The crisis in our political system has been long in coming not just in the current impasse regarding the choice of the next chief justice.

Remember when Malta was practically left without judges because of the stand-off between the judges and the Mintoff -KMB administration?

I remember clearly what a dear friend, now dead, told me how one day she answered the phone at her parents' home (her father was a sitting judge) and the person who was calling was none other than Dom Mintoff himself. It was not a social call. Her father, a very, very strict judge, soon resigned.

And what about the other arbitrary choice of another minister's brother as Chief Justice? And his subsequent elevation to the European Court of Justice in what became known as the "All in the Family" scandal?

Remember the other scandal involving yet another Chief Justice and two other judges, one of whom ended up in prison?

And other cases involving other judges who were kept in office only because Parliament for its own reasons respected the law regarding what is needed to end a judge's security of tenure?

As we lurch from one crisis to the next we tend to focus on the latest one and forget the ones before it.

We fail to see the system is broken, was born broken. The changes that have been made have not changed much. 

When the result is good we think the system as amended can work but then there can be a different election like the one we have now and it's clear the system is broken, can't work. We're back to square one.

Then we focus out and we see that it's not just the selection of the chief justice (and, before that, the selection of the head of state) that is broken but practically the whole constitution. 

Many times, successive presidents have tried to prod changes to the Constitution that they thought are necessary but nothing was done: the parties sat on their hands, refusing to risk their enviable joint monopoly over the country.

The crisis is far wider than we think. Even now judges are still chosen by the prime minister (despite recent changes). Note how many judgements made in Malta can be overturned in Europe.

Now things seem to be at an impasse. The only thing politicians seem to be thinking about is the next election, sometime in the near future. On this they each have high hopes but cruelly only one can be satisfied - the winner. It's still a winner takes all country.

In turn all the efforts thus concentrate on getting a majority, however it's obtained - free flights, the obsessive search for the very last vote, playing around with electoral districts, the minute search for a flawed vote, much like the obsessive search for flawed votes in the last two US elections.

That's why the system is broken. Don't be taken in by the furore regarding Judge Wenzu Mintoff's sworn declaration.

To call Mintoff a maverick is unfair, for in truth he was more sinned against than a sinner. 

First he was a Labour MP, then he moved away and founded Alternattiva (now of all ironies will be investigated by his companion-founder member of Alternattiva Toni Abela) then was appointed judge, then developed ambitions to be appointed chief justice, then  harboured massive resentment until he exploded.

In his bombshell he claimed unlawful pressure by Robert Abela (before he became PM) to change the tax to be paid on an extra-judicial agreement on the case between the Paqpaqli accident victims and former President Coleiro Preca.

Those like me who know this Robert Abela when he was just the privileged son of the President know this was precisely the Abela they knew. One of the consequences of the mad brainwave of Lawrence Gonzi which continued the downfall of the party which had led Malta to Independence and EU membership but then lost its way.

Even if Wenzu Mintoff was right his declaration did not offer any solution. It was just the aggrieved cry of anger by a man who believed he had been robbed of something he (without reason) saw as his. 

Apart from this there was no solution on offer by Judge Mintoff. But the judge's words have had a wide echo. As things stand, the prime minister should stand back from any future role in the choice of the chief justice. Or else he should resign for having admitted to give the wilder elements in his party veto power on who should be chosen. But don't hold your breath. 

I'm afraid this impasse will lead to the choice of that judge who is the most innocuous of the lot.

Some weeks ago I had offered the Italian model as a possible way out of this impasse.

The Italians have what they call the Electoral College which includes the two houses of Parliament together with a small number of electors taken from the provincial governments.

The voting is in secret, something not contemplated in Maltese legislation, I'm told.

Here in Malta the parties are all powerful. In Italy the individual MP is everything.

Power in the hands of the parties is what makes each prime minister an absolute dictator.

As things stand, the only response by any Maltese citizen to Robert Abela remains the famous gesture with which Roberta Metsola rebuffed Prime Minister Joseph Muscat's advances.

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