Josef Caruana, former editor of that bastion of truth l-Orizzont, now works for that stickler for the facts, ONE News. Caruana may have changed his role but he certainly hasn't changed his ways.

On 10 March 2017, the Appeals court ruled that Caruana "evaded the truth when he could easily have verified the facts".  The court condemned Caruana for acting in bad faith. Ironically Caruana, the evader of the truth, was found guilty of slander for an article entitled "Proven liar" in which he falsely accused former Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi of lying.

The court's lashing was like water off a duck's back for Caruana.  The humiliating public rebuke didn't make him relent.  There could be no worse condemnation for a journalist than being labelled a liar by the courts. Caruana wasn't embarrassed.  Quite the contrary.

Now at ONE news Caruana is still peddling lies and deceit. In a ONE news item  Caruana completely distorted a decision taken by Standards Commissioner Joseph Azzopardi - literally reporting the exact opposite of what the Commissioner decided.

Complaint 179 referred to an official statement issued by the Department of Information in which Prime Minister Robert Abela and his cabinet openly attacked the opposition using partisan language.  "The Opposition was always ready to try to destroy former Deputy PM Chris Fearne," that statement read. "The Nationalist Opposition was never really concerned about Malta's interests but only in gaining immediate partisan political capital".

Caruana reported that complaint 179 was "a baseless complaint".  He falsely claimed that the Standards commissioner "did not agree" (ma tax ragun) with the complainant.

That was the exact opposite of what the Commissioner said. The Commissioner categorically declared that he "agreed with the complainant".  In fact the Commissioner ruled that "this behaviour (of the Prime Minister and his cabinet) constitutes a breach of ethics".  He commented that "the fact that in this case no action can be taken against this behaviour is preoccupying".

The Commissioner decided he couldn't investigate the complaint and take action because the statement was issued by the whole cabinet and he didn't have the power to scrutinise Cabinet. "Nonetheless I'm still going to comment about two aspects of this case," the Commissioner added.

He chastised the Prime Minister for his mediocre partisan pettiness. The Prime Minister in his reply to the Commissioner attacked the complainant because he was a former Opposition election candidate. "Comments about who is making the complaint should not be made so that correspondence in the relevant documents remains civil and without irrelevant comments".  The Prime Minister had to be told off by the Standards Commissioner for his incivility and irrelevant comments towards citizens exerting their rights..

But the Commissioner reserved his sternest rebuke for Abela's abuse of the DOI for partisan political point-scoring. He declared this was an ethics breach and lamented the fact that he couldn't investigate.

Unbelievably Josef Caruana turned the Commissioner's report upside down. He reported that the complaint was baseless, and that it was only an "allegation" that the DOI statement contained partisan language. Caruana took a leaf out of the leader's book and ridiculed the complainant "who contested the general election with the PN without success and was told he was wrong on several occasions". Caruana maliciously referred to the complainant as "the principal exponent of the Nationalist establishment" in his 'News' report.

Caruana could lie to his heart's content because the Commissioner's decision wasn't published.  Any decision by the Commissioner not to investigate a complaint, for whatever reason, is not uploaded on the Commissioner's website.  Nobody can see it except the complainant and the person about whom the complaint was made, in this case the Prime Minister.  Caruana could only have got a copy of that decision from one of them.  I was the complainant and certainly didn't give Caruana a copy.  Caruana must have got his copy from the Prime Minister, assuming no leaks from the Commissioner's Office.

Robert Abela knew the Commissioner's decision.  He knew the Commissioner had rapped his knuckles for breaching ethics and being insolent towards the complainant.  He also knew Caruana's ONE news report was littered with lies, that Caruana had dishonestly distorted the Commissioner's report beyond recognition. Abela didn't correct that News report.  He didn't feel compelled to denounce Caruana's lies or chastise Caruana for peddling them and misleading the public. The deceit suited him fine.

So incensed was the Commissioner that he wrote an angry letter to Speaker Anglu Farrugia, as Chair of the Parliamentary Standards Committee. He lamented that "the fact that the Commissioner's Office is precluded from publishing its decisions gives scope for others to publish a selective, mistaken or outright deceitful interpretation of the decision - as happened recently regarding a decision about complaint 179".  Rosianne Cutajar had done the same. She falsely claimed the Commissioner had exonerated her over her fake ITS consultancy.  In fact the Commissioner didn't investigate her over a technicality - the complaint was time-barred. 

Even Abela's chosen commissioner is disgusted with the obscene way in which his decisions are turned upside down by Abela's ONE news, abetted and aided by Abela himself.

This isn't the first time the Commissioner asked Anglu Farrugia to authorise the publication of his decisions not to investigate.  He wrote to Farrugia in June 2023 and again in December 2023 demanding to be allowed to publish those decisions on his website, issue press statements and share those decisions with the media.

The Commissioner is clearly disturbed by the shameless abuse of the secrecy of his decisions and Anglu Farrugia's and Labour's connivance in maintaining that convenient secrecy.  "This issue has been pending before the Standards Committee for over a year," the Commissioner complained in frustration, "I beg the committee to take a decision as quickly as possible in the interests of good governance".

The Commissioner should ask himself, when was the last time Robert Abela took a decision in the interests of good governance?

The disturbing truth is that Robert Abela cannot distinguish between party and state. He abuses state institutions for partisan political advantage making them a core part of Labour's election winning strategy.  When the Commissioner's report roundly condemned him for it, he passed on that report to the "evader of the truth" to manipulate it beyond recognition and to use it as a weapon with which to harass the complainant for bringing Abela's abuse to the attention of the Commissioner.