Quid iuris... this is the question that one of our most eminent law professors, the late Guido de Marco, would have invited his law students to ask. In his inimitable style, he would effortlessly lead us to query the logical legal consequences, implications or effects of a statement or provision of the law.
What about the removal, not merely the appointment, of the police commissioner as Robert Abela is proposing? To date, the prime minister enjoys unfettered discretion to appoint and remove the police commissioner. In the last six years, we have had no less than seven, all removed at the whim of the prime minister.
I will not go here into the details of the ruinous state of the reputation of our country. No need to go into the ravages of the rule of law in Malta. You know now, thanks to Transparency International, that Malta is “mired in corruption” as the Opposition has been stating since 2014, the legacy of Joseph Muscat, voted the most corrupt politician for 2019. The nadir of this filth was reached with the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia by a consortium of criminal masterminds and intermediaries.
What brought Malta on its knees, to this state?
There are many reasons for this, but chiefly among these is the climate and culture of impunity fostered by design by Keith Schembri and Joseph Muscat. Who had the power and authority at law to predict, prevent and counter this climate?
None other than the police commissioner – each one of them since April 2013, each of them removed by the prime minister. That is why last Monday I co-authored and co-signed an Opposition Bill to have the police commissioner appointed, after the requisite hearing before the Parliamentary Public Appointments Committee, by a vote of two thirds of the House of Representatives, and for the same vote to be required for his removal from office for a stated reason of misbehaviour or incapacity, same as for the members of the judiciary, the Ombudsman, the Auditor General and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards in Public Life.
The government does not want the police commissioner to have security of tenure
I’m on public record stating and writing, just a few minutes after the prime minister announced his new method of appointing the police commissioner last week, that it went against the substance of the Venice Commission proposals for the reinstatement of the rule of law. This is both because the ultimate discretion will still be vested in the hands of the prime minister and since the same prime minister will be able to fire him on a whim.
In brief, the government does not want the police commissioner to have security of tenure. The Opposition is adamant on the contrary.
The day after my comments, two of Malta’s eminent legal minds, Kevin Aquilina (writing in this newspaper) and former Judge Giovanni Bonello in comments to The Malta Independent, confirmed that the method being proposed by the government falls foul of the Venice Commission while the one proposed by the Opposition under the leadership of Simon Busuttil and Adrian Delia, and presented as a Bill last Monday, fulfils the standards of the Venice Commission.
Why is this? This is because the Bill presented by the Opposition ensures an appointment and a removal of a police commissioner by no less than two thirds majority of the sitting members of Parliament. One cannot possibly get a higher or better security of tenure than this.
Having the comfort of the approval of both Aquilina and Bonello on the method that the Opposition is insisting upon is critical on this sensitive issue.
I respectfully invite the media to start asking the prime minister who he wants to have the ultimate power to remove the police commissioner. Him or the House of Representatives? That is the million-dollar question. Is the prime minister ready to bite the bullet?
The crux of the issue is this. What is substantively crucial is not from where the name of the police commissioner is derived, but the ultimate method of appointment and removal. By all means, the public call is important, but it precedes the pivotal decision as to who will appoint and who will remove the police commissioner.
Once the government is so sure that its model is compliant and will be acceptable to the Council of Europe (and I have a cast iron conviction that in essence it is not), I challenge the prime minister to immediately ask the Legal Affairs Committee of the Council of Europe, which is meeting next week in Strasbourg, to get the Venice Commission’s written opinion on his proposal.
I have no difficulty in independently and immediately submitting to the same scrutiny the proposal of the Opposition.
Jason Azzopardi is a Nationalist MP.