Civil society group Repubblika said on Friday that the composition of the newly appointed Committee on Governance boded no good adding that the people on it should first be trained in good governance.

Dr Abela announced the setting up of the Cabinet committee on Thursday. It's aim is to propose changes to Maltese law in line with recommendations made by the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission and Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO).

In a statement, Repubblika also said it would have been far better had the government appointed a “Committee on Good Governance” rather than simply a “Committee on Governance”. 

In the past few years, it said, Malta had governance which was weak towards criminals, abusive towards free press and civil society, partisan and corroded by corruption.

Malta had a type of governance that was riven by conflicts of interest where persons appointed as “persons of trust” used the power they had been given for their own personal gain. This was governance, but it was bad governance. 

It noted that there were only men appointed to the committee, “as though no woman is capable of contributing ideas toward good governance”. 

It was also a serious deficiency that the government was not stating that this committee would not be consulting with the rest of Maltese society, including civil society, experts and academics, the Opposition and others. 

Repubblika said that Mario Cutajar, head of the civil service, recently defended measures of bad governance whereby the permanent civil service, that according to the Constitution should be based on merit, was currently crushed under the weight of an army of 700 casual employees who had been recruited simply because they are trusted Labourites.

The Council of Europe has explicitly condemned this systematic abuse of public service employment but Mr Cutajar did all he could to ensure that the advice given by the Council of Europe would remain unheeded. 

For over a year, then Justice Minister Owen Bonnici dragged his feet on institutional reforms requested by the Council of Europe when these fell under his responsibility.

In one of the worst episodes of bad governance in Malta’s history, Dr Bonnici gave instructions to the Attorney General, who, according to the Constitution, reported to nobody in criminal matters, telling him that he was the personal lawyer of persons involved in criminal investigations. And this, while he was serving as Minister for Justice. 

For two whole years, Dr Bonnici also censored a legitimate protest in Great Siege Square. 

Dr Bonnici defended the abusive taunts of certain government officers, including Valletta 2018 chair Jason Micallef who, while reporting to him, abused of the power conferred to them by the state to threaten and intimidate civil society.

In this way, Dr Bonnici made these people’s threats and intimidations his own.

He consistently abused public discourse by giving an incorrect interpretation of concepts such as “rule of law” and “freedom of expression”, which he used to justify systematic abuse by the state.

Repubblika said that when Edward Zammit Lewis was Minister for Tourism he gave a sponsorship of €1 million to Vistajet to publicise Malta on its planes, despite the fact that this company did not carry tourists, but served as a taxi for millionaires.

The real reason behind this unjustified spending was never provided. Nor was the reason why the money was paid one week after one of its planes flew, with no passenger on board, to Azerbaijan and later to Dubai, hours after Ali Sadr Hasheminejad was seen escaping from his bank, Pilatus, carrying suitcases that may have contained proof of criminal acts that led to the bank being closed down by the European Central Bank. This too, was an atrocious episode of bad governance. 

The organisation noted that these people kept their mouths shut when a government minister and the chief of ataff in the Prime Minister’s secretariat were caught out owning companies in Panama and gave them a vote of confidence when asked, even following the arrest of Yorgen Fenech and information provided regarding the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. 

In view of this, we recommend that these people should first be trained in good governance.