Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri said on Monday he respected criticism by former prime minister and MEP Alfred Sant, who has described the new mechanism to appoint the police commissioner as “a charade”.

Sant made the remarks in his blog on The Malta Independent, just days after a call was issued by the Public Service Commission for people interested in serving in the role. The new selection process was recently approved by parliament.

The minister reacted when asked about Sant's comments by shadow minister Beppe Fenech Adami in parliament. 

“Alfred Sant has a different opinion which I respect, and he is also talking about other changes within the force, some of which he proposed when he was in government [1996-1998] but was not able to implement as that administration was short-lived,” he said.

“We cannot keep the present system, which the Opposition wants, whereby the candidate is chosen by the politician,” Camilleri added.

While reiterating that everybody had the right for his views, he said the government felt the appointment mechanism had to change.

In his blog, Sant expressed scepticism on the new selection process headed by the PSC, but under which the prime minister would still have the final say over who gets appointed from among a pool of shortlisted candidates.

“If I am to admit the truth, I must say that for me, in appointing a chief of police, the process by which the government must issue a call for applications, conduct an examination of applicants, present whoever is chosen before a parliamentary committee and the rest... it all sounds like a charade and nothing else,” Sant remarked.

He added that such a mechanism would have been understandable for a country bigger than Malta, having regional police corps, as the interested candidates would have been given an opportunity to compete.

“But given our size, this just does not make sense. As does not the idea that we could have a foreigner to run the police corps. For a central bank, that solution might work. But for the police...? he said.

Camilleri, also referred to the subject shortly afterwards during his winding-up speech on amendments to the Police Act.

He insisted that the new mechanism would ensure that the best candidate would be selected since the level of scrutiny had been increased. Apart from the initial shortlisting by the PSC, the process also involved the grilling of the recommended candidate by a parliamentary committee, where government holds a majority.  

The Opposition has been critical of this new mechanism saying the candidate should be appointed with a two-thirds parliamentary majority of the House so as to have security of tenure. 

“The government is, for the first time, giving up some of its absolute power to appoint the police commissioner,” Camilleri said. He added that the new mechanism was in line with the recommendations being made by the committee of rule of law experts of the Council of Europe, known as the Venice Commission.

During the debate, the minister said that community policing which had been successfully introduced in Mellieħa, would be expanded. However, this could result in the closure of some stations for certain periods.  

“Not all police stations need to remain open as present technology offers good alternatives,” he said.

“I would rather have police on patrol than behind a desk,” he said.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.