The promotion of three judges and the appointment of three new magistrates, despite them all being capable and up to the job, indicates that the promised system change isn’t really one the government wants to make, even when the proposed changes are for the betterment of the Maltese institution and the strengthening of checks and balances.
The Council of Europe’s Venice Commission had strongly highlighted the weakness of Malta’s institutions and the centralisation of power around the Office of the Prime Minister. This is a dangerous situation. The Commission made a large number of recommendations, one of which was to change the way members of the judiciary are appointed. They had proposed that Judicial vacancies should be announced, that an enlarged Judicial Appointments Committee (JAC) should vet and rank the applicants, including for the position of Chief Justice, and that the JAC should propose candidates directly to the President of Malta for appointment.
The government had said that it is working on proposals regarding judicial appointments, yet has gone through with this latest batch regardless. This indicates that the government just does not understand why the change was proposed and is just going through with it to try and look good internationally, or just doesn’t really care. This also begs the question, is government dragging its feet?
During the swearing in ceremony of the 3 new magistrates and 3 new judges, President George Vella himself urged the government to draft and implement more Venice Commission recommendations. The appointments also came amidst a court case being filed by civil society activists Repubblika to block their appointment.
The NGO argued that the government had accepted the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission recommendations to introduce a different method of appointing judges in a way to guarantee their judicial independence. The court however, presided over by Mr Justice Mark Chetcuti, rejected the application, ruling that "no irrevocable prejudice" would be created by the appointments.
This situation - where government argues it wants to make an improvement, and yet takes its time in implementing it - is slowly becoming a pattern. We have seen this with the fuel station policy, where the Planning Authority took excessively long to prepare the necessary changes, and applications were still being let through resulting in speculation that they were waiting for certain applications to pass.
This newsroom is not saying that this is what happened in the fuel station situation, or that government is trying to speed through many judicial appointments before changing the appointment system - as the candidates are generally qualified for the job - yet it gives rise to such speculation.
Indeed were these six members of the judiciary appointed through a system which was free from political control, and indeed all six are capable individuals with the necessary experience to succeed in their position, then there would never be any doubts in the mind of the public as to them being the right people for the job which is, after all, the most important factor in having a strong and independent judiciary.
The government needs to start caring, or needs to understand, that the public out there do respect the judiciary, yet due to Malta’s political climate the current system raises doubts about the person behind the gavel when it comes to cases involving political situations.
This shouldn’t be the case as while members of the judiciary do not, at lease should not, allow politics to sway their decisions, successive governments have done a disservice to the institution by not removing political interference when it comes to their appointments.
The only way any judge or magistrate will be free from suspicion of political leanings is to completely remove the politicians from their appointment process.