Former Chief Justice and current Standards Commissioner Joseph Azzopardi categorically declared that abuse of office by government ministers should be a criminal offence. If you're aghast or surprised that there's still no law criminalising ministers' abuse, you're not alone. Everybody knows ministers abuse of their office to their hearts' content with total impunity. We've seen it happen time and time again. But the majority believes that's because of a failure to prosecute them not because there's no law that makes it a crime for a minister to abuse. In Malta abuse of office by a cabinet minister is simply not a crime.
Standards Commissioner Joseph Azzopardi was hand-picked by Robert Abela. The Prime-minister actually introduced an anti-deadlock mechanism to force through Azzopardi's appointment as Standards Commissioner when the Opposition refused to support his nomination. The former chief justice is not some raving die-hard PN supporter. Neither is he some anti-Labour activist. Yet he's seen enough of the in-your-face disgusting abuse by Labour's ministers firsthand. He's conducted interviews with those abusers. He's watched them try and dodge his questions, present pathetic excuses and lie through their teeth to cover up their blatant looting of the state.
He watched incredulous as the Parliamentary Committee for Standards simply refused to accept his damning report over the Prime Minister's abuse of public funds to produce and circulate a propagandistic video. The Commissioner called it "election style propaganda". When Abela's MPs on that parliamentary committee defended Robert Abela claiming the video provided useful public information, Commissioner Azzopardi rebutted "All you see is the PM going around Gozo, mostly on his own, speaking to people and having coffee with them". The Commissioner was ready to close the case if Abela apologised for abusing his office and public funds
Robert Abela refused. Commissioner Azzopardi referred the case to the Parliamentary Committee for Standards. But Abela's own MPs ensured that the Commissioner's report was rejected.
The following year Robert Abela was again found to have breached ethics by the Standards Commissioner over another promotional video funded by taxpayers' money. Again the Commissioner asked Abela to apologise. Again Abela refused. Again Abela's MPs sitting on the parliamentary committee for standards were there to shield him. They refused to accept the Commissioner's conclusions. Robert Abela got away with breaching ethics and abusing of taxpayer funds and his office, again.
But Commissioner Azzopardi's demand for criminalising abuse of office stems primarily from an even more egregious case. Azzopardi found Minister Clayton Bartolo and MInister Clint Camilleri guilty of abuse of power when they appointed Bartolo's then girlfriend Amanda Muscat to a consultant position with the Ministry of Gozo when she neither had the qualifications nor the competence for that role, and never actually performed the work of a consultant. The two ministers effectively conspired to defraud the state of tens of thousands of euro to hand over to Bartolo's girlfriend.
When the case reached the Parliamentary committee for Standards, Minister Clint Camilleri was simply given an "admonishment". He wasn't even asked to apologise. Minister Clayton Bartolo's punishment was offering an apology to Parliament and refunding €16,400 that he had misappropriated for his partner, although she had actually been paid €68,000.
Meanwhile Robert Abela kept insisting that "his apology is enough" and wouldn't sack Bartolo. As for Clint Camilleri, Abela didn't even dare mention his name. Abela claimed that the Standards Commissioner had not found evidence of criminal misconduct and therefore he saw no reason to escalate the matter to the police. Of course there was no "criminal" misconduct - because abuse of office is not a crime. And it's still not a crime because the very same Robert Abela has been ignoring the Daphne Caruana Galizia inquiry recommendations for years.
The Caruana Galizia inquiry report recommended that there should be a specific law that criminalises abuse of office. Robert Abela knows that all too well. But for years he's done nothing. That same inquiry recommended another law criminalising obstruction of justice by government officials. Abela has completely ignored that recommendation too, ensuring that permanent secretaries and other high ranking officials who refuse to cooperate with police, the NAO or the ombudsman can get away with it. Abela also conveniently ignored another key recommendation of that inquiry - the introduction of unexplained wealth orders. He's refused to reform the freedom of information act to curb Labour's culture of secrecy under the pretext of privacy and commercial sensitivity. He's failed to work on the recommended constitutional amendment to recognise the right of an individual to receive information from the state and public administration and the obligation of his government to provide that information.
Those are not the actions of an honest leader who seeks to protect the citizens and the state from being abused by unscrupulous ministers. That is not the behaviour of a Prime Minister intent on ensuring good governance. Those are the actions of a man determined to protect himself and his ministers. Indeed he was dead set on bringing in legislation to protect all those civil servants and other public officials who enabled and permitted ministerial abuse, highlighted by the Commissioner in several of his reports.
In January 2025 Robert Abela threatened to bring in legislation to protect public officers from prosecution and to reassure those complicit officials that government would take responsibility for their actions. Abela planned to invert a 170-year long legal culture which held public servants to a higher degree of responsibility specifically because their role made them guardians of the public interest and not servile bootlickers of Abela's ministers.
Instead of introducing abuse of office and unexplained wealth order legislation, as the Caruana Galizia inquiry recommended, Abela made it practically impossible for citizens to request a magisterial inquiry into abuses by cabinet ministers. Abela has steadfastly ignored those inquiry recommendations for years. He'll do the same with Commissioner Azzopardi's latest demand for the criminalisation of abuse of office. To do otherwise would be like turkeys voting for Christmas.