Principal Permanent Secretary Mario Cutajar has, through the Department of Information issued a right of reply to an opinion piece penned by Kevin Cassar, and said that it is not true that he lashed out at the Ombudsman.

The full right of reply can be found below:

With reference to the article “Buying Loyalty” which appeared on the Malta Independent on the 31st January 2022, it is simply obvious that Prof Cassar missed the wood for the trees on what was written by Principal Permanent Secretary Mario Cutajar in his introduction to the publication “Governance Action on the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s Annual Report 2020”.

Prof Cassar either read the introduction and still wrote the piece to suit a spin – that’s not on; or else wrote the article without even bothering to read Mr Cutajar’s contribution – that’s entirely not on. 

This is because in no way the Principal Permanent Secretary “lashed out at Ombudsman for doing his duty”. On the contrary, truth is that the Public Administration put forward a number of proposals for further strengthening the Parliamentary institutions entrusted with the scrutiny of the administration to provide the highest standards of transparency and accountability. How that can be termed as ‘lashing out’, one cannot really fathom.

These proposals include:

The introduction of established recruitment procedures, including for the recruitment of persons of trust, at entities such as the Ombudsman and other institutions of oversight.

The introduction of deadlines for case responses, so that clients receive a reply in the shortest possible time. Here, it is noteworthy to highlight that at the time of publication, there were more than 20 cases in which the Public Service has been waiting for a reply from the Ombudsman for between two to five years.

The need for the Ombudsman (and again, the other institutions of oversight) to clarify with those seeking his services which complaints he can investigate and those he cannot. A quarter of the cases received in 2020 complained to the Ombudsman without seeking redress from the public administration. In this scenario, the Ombudsman would take on a customer care role rather than a protective role on the operations of the public administration.

Finally, it was recommended that the reports or recommendations by the entities of foresight are to be based solely on facts.

The proposals are black on white in the Public Administation publication, and it is accessible from the Public Service Website.