The Malta Independent 10 February 2025, Monday
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In defiance of arrogant power

Carmel Cacopardo Sunday, 19 January 2025, 08:03 Last update: about 23 days ago

Last Sunday, Robert Abela, at Kordin, bid farewell to accountability and good governance. This has been coming for a long time, but now it has reached the point of no return. It was an arrogant Robert Abela speaking about his five-year leadership of the Labour Party and the country.

The Auditor General, some months ago, had identified that at the Institute of Tourism Studies (ITS) a phantom job was created for the benefit of Labour MP Rosianne Cutajar. Cutajar had been seeking ways to pig it out, as she had herself declared in private chats with Yorgen Fenech. Chats which are now in the public domain.

The Auditor General had identified that public funds were misused. Notwithstanding these clear conclusions, no criminal action was taken against those involved in the creation of the Cutajar phantom job at the ITS. Those who abused were protected. I am ignoring the gimmick of Cutajar's exiting from Labour's Parliamentary group only be to re-admitted at a later stage.

The Commissioner for Standards in Public Life had identified the abusive consultancy dished out by Justyne Caruana, then Minister for Education, to her friend Daniel Bogdanovic. Consequently, the Minister resigned. Her Permanent Secretary was fired, only to be subsequently appointed as Chief Executive of a government agency. Together they were complicit in the attempted misappropriation of public funds, yet not one of them was criminally prosecuted.

The recent case of Amanda Muscat, then the Minister of Tourism's girlfriend, is well known, as it is a recent one. The abusive creation of a phantom consultancy at the Ministry for Gozo with the beneficiary remaining at the Ministry for Tourism was only possible as a result of the role of the permanent secretaries and the two ministers. While one of the ministers was forced to resign on the basis of an FIAU report the contents of which are still largely known, no criminal action relative to the misuse of public funds has been initiated against the two ministers and the two permanent secretaries.

Instead of being criminally prosecuted those who made the abuse possible, were protected.

This is a negation of the basic principles of accountability and a solid foundation for a developing bad governance.

This is not only the responsibility of Robert Abela as Prime Minister. It is also a responsibility of the Commissioner of Police Angelo Gafà. The failure of the police to investigate and to act on the results of their investigation has inevitably led to the proliferation of requests by civil society to the Court of Magistrates to investigate instead of the Commissioner of Police.

Contrary to Abela's discourse this is not an abuse of the magisterial investigative process. Rather, it is a utilisation of the investigation procedures to remedy the fact that the Commissioner of Police did not investigate and subsequently prosecute the most obvious cases of rampant economic crime in the public sector: the abusive use of public funds.

Civil society is compensating for the Police Commissioner's lack of action when it is requesting the Magistrates' Court to investigate various instances where it is reasonable to suspect that rampant economic crime has been committed. Faced with a failure of the institutions to act, it is the duty of the common citizen and civil society to fill the gap.

The response of Prime Minister Robert Abela is to embark on an exercise changing legislation to reduce the possibilities for civil society to act against protected criminals and criminal action.

To date a Bill to amend the Criminal Code has been presented for the consideration of Parliament. It is expected, in line with the Prime Minister's declarations, that additional legislation will be presented to protect public officers from personally shouldering the criminal consequences of their actions.

This is definitely not acceptable. When the legislation referred to above has been approved by Parliament there is only one practical way in which we common citizens can react. We have the right to call an abrogative referendum. This referendum will seek to cancel the legislation which limits the possibility for investigations as well as that which protects public officers by shielding them from shouldering the criminal consequences of their actions.

In the coming weeks, as soon as the relative legislation is approved, ADPD-The Green Party will, depending on the final text of the approved legislation, kickstart the process of collecting the required signatures in order to call an abrogative referendum. We will hopefully be cooperating with others who are on the same wavelength.

This has to be our clear and definite reply in defiance of the arrogance of the government led by Robert Abela.

 

An architect and civil engineer, the author is a former Chairperson of ADPD-The Green Party in Malta.  [email protected] ,   http://carmelcacopardo.wordpress.com

 


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