I was talking to a colleague on campus the day the In-Depth interview went online and had the chance to go over a few points from the perspective of another discipline. It’s the ‘universe’ in university, grouped under one roof, that makes such exchanges possible.

He had a very valid point that had escaped me: the Public Service Commission does not have the necessary policing expertise to select applicants for such a specialised appointment as that of Police Commissioner. Is the Home Affairs Minister going to appoint a specialised board? There is an obvious need to have people who can rightly make the necessary assessments of the qualifications presented and experience, and then apply the entry requirements and agree on a suitable mark.

How can a non-knowledgeable board carry out that kind of exercise and not expect an avalanche of appeals from the candidates who are not selected?

The last time I went through a job interview with the public service was for the position of part-time Child Advocate with the Family Court: twice in the past seven years. Of course, both sets of interviewers were none other than two of the three judges sitting at that same court at that particular point in time.

It’s obvious, isn’t it? I couldn’t be interviewed by anything less than that standard. But I couldn’t recall the same experience when I applied for different positions within the police over the span of 13 years. I had at least three experiences that left me speechless: so surreal that brings to mind the latest European Court of Human Rights judgement – Grace Gatt vs Malta – regarding the lack of independence of police-appointed boards.

In the first such interview, I was already a warranted lawyer and was asked a ‘legal question’: I had to explain the new Ġigġifogu time schedule published a few days earlier in the Government Gazette. Forget about Carrara’s theories of criminal law, or the latest human rights cases that concerned police work – who cared?

In the second instance, the dinosaur asked me to point out what I thought were successes in my track record of which the public would be appreciative. I had hardly finished answering when he replied: “Oh sweetie, that’s not what people will remember you for: it’s your eyes.” Meteorites, anyone?

The third time around, the T-Rex asked me whether I was willing to give up the parental leave of which I was availing myself at the time, following the birth of my daughter, in order to take up the post. “Understand that we need our men now, not later. You’re not expecting to have reduced hours, are you?”

It is still chilling to talk about it, especially the second question: humiliating, illegal and outright degrading. At least one of the three reptilians is still roaming the earth, selecting and interviewing applicants.

There’s another issue. It does not look as if we will getting a new Commissioner any time soon. By the time the entry requirements are sorted, the application process is set in motion and the candidates have been short-listed, it will take weeks. Imagine if the rejected candidates then had to appeal. By the time the rightful Board addresses those grievances, more time will have elapsed.

Parliament would have to wait for the grilling session – not that it would start any time soon – once the selection process forwards the names of the final two candidates. There are conflicts of interest issues that can very easily arise from the presence of some of the members sitting on the Public Appointments Committee.

Think about it. If an MP is involved in a TV production that has interviewed one of the short-listed candidates sitting before him, would there not be a conflict of interest, for example? Or if a candidate is a law graduate and his lecturer in Roman Law and the one in Criminal Law are both sitting on the PAC, is that not an unfair advantage?

Are there enough members on the PAC or, better still, are they the right kind of MPs – with the necessary Home Affairs or Criminal Justice background – to do the grilling? And if they did not have that background, would it not be yet another ground for appeal? Do the Hansard rules cover this?

Or just bring in Eminem and let him do the rapping.

Dr Mary Muscat is an academic and former Police Inspector