The reputation of the Maltese Law Courts with regard to the time it takes for a decision to be handed down on a case, even if it is a simple straightforward one, is admittedly not good at all and matters must change.

The amendments proposed in the white paper aiming for a more expeditious judicial system are a step in the right direction for which most lawyers and people dealing with the Law Courts have been waiting. Even the judges and magistrates themselves are probably relieved that someone has finally thought about them and intervened to try to improve the situation.

Although they are not to shoulder all the blame for the length of time it takes for a case to be decided, it must be said that the members of the judiciary have to be more productive. This will help to restore people’s faith in the Maltese judicial system, because an unjustified delay in the administration of justice is, in itself, an injustice.

In an interview with The Malta Independent a few days ago, Parliamentary Secretary in the Justice and Home Affairs Ministry Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici said there is a staggering total of around 22,200 pending cases before the Maltese courts. Some of these have been pending for a considerable number of years.

During the interview, Dr Mifsud Bonnici insisted that the government does not believe that, by increasing the members of the judiciary, the problem of long, never-ending court cases will be solved.

And neither does the government believe that by increasing the number of judges and magistrates, the amount of pending court cases will be drastically reduced.

The secret, he said, is to tackle the problem administratively by reducing the number of things which are wasting the judiciary’s time and giving them the opportunity to hand down judgements faster.

While agreeing that this may be one of the ways to solve this problem, one or two more judges and magistrates would alleviate the problem further because the pending cases will be better distributed.

At present, there are 17 judges and another 17 magistrates on the Bench, and their salaries and that of their staff amount to Lm1.6 million, which is 45 per cent of the budget of the Law Courts.

Another interesting proposal in the white paper is that judges or magistrates will now be more accountable for their work. It is being proposed that judges and magistrates can also be judged on their performance and productivity. If a case has been pending for more than three years, a party in the case can ask for the presiding judge or magistrate to be changed. This should certainly contribute to urging these members of the judiciary to be more productive because otherwise they will be put in bad light.

It is indeed worrying that the World Development Report lists Malta as one of those countries where it takes more than two years to reach a judgement on small debt collection equivalent to five per cent of the Gross National Product. Along with Malta, the report mentions countries like Colombia, the Czech Republic, Kuwait, Mozambique and the United Arab Emirates.

Malta’s competitiveness is at stake here and this is also having a negative impact on the country’s economy because possible investors also look at the legal aspect of the country where they are thinking of investing their money.

So working together for a faster judicial system not only benefits the judges and magistrates and the members of the public who come into contact with the Law Courts to seek justice, but also benefits the country because it will instil more trust in, and a better reputation for, the Maltese judicial system, which it indeed deserves.