Robert Abela has gotten away with it.

Last week, the Standards Commissioner ruled that not enough evidence existed to establish whether or not Prime Minister Robert Abela breached ethics when he had a conversation or a meeting with an unidentified magistrate, during which the way the Maltese courts operated was discussed.

The complaint was filed by independent candidate Arnold Cassola after requests for information from the Office of the Prime Minister as well as the Data Protection Commissioner were turned down. A second complaint on the matter was also submitted by the Law Students Association.

The matter goes back 18 months and, as a first observation, we do question why it took so long for the investigation to be concluded. The answer may lie in the fact that the Standards Commissioner, Joseph Azzopardi, wrote to Abela three times to seek more information as to what went on, and three times the Prime Minister failed to give a straight answer. That these exchanges between the commissioner and the PM took place chronologically in July 2023, January 2024 and March 2024 shows that both sides did not give much urgency to the situation.

The second point is that Abela, like a true lawyer, defended himself to the hilt and offered little by which the commissioner could find him guilty of a breach of ethics. The Standards Commissioner “cannot conclude that there was an ethical violation… but in light of the fact that the Prime Minister did not provide a clear answer about the circumstances of the conversation, it is also not warranted to conclude that there was no violation.”

That paragraph says it all. The PM was reluctant to part with the information he possessed, making it impossible for the commissioner to decide on whether or not there had been a breach of ethics. As is always the case in our society, the law favours the “accused”, in this case the Prime Minister, and since there was no proof of “guilt”, Abela got away with it.

But this does not absolve Abela of wrongdoing. His case has been closed and it will not come up before parliament’s standards committee for discussion, but the fact remains that Abela was in the wrong to have had such a discussion with the unnamed magistrate. And he knows it, too. That he arrogantly admitted to it – in one of his Sunday morning activities – shows the level of arrogance that the PM has reached.

We would be the first to defend the Prime Minister’s right to free speech, but we also believe that the independence of the judiciary from the executive is a sacrosanct foundation of our democracy. If this wall that separates the two institutions is breached, the confidence that the people have in the impartiality of the courts of law can be undermined.

As the Standards Commissioner said, one cannot accept the argument that there is nothing wrong for a member of the executive – in this case the head of government – to seek this type of contact with the judiciary, even when no specific case is discussed.

Any dialogue between the executive and the judiciary should take place through official channels, the commissioner said.

Whether Abela takes up the suggestion is another matter.