The Commissioner for Standards in Public Life has once again stated that the department of Information should not be used for "partisan purposes".

In the second chastisement of a minister along such lines, the Standards Commissioner has now taken aim at Justice, Culture and Local Government Minister Owen Bonnici.  The first such ruling by the Standards Commissioner concerned the misuse of the DOI by Minister Konrad Mizzi.  Both reports stemmed from complaints filed by Dr Andrew Borg Cardona, who complained that a press statement issued by the Minister for Justice, Culture and Local Government through the DOI constituted inappropriate use of public resources because it was political in nature.

The Standards Commissioner today found that the ministerial statement that announced that the constitutional court had turned down civil society group Repubblika's application to stop the appointment of three judges and three magistrates, and that the appointments had been made on the same day as this court judgement.

It also criticised Repubblika's lawyers, Simon Busuttil and Jason Azzopardi, for trying to stop the appointments notwithstanding that these were being made in accordance with the method of appointment in the Constitution that the two lawyers had voted in favour of, as members of parliament, a couple of years earlier.

The Commissioner concluded that, "Minister Owen Bonnici's statement did not amount to a breach of the Code of Ethics for Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries, since its content related to the Minister's official responsibilities."

However he expressed the view that, "Minister Bonnici would have been more in order had he omitted comments regarding Repubblika's lawyers. Court cases belong to the litigants not the lawyers, and lawyers do not necessarily endorse the cause by representing a litigant.

"These comments, which were intended to score political points, brought the statement dangerously close to crossing the line with regard to ethics."

The Commissioner recalled that he has had the opportunity to address the use by ministers of the DOI in a previous report.

He reiterated the call he had made in that previous report for ministers to avoid using the DOI for statements of a partisan nature.

The Commissioner also warns that "lawyers active in politics, even more than lawyers in general, should be particularly sensitive to the peril of seeking publicity for the cases they participate in, since this would fuel the perception that they identify with the case".