Sant insists on proper House structures to handle EU laws

Opposition leader Alfred Sant yesterday kept up the Opposition's insistence that Parliament needed to have the structure and the resources to scrutinise, debate and make its own input on proposed EU laws.

"That the House does not have this structure already is shameful. The government and the Speaker have a duty to ensure that they give form and substance to Maltese democracy by ensuring that the House is able to scrutinise future laws," Dr Sant said.

He was speaking during the debate on a bill amending 24 laws, most of them related to EU membership.

Dr Sant said it was shameful that the government had given so much attention and was spending so much money on EU accession celebrations while the House was still debating laws which needed to be amended before accession.

Indeed, he was sure there were other laws which needed to be changed, and somebody would eventually notice them.

The bill currently before the House was being rushed without proper consideration of its impact. At this rate, the same would happen with regard to proposed EU laws.

The government would end up acting like a directorate which received its instructions and implemented them.

The House should be able to give its input to EU laws during the draft stage and then implement them in the local context as EU legislation provided.

Dr Sant pointed out that the Opposition had, for months, been calling for the assignment of personnel to assist MPs in their consideration of proposed EU laws. The Opposition, he insisted, would insist that such personnel had the right expertise and were not simply people whom the Foreign Minister wanted to remove from the ministry.

Dr Sant insisted that it was also the Speaker's duty to ensure that decisions taken in Brussels were introduced here automatically.

Dr Gavin Gulia, opposition spokesman on Home Affairs spoke on a recent court case involving Joseph Fenech (Zeppi l-hafi).

He observed that two people had filed a challenge in court against the Police Commissioner insisting on action against four persons, including Mr Fenech, alleging that they had created a scenario through which they were swindled some Lm16,000.

The case involved a promise of sale agreement on a property for which the money was paid on deposit. This sum up to today had not been returned. It had resulted that the property belonged to the government and could not be sold.

The police and the office of the Attorney General had initially investigated the case but dropped it, and the couple then had to challenge the commissioner to institute criminal proceedings.

The Magistrates' Court presided by Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera on April 21 found there was prima facie evidence of fraud and ordered the police to take criminal action against Mr Fenech.

The court in its decision also reprimanded the police and the office of the Attorney General for the way this case was handled so that action was not taken against Mr Fenech. The court mentioned how the office of the Attorney General stated that the sale of the property concerned could not continue due to the fact that the property belonged to the government, but it stopped there. The fact that the title to this property pre-existed the promises of sale showed that Mr Fenech knew that the land was owned by the government.

This was the same person who was involved in the case of the attempted murder of the prime minister's personal assistant and who has been granted three presidential pardons to no avail.

Had it not been for the Magistrates' Court, criminal proceedings would not even have been possible also in this case. A week had since passed and no proceedings have yet been instituted. He hoped that the police would now act as ordered to do by the court.

It was possible that following criminal proceedings Mr Fenech would be acquitted but it was only fair that a person who was prima facie involved in a case of fraud, was tried in a court of law for his actions. The other persons investigated were released by the court because there was lack of evidence against them.

Dr Jose Herrera (MLP) referred to the amendments to the Criminal Code and said it seemed there was to be no more distinction between contraventions and crime. The word crime was being replaced by offence. Why?

Other articles were raising fines drastically for crime against public authority. This was a radical reform which merited a bill of its own. However, he agreed that the current fines were too light and it made sense to consider such crimes more seriously.

However, the amendments failed to encourage whistle blowers by offering reduced punishment by one or two grades so that cases could be revealed.

He said the country also needed a body which was independent of the government, which could investigate alleged cases of corruption. At present, boards of inquiry were appointed by the government itself.

Dr Herrera observed that one of the amendments clarified what constituted a public purpose in cases of requisition and acquisition orders. But the government should also move a bill working out what the compensation should be.

Dr Joe Brincat (MLP) said major sections of this bill were being considered illegal and in violation of parliamentary procedure because no mention of them was made in the Objects and Reasons of the bill. He asked the Speaker to give a ruling. Parliamentary Secretary Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici said he disagreed. The Objects and Reasons were only indicative of what was in the bill.

The Acting Speaker, Carmelo Abela, said he understood the points raised by Dr Brincat but this was the third sitting which was considering this bill and the minister in his introduction had said that a bill of this nature was exceptional. He was however recommending that the government drafters consider the valid points raised by Dr Brincat. He also pointed out that the Objects and Reasons were technically not part of the bill.

In other parts of his speech, Dr Brincat referred to amendments to the law on corruption of public officers - which has been extended to the private sector. He called for a full debate on the law and insisted that the prescription period in such cases should be removed.

The definition of "public purpose" in the law on requisition introduced the possibility for the government to transfer property to third parties but it did not define which category of persons this referred to. Thus, the "public purpose" could be used abusively by the government which could grant property to developers for the purpose of, say, building a hotel stating that this was a public purpose.

This law was contrary to the European Convention of Human Rights, in that it did not offer a remedy to persons who had their property requisitioned.

Dr Brincat said the amendments referring to plant quarantine would reduce the protection that Malta enjoyed. Up to today, a plant could have been brought into Malta provided that it was removed from its soil. With this amendment, these controls would be lifted.

This bill was also amending the nomenclature of the courts. These would be named only as "courts" and then further indicated by a specific name by the minister through a legal notice. This was dangerous because the competence of the court should not be left to be established by legal notice. The rules of procedure which regulated the courts was delicate and extremely important. The name was directly linked to the competence of the courts.

Winding up, Parliamentary Secretary Carm Mifsud Bonnici said there was nothing wrong, given time constraints, for the government to move one bill to amend a number of laws. The British parliament had been moving such bills, called Omnibus, for two centuries. Indeed, he shared the concerns of those who felt Malta should have full time MPs to have enough time to consider proposed laws.

Dr Mifsud Bonnici said the Opposition had first been all out against EU membership, and now it was claiming that the government had not prepared all legislation for EU membership. But this bill did not provide for new legislation but amendments and consolidation of existing ones.

Contrary to what the Opposition said, the opposition had been given ample time to scrutinise the bill, Indeed, Dr Gulia had gone out of subject and discussed a sub-judice case which could still be appealed from. And MPs had more time to scrutinise the bill, line by line, in the committee stage.

He referred to a comment that the bill should have first been debated within the European and Foreign Affairs Committee saying it did not fall within the remit of this committee.