Former Ombudsman Joseph Said Pullicino and the President of the Republic have over the past few days both taken swipes at the executive arm of the government for having failed to take any action whatsoever on the Office of the Ombudsman’s damning findings from its investigation into how Parliamentary Secretary Ian Borg secured planning permission for his Rabat development.

Chief Justice Emeritus Joseph Said Pullicino in an interview last Sunday hit out at the Prime Minister for having refused to order a review of an irregular development permit issued to Dr Borg, saying, “The Ombudsman had reached a decision that the permit was not regular and needs to be corrected. That report cannot be contested. As obliged by law, we sent the report to the Prime Minister for action. It was the Prime Minister who stopped it and decided not to act on it.”

The President, presiding over the installation of a new Ombudsman earlier this week dished out similar criticism, but in more diplomatic terms, observing how, “The Ombudsman will be given greater value if the executive takes up his recommendations.”

Dr Borg has been in the eye of a storm since last year because of a probe into the circumstances in which the Malta Environment and Planning Authority issued a development permit for a property he bought in 2014 in Rabat.

A report by the Commissioner for Environment and Planning in the Office of the Ombudsman described his methods in applying for and obtaining a development permit as ‘devious’: he used another’s name to hide the fact that he was the de facto owner. Two years before Dr Borg’s permit was approved, according to the Ombudsman’s own report, the person who owned the land before had applied for a permit but had been refused permission. The junior minister then bought the land and another nearby parcel, development policies were conveniently changed thanks to what the Ombudsman described as a ‘deliberate’ error on the part of someone at the Authority, and Dr Borg got his permit.

But rather than implementing the Ombudsman’s recommendations immediately in the wake of the report, as should have been done, the Prime Minister decided to await the conclusions of another parallel inquiry conducted by the Commission Against Corruption.

The Permanent Commission Against Corruption’s own investigation into the process and policies followed by Mepa in granting the controversial permit used the Ombudsman’s report as its basis.

But according to the Prime Minister, action, if any, was to have been taken in Dr Borg’s respect only after the PCAC report, but the truth of the matter is that the PCAC investigation had already been trumped by that of the Office of the Ombudsman, a constitutionally-appointed body.

The fact of the matter is that, in reality, not much changed after the PCAC report.  In fact, the PCAC’s first conclusion was that it accepted the Ombudsman’s report with its conclusions and recommendations, which were annexed with the PCAC’s own report.  In its second conclusion, the PCAC said that it “has not found any evidence to the degree required by the Criminal Code (beyond reasonable doubt) ... which can lead to the conclusion that a crime has been committed or that there has been an attempt to commit a crime or some form of complicity in a crime according to any of the articles mentioned in Article 6 of Chapter 326 by any of the witnesses in front of the PCAC”.

The conclusion does not rule out the possibility, or even the probability, that a crime may or may not have been committed – only that evidence of one under the Commission’s specific remit was not found.

Nothing, however, was done by the Prime Minister, who preferred to ignore the case in the hope that it would go away.  The case clearly will not go away, and the Prime Minister stands accused of ignoring the Ombudsman’s authority as a constitutionally-appointed body.

Standards of political accountability and good governance dictate that Dr Borg should have been sent packing as soon as the Ombudsman’s report was published.

By having ignored the Ombudsman’s findings, and by vaguely claiming there were undefined ‘inaccuracies’ in its report, Dr Borg, the Prime Minister and the government at large demonstrated a condemnable lack of respect for the Office of the Ombudsman.

This does not bode well for the new Ombudsman installed this week, who will clearly have challenges ahead of him in the form of a government that has shown it is ready to ignore the findings of his office.  The new ombudsman has inherited the office under a very dark cloud indeed.

What is, after all, the point of a constitutionally-appointed Office of the Ombudsman if the Office’s findings are neither respected nor adhered to, and can be conveniently ignored by the Prime Minister?