Both Robert Abela and Chris Fearne, the two contenders for the Labour Party leadership post, are against having a foreign police commissioner.
Abela and Fearne have both expressed concern on the way the police force has been led by Lawrence Cutajar.
Fearne has said that he would subject the appointment of the commissioner to a vote in parliament where the nominee would require a two-third majority approval. Abela, for his part, said that he is not happy with certain parts of the investigation into the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Neither of them however believe that a foreigner should be appointed in Cutajar’s stead. When asked by The Malta Independent about this idea, both replied in the negative – with Fearne replying with a simple “no” and Abela saying that the next commissioner should be either Maltese or Gozitan.
Cutajar has been Police Commissioner since 2016, but has frequently faced calls for him to step down from the Opposition and from civil society after criticism of the way he handled investigations into the murder of the journalist in 2017, as well as the police’s failure to act on revelations made in the Panama Papers.
The next Police Commissioner would be the 37th to be appointed since the Force was established in 1813 and the fifth since the Labour Party came into government in 2013.