The PN is proposing a new law that would require employers to have a zero-tolerance approach to workplace bullying.

In a 2022 OPM manual issued by the People & Standards Division and entitled "Employee Wellbeing: A Harassment & Bullying Free Workplace," harassment and bullying were classified as a workplace health and safety matter and therefore should be treated seriously and responsibly.

Disciplinary actions are contemplated for anyone found to have harassed or bullied any public sector employee in the course of his or her duties.

The manual provides detailed definitions of what constitutes harassment and bullying.

Harassment is the offensive, belittling or threatening behaviour directed at an individual worker or a group of workers, which occurs with the purpose or effect of violating the dignity of a person and of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. This unwanted behaviour may include, and is not limited to, spoken words, gestures or the production, display or circulation of written words, pictures or other material.

Bullying occurs when an individual experiences persistent negative behaviour, ranging from negative verbal comments to negative physical contact, which could psychologically, emotionally or physically hurt or isolate that person at the workplace. It usually involves repeated incidents or a pattern of behaviour intended to intimidate, offend, degrade or humiliate a particular person or group of people. It may also be described as the assertion of power through aggression.

Of course, it's time now to give the fight against workplace bullying and harassment the force of law and extend it to any employee in the private sector along the lines of the Healthy Workplace laws in the majority of US states.

Those laws tackle the issue from a criminal and civil law point of view, and victims can be lavishly compensated.

Such workplace bullying legislation allows workers to sue for harassment without requiring a showing of discrimination.

There are downsides, however.

Would the proposed new law encourage frivolous lawsuits? Would it protect workers from bullying while not opening up employers to scores of meritless claims or imposing a civility code on the workplace?

What we're talking about here is legislating civility. In that respect, legislating civility would appear to be a new employment law phenomenon.

                                                     A threat to freedom of expression

Originally and historically, criminal libel was designed by the wealthy and powerful, specifically to silence critics and those who exercise their freedom of expression, threatening them with arrest and even imprisonment.

Criminal libel was abolished in 2018 by the Labour government as part of a series of reforms that saw the Press Act make way for the new Media and Defamation Act.

From certain innuendoes uttered publicly by Prime Minister Abela, there is a concern that criminal libel could see its return on our statute books.

There is no legitimacy or wisdom behind the re-introduction of criminal libel.

Up to 2018, criminal libel had been used and abused by private parties to advance their various interests and by public personalities to shield themselves from scrutiny, even on matters of public concern.

We are, after all, noted for our litigious nature, and anyone finding himself scorned in public would have attempted to seek a legal counterattack against those that he or she felt had wronged him or her.

Criminal libel abuse had been heightened by the rise and prevalence of social media as the people's primary medium of communication.

Even beyond the issue of its weaponisation, criminal libel had always been a contentious crime. The wording of the law itself had left it possible to be interpreted and applied in such a manner as to give rise to several injustices. Any type of wrong or scorn could have easily given rise to a prosecution for criminal libel.

Criminal defamation laws can also be deployed by private entities to powerful effect.

For journalists and outspoken social media users, the threat of criminal libel is their worst nightmare.

Any attempt to revive and deploy criminal defamation laws to silence critics and commentators can only be symptomatic of a repressive government. This kind of offence has no place in a supposedly vibrant democracy.

Arguably, new checks and balances are needed on free speech. The world is a different place than it was ten years ago. Rather than falling to the temptation of re-introducing criminal libel, the government should find an answer to the wild-west online content. It must endeavour to address the fact that misinformation and harmful content is now rife online.

Yet, criminalising libel is undoubtedly a step too far. Criminal libel law is archaic, anti-democratic and unconstitutional.

At a time when countries around the world are abandoning tyrannical anti-free speech laws, our government wants to turn the clock back.

This latest threat by the government is terrifying and should frighten every person in Malta who values their rights and freedoms as guaranteed by our constitution.

                                                                Hindering the administration of justice

Prime Minister Robert Abela has instructed the justice minister to swiftly reform the existing system of magisterial inquiries, claiming that individuals like Jason Azzopardi are misusing the system.

Anyone possessing a legal understanding should explicitly recognise that instruction to mean revoking an amendment that was enacted in our Criminal Code (Article 546(4A)), which allows for anyone aside from the Attorney General or a police officer to solicit the initiation of a magisterial inquiry regarding a suspicion of a criminal offence.

That amendment was specifically designed to ensure justice is served by granting citizens the right to initiate an inquiry when either the Attorney General or the police, whether intentionally or through negligence, neglect to pursue such an investigation despite compelling reasons to do so.

The legislation contains numerous protections to guarantee that no misuse of that right can happen.

A repeal of it would undoubtedly be a backward move that fails to honour justice.