Speaker Anglu Farrugia has been asked to decide whether an ethics committee hearing into former Education Minister Justyne Caruana can be suspended.
Government MPs asked for the committee’s work to be suspended due to a constitutional case filed by Caruana.
The former minister’s lawsuit is seeking to challenge the validity of the law granting the Standards Commissioner “unfettered discretion” throughout the ethics probe which effectively breached Caruana’s right to a fair hearing, the former minister’s lawyers have claimed.
Opposition MPs hit back at the government’s request on Tuesday for a suspension, arguing that the law does not allow for committee hearings to be suspended.
PN MP Karol Aquilina said the attempt to suspend proceedings was just a ploy to ensure the delay of any decision until after the general election.
He said not even Caruana herself had asked for the committee's work to be suspended pending the court case.
Fellow PN MP Therese Comodini Cachia pointed out that criminal cases are not suspended when someone files a constitutional case, and neither does the government suspend a law when an ordinary citizen files a lawsuit challenging it.
“Are we treating an MP differently from an ordinary citizen? If a court case is filed challenging a law, the government does not suspend that law,” she said.
Government MPs Edward Zammit Lewis and Glenn Bedingfield hit back at the claim that the request for a suspension was a ploy to delay proceedings until after the election.
Zammit Lewis said two people had already resigned as a result of the ethics investigation.
Caruana stepped down as education minister in December with the ministry’s permanent secretary Frank Fabri following suit this week.
Zammit Lewis dismissed Aquilina’s argument that committee hearings cannot be suspended.
“Just because suspension is not in the law, it does not mean it cannot happen”.
Aquilina disagreed, asking the speaker to weigh in on the matter in a ruling to be given at a later date.
Standards Commissioner George Hyzler told the committee that he would prefer not facing procedural questions about his ethics investigation pending Caruana’s court case.
Hyzler's investigation found the former minister abused her power in awarding a €15,000 contract to footballer Daniel Bogdanovic, who is a close friend of the minister's.
The report, which found the minister breached ethics rules, lays out bare how although Bogdanovic was paid handsomely to review the National Sports School, he had not even written the report himself and then repeatedly lied about it when questioned.
The report says there was a “concerted effort to hide Bogdanovic’s incompetence” and that the work he was handsomely paid to carry out was in fact done by one of Caruana’s consultants, Paul Debattista.