Letters to the editor - October 23, 2022

Police exams

I refer to the article ‘Officer charged with beating foreigners had failed all police exams’ (October 16).

The title the article and parts of the story are factually incorrect. This was acknowledged in the article that appeared on timesofmalta.com by the addition of a sentence not included in the newspaper version, which states: “Sources close to the police said Brincat failed the main exam after failing to pass in two of 30 subjects and then also the resit.”

The Academy for Disciplined Forces has already provided the journalist with all the relevant information about the reported case. As explained and clarified more than once, the officer did not fail all the requested exams of the basic training course as provided by the Academy for Disciplined Forces and accredited by the Malta Further and Higher Education Authority (MFHEA).

Being the first accredited course, the academy consulted with the MFHEA on the resit process and the board of the Academy of Disciplined Forces unanimously approved the process. This resit procedure is available to all those who are eligible. In fact, to date, 182 sat for resits, five of whom failed the first resit and sat for the second resit.

JOHN CHARLES ELLUL – director of studies, Academy for Disciplined Forces, Siġġiewi

The government they deserve

The leader ‘We’ve learnt nothing in five years’ (October 16) scolds the “swathes of society that remain conspicuous by their absence”, presumably to activism. 

Perhaps people do get the government they deserve. What do the tens of thousands who are said to have abstained from voting in the last election think they have achieved for themselves and the country?

ALBERT CILIA-VINCENTI – Attard

Abuse of diplomatic immunity

The Spanish embassy in Ta' Xbiex.

The report (October 9) about a Spanish diplomat stationed in Malta who is claiming diplomatic immunity after he allegedly picked up his 12-year-old son from school last week when the boy was meant to go home to his mother set me thinking.

Diplomatic immunity was originally established to promote international relations by protecting diplomats from retaliation in times of international conflicts. However, there has been an increasing number of challenges to the object and purpose of the Vienna conventions, as diplomats, their families and consular officials have increasingly paid scant respect for laws and regulations of the receiving states and have frequently abused their immunities and privileges, necessitating the invocation of local jurisdiction by the receiving state.

At the same time, it is equally true that, at times, receiving states have rejected claims of diplomatic immunity on flimsy grounds, including the assertion that such immunity is available only for ‘official acts’.

Undoubtedly, the abuse of privileges and immunities by diplomats, as well as by the states that receive them, constitute one of the major challenges to the continued success of the Vienna conventions.

Furthermore, the definition of ‘diplomat’ is too wide, encompassing not just ambassadors and staff representing their nation in overseas embassies but also at specialised agencies of the United Nations and other international bodies.

Another possible area of serious diplomatic abuse can be discerned in the fact that there are a number of countries around the world where you can effectively buy citizenship which includes a diplomatic passport to benefit from diplomatic immunity.

Abuses of diplomatic immunity are unfortunate and they should never be a price worth paying to promote peaceful relations between states.

MARK SAID – Msida