four government MPs argued that Grech had already provided sufficient information, voting against PAC chair Darren Carabott’s request to summon Grech.
Cassola promptly filed a complaint with the Standards Commissioner, saying the MPs’ vote “ensured that the public does not have an account of how the Film Commissioner spent €7 million in taxpayer funds”.
Cassola’s complaint initially also included MP Glenn Bedingfield, although this was withdrawn when it emerged that Bedingfield did not attend the committee sitting, with Naomi Cachia taking his place.
Nevertheless, the Standards Commissioner threw the case out, pointing to how his office does not have jurisdiction over matters that take place in parliament.
The commissioner said several previous rulings had explained that parliamentary affairs fall under the Speaker’s responsibility. These included previous rulings on complaints linked to the same public accounts committee, the commissioner added.
Furthermore, “each MP has the right and duty to vote according to how they feel is right and should not be found to have breached ethics simply because of how they vote,” he said.
He also pointed to a previous ruling which found that now-PN leader Alex Borg had breached ethics for misleading comments he had made when justifying his vote over an amendment to the Fort Chambray concession.
In that ruling, the commissioner had said that “the breach of ethics came from the factual inaccuracies in his comments, not in how he voted over the motion”.
Ultimately, there were no grounds for an investigation to take place, the commissioner concluded.
Reacting to the ruling, Cassola said "yesterday we got to know that MPs are free to lie. Today, we get to know that MPs are free to vote as they deem, even if they are obstructing the quest for justice and truth. We wonder if there is any other such parliament in democratic Europe where MPs are allowed to behave this way".