Here’s the shadow minister for justice, Jose A. Herrera, writing in The Times yesterday: “As the opposition member responsible for justice, I have, as expected, been persistently approached by various members of the Bench who have clearly pointed out their dissatisfaction with such a situation. Notwithstanding their position in Malta’s hierarchy, the Bench has commenced a nosedive in terms of salary scales within the government service. It is to be appreciated that, in order to have a strong and efficient judiciary, we have to entice the best legal brains available. Surely, the financial package being offered nowadays is far from attractive in this regard.”
If the shadow minister for justice hasn’t been rendered stark, staring mad by the heat (and I have good reason to believe that he hasn’t), then Jose A. Herrera has been cut from the same cloth as his sister, who only last week received a night-time visit at her home from the Leader of the Opposition and Mrs Muscat. Neither of them, and the people whose visits and overtures they receive, appears to understand anything about the separation of powers, clear parameters, boundaries, and the transparency which leaves no room for public doubt in the administration of justice.
If Jose A. Herrera understands these things, then his cavalier disregard for them, the absolute arrogance with which he ignores such basic standards in public life, is shocking.
People tend not to read newspaper articles written by politicians unless they are flagged up. But what the newspapers choose to flag up is interesting. The finance minister’s utterly idiotic but ultimately harmless statements about his belief in a weeping Madonna who didn’t want divorce were given the coverage they deserved. But as I am writing this column, the shadow minister for justice’s disturbing belief that he can receive the overtures of judges lobbying for more money, at a time when he is still pleading and defending cases before them, has received no ‘flag-up headline’ at all, not even in the newspaper which ran the piece.
What Jose A. Herrera is telling us here is that he − a lawyer who argues cases before judges and tries to secure the best outcome for his clients (as all lawyers do) − is “persistently approached” by those same judges who lobby him with requests for better pay, in anticipation of when he becomes minister for justice in roughly 18 months’ time. You would have to be Jose A. Herrera to see nothing wrong with this, so much so that you even show off about it in a newspaper article.
But it is beyond shocking. It is calamitous that the behaviour of some judges has plummeted to the point where they are lobbying a criminal lawyer, who argues cases before them, like workers’ union leaders who see a new boss on the horizon. That they can sink so low, disregarding basic ethics, is incomprehensible. If they think the money is insufficient, they shouldn’t have taken the position. They knew what the money was before they took it. Being a judge is a position of honour and prestige. It’s not something you do for the money. But this sort of behaviour, and previous and ongoing shenanigans, has gone a long way to undermining that very prestige and honour. We are rapidly reaching the point where to be a judge or magistrate is to be a member of a club to which decent, right-minded and correct people do not wish to belong.
Secure in the knowledge that he will soon be justice minister, Jose A. Herrera actually boasts that judges think so too. I rather suspect that part of the reason he boasts about it so publicly is because he wishes to put the boot in to his rival for the cabinet post, former police inspector Anglu Farrugia. He seems oblivious to what the sensible reader will think on reading his words: that the potential for horse-trading is enormous in unofficial discussions like those. It is absolutely unacceptable for judges to have private meetings with lawyers who argue cases before them, still more when in those meetings it is the judge who is requesting something of the lawyer, something that has nothing to do with a particular case being pleaded.
The public should have its mind at rest that there is no such horse-trading or persuasion. The judiciary, including Jose A. Herrera’s own sister who no doubt hopes to be made a judge herself and benefit from better pay and conditions, has scandalised us sufficiently and we don’t need more of this sort of behaviour.
The proper time for Jose A. Herrera to discuss what judges are paid is when he is minister for justice, and the proper way for him to do it is at arm’s length, through a battery of senior civil servants who will ensure that nothing unseemly takes place. The risk of inappropriate exchanges is ever-present in a situation where the minister for justice is somebody who was, until he became minister, a lawyer working in the courts, to which he will return when he ceases to be in the Cabinet.
It is beyond ironic that Joseph Muscat is demanding the resignation of the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, for ringing the Police Commissioner to make sure that there is no political interference in an investigation, while his shadow minister for justice is discussing salaries with judges in between pleading cases before them.
I cannot believe that I am sitting here spelling out these things, feeling as though I am surrounded by the inhabitants of a small town in the Sicilian hinterland. Our history has been different over the last 200 years or so, but you would never believe it when reading Jose A. Herrera. If even judges and magistrates have to be told these things, that they should not lobby a criminal lawyer who argues cases before them, in preparation for when he becomes minister for justice, then it is not surprising at all that one of their number, the sister of the future minister for justice, does not see why the Leader of the Opposition should not call at her home.
When Magistrate Herrera said under oath in court (falsely, as it turned out) that she had lunch with Assistant Police Commissioner Michael Cassar, who was then head of the Vice Squad, he gave an immediate public statement to the press denying it, and within hours hand-delivered a letter to the Chief Justice putting this fact on record. This is because he knows that no police officer, still less somebody of his rank, can enter into private social or personal engagement with a member of the judiciary without compromising both. The Leader of the Opposition and future prime minister cannot make any such statement because the reports of his visit are correct. And worse still, Jose A. Herrera, future minister of justice, boasts of his discussions with judges as they plead for more money. Where do they have these discussions – at Cafe Cordina, or at his sister’s parties, where judges are among the guests?
It is true that judges should be paid more, not least to keep the worst among them away from the temptation to take bribes from drug traffickers (though checking their integrity might be the better option), but this is not how it should be done.
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