Independent candidate Arnold Cassola on Friday asked the Standards Commissioner to open an investigation against Speaker of the House Anglu Farrugia for voting against a Standards report that found 18 ministers had misused funds on political adverts.

In an email sent to the Office of the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life, Cassola reminded the office that Farrugia is the “Principal Office Holder” of parliament, and his duty is to look after the interests of the Maltese citizens in parliament.

“With his vote in the parliamentary committee on standards, the Speaker failed in his duty to look after the interests of the people and instead chose to look after the interests of 18 Members of Parliament who broke the rules on advertising.”

“With this act, the speaker not only covered up the shame of a parliamentarian who did not behave ethically, but undermined, discredited and ridiculed the valuable and honest work of the Commissioner for Standards,” Cassola added.

In June 2022, former Standards Commissioner George Hyzler had published a report about a supplement published in Labour’s newspaper the previous January on the occasion of Robert Abela leading the party for two years.

In his report, the Commissioner found that 18 ministers participated in the supplement and that all breached four articles of the Ministerial Code of Ethics by spending €16,700 in public funds for a manifestly partisan scope, and had recommended that the money be paid back.

The Standards in Public Life committee discussed the report earlier this week, with the two government MPs on the committee voting against adopting the report and the two opposition MPs voting in favour of adopting it.

That left the casting vote in the Speaker’s hands, and he voted against its adoption on the basis that the guidelines for political adverts which Hyzler referred to in his report and in his decision to find an ethics breach were not enshrined in the law.