The PN will be holding the State Advocate, Attorney General and Police Commissioner personally responsible if they persist in abdicating their official duties to take action over the 'fraudulent' hospitals' deal.
Their attitude ran counter to national interests and everything they were bound to safeguard in the supreme interests of the people and the country, Opposition leader Bernard Grech and Nationalist MP Adrian Delia said in a court reply to counter-protests filed by the three authorities earlier this week.
Last week, Grech and Delia filed a judicial protest calling on the State Advocate, AG and police chief to take action against those who defrauded the Maltese people.
But on Wednesday, the three told court they had no power to do what the Opposition was asking of them.
Reacting, the PN on Thursday said the authorities' rebuttal was proof that Robert Abela and Joseph Muscat controlled the country's institutions.
Then on Friday, the party took official court action, with Grech and Delia hit back saying that inaction by the authorities amounted to failure to do what was expected of them in terms of the duties of their respective offices.
Indeed, they were duty-bound to uphold the rule-of-law and respect their oath of office in terms of the Constitution and the laws of the land, they said.
The State Advocate’s reply showed that he had not understood his official role as outlined under the Constitution and the State Advocate’s Act. Defending the State was one thing, advising the government was something totally different, they added.
Article 91 of the Constitution states that “In the exercise of his functions, the State Advocate shall act in his individual judgment and he shall not be subject to the direction or control of any other person or authority.” By failing to act against top government officials in their personal capacity over their involvement in the fraudulent deal, as declared by the Court of Appeal in the Vitals judgment, the State Advocate was failing in an “essential function” of his office, Grech and Delia claimed.
Such attitude indicates that the State Advocate is “under the heel of those government officials who acted in a fraudulent, abusive and illegal manner,” their actions described as “collusion” by the court. They committed corruption in the interests of the foreign parties involved in the deal rather than acting in the interests of the people of Malta and Gozo, the two PN MPs said.
As for the AG and the Police Commissioner, while they acknowledged that any civil action to recover damages lay with the State Advocate, they “conveniently” seemed not to have understood or did not recall that any criminal action against those “fraudsters” was vested “solely and exclusively” with them., they said.
Investigating, prosecuting and charging the people indicated by the PN in their initial judicial protest was a function that only the AG and the Police Commissioner could exercise “and no one else”, Grech and Delia insisted.
No one could understand how the State Advocate abdicated his constitutional responsibility to sue those responsible to recover the funds unduly forked out by the government. Nor could anyone understand how the Police Commissioner and the AG abdicated their responsibilities which they could exercise independently from any ongoing magisterial inquiry.
Should all three State authorities persist in their inaction, claiming they were following “superior orders from the government”, then the PN would hold them each personally responsible, they concluded.
Their attitude ran counter to national interests and all that they were bound to safeguard in the supreme interests of the people and the country, said the PN in their reply filed on Friday.
Lawyer Edward De Bono signed the act.