It’s time to abolish the standards commissioner’s office. The current incumbent is a threat to justice, an adversary of truth and a stick in the hands of Labour’s crooked politicians with which to beat the people they’re meant to serve. By appointing Joseph Azzopardi, Robert Abela managed not only to destroy the function of that office but to transform it into Labour’s propaganda machine.
Yet again, the standards commissioner, Azzopardi managed to defy justice.
He’s become Labour’s battering ram against democracy. The commissioner decided Gozo Minister Clint Camilleri should not be investigated.
The Gozo minister commissioned works on the Natura 2000 site of Comino without requesting any permit from the Planning Authority. He falsely claimed that those works were urgently required for touristic purposes. He engaged a Labour Party official as the architect by direct order. These are facts. None of them are contested. Arnold Cassola listed all of them in a complaint lodged with the commissioner.
But the commissioner decided he should stop the investigation into Camilleri.
To justify his shameless protection of Labour’s minister, the commissioner twisted the truth beyond recognition. He bent over backwards to let Camilleri off the hook.
The man has absolutely no shred of self-respect, no shame, no decency.
The environment and planning commissioner within the ombudsman’s office lambasted Camilleri in a report published on May 3, 2021. He stated: “Emergency works should never comprise such works about which there is doubt about their real necessity, especially in such a sensitive zone as Comino.”
He added: “These works were already postponed by a year and, therefore, one would expect, in the sake of the environment and rectitude, that these should again be postponed and that the site is returned to its original state.”
Those works were not emergency works. They weren’t urgent at all. Even the standards commissioner noted that “it is strange that the environment in question had been in that state for hundreds of years and no need was ever felt for these additional services”.
The environment commissioner ordered the Planning Authority to issue an enforcement notice to stop the works. He ordered the Planning Authority to ensure the site is returned to its original state. He requested the Planning Authority to impose and collect fines and to place that money in a fund to be used for the benefit of the environment in Comino. But the Planning Authority simply ignored the ombudsman who reported the authority to the prime minister and the speaker.
Cassola accused Camilleri of lying when he claimed that those works on Comino were urgent. Cassola was right. The environment commissioner agreed. So did the standards commissioner.
Yet, Azzopardi conveniently decided he would stop investigating the minister.
Azzopardi deviously used the Planning Authority’s servile statements to justify his despicable decision. He ignored the measured judgement of the environment commissioner, which categorically condemned the minister’s actions. The Planning Authority is nothing but a Labour Party club. Its priority was not to protect the environment of the Natura 2000 site on Comino but to shield the minister. The Planning Authority cynically declared that no permit was necessary for the works in Gozo, exonerating the minister who’d simply commissioned the works without even bothering to inform the Planning Authority.
The standards commissioner constitutes a real threat to our democracy
The ombudsman’s office declared that “this is precisely the mistake that the Planning Authority made when it ignored the additional works on the service culverts when it considered it an integral part of the urgent works on the road”. The same report stated that “the (Planning) Authority failed to address the principal preoccupations of the commissioner”.
The standards commissioner knew all this. That was no mistake by the Planning Authority. It was just a devious plan to exculpate the Gozo minister.
The standards commissioner declared: “all I can do is show solidarity with the Office of the Ombudsman and its conclusions”. And then trampled over everything the ombudsman’s office had revealed. Azzopardi’s excuse was that “this Office does not have jurisdiction over the (Planning) Authority”. But he has jurisdiction over Camilleri. And he chose to ignore the most serious accusation against him – that he’d lied about the supposed urgency of the works.
Despite knowing those works weren’t urgent, the standards commissioner still used the “urgency” excuse to conclude that Camilleri’s direct appointment of Labour’s organising secretary, William Lewis, as the architect was justified. Pathetically, he concluded that “since there are no doubts about the qualifications or competence of the architect, this Office sees no basis on which to investigate his selection”. How slimy can the commissioner get? Who does he think he’s fooling? The architect’s qualifications are not the issue. It’s the minister’s dishonesty that is.
Exonerating Camilleri was bad enough. But the commissioner enabled Camilleri to exploit the commissioner’s decision to disparage and slander Cassola. Camilleri accused him of making allegations full of “lies and reports without any basis”. He attacked “the haphazard reports” made in a “frivolous manner” and “with malignant political aims”. But Camilleri went further.
“I cannot understand how the complainant is not obliged to provide evidence, nor testify to substantiate his accusations, and neither is he obliged to pay the expenses of the process if those accusations are found to be untrue,” he wrote on a Facebook post. Camilleri is misleading. Those accusations were not found to be untrue – quite the contrary. They are true – Camilleri did commission works without a permit, lied about the urgency of the work, engaged a Labour Party official by direct order.
It’s just that Labour’s chosen standards commissioner chose to misconstrue those facts.
Camilleri vengefully grasped the opportunity to vilify and intimidate Cassola for trying to hold him to account.
Camilleri’s also sending a message to prospective complainants – try reporting me and you’ll pay. You’ll be harassed, attacked and lied about.
This is all Abela’s doing.
The political perpetrators of abuse are provided with ammunition by the standards commissioner to target the very citizens fighting for justice and accountability.
The standards commissioner is a disgrace and must be sacked. Failing that, his office should be abolished. Instead of safeguarding standards, he constitutes a real threat to our democracy.