Warped logic

I read with interest the recent articles by Parliamentary Secretary Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici regarding Bill 27.

The prime reason given by the said junior minister for the promulgation of the Bill in question was to try and reduce some of the backlog of cases before the ordinary courts and channel them elsewhere. The government therefore has come up with the idea of redefining the institute of arbitration and introduce the so-called mandatory arbitration. By means of the law in question all collision cases where the damages do not exceed Lm5,000 will henceforth be referred to forced arbitration. It is not my scope in this article to once more reactivate the debate on whether this is juridically acceptable or not. I have had ample opportunity to register my strong objections in this regard.

Following the parliamentary debate on this particular piece of legislation I had the opportunity to forward to the Minister of Justice parliamentary question number 6468. Here I asked the minister to give me a breakdown of how many collision cases have been presented this year and before which courts. From the answer given it transpires that 224 cases were presented before the Small Claims Tribunal and a mere 29 before the Magistrates' Courts. There were only three collision cases in which the pretensions exceeded the competence of the inferior courts.

One does not have to be too intelligent to realise that in actual terms the Bill in question will hardly, if at all, affect the volume of cases before the ordinary courts. As I had occasion to explain in Parliament, over 90 per cent of all collisions that do not result in personal injuries will nearly always fall within the competence of the Small Claims Tribunal.

These petty tribunals do not form part of the judiciary. It is a point of fact that the scope behind the introduction of these ad hoc tribunals was none other than to ease the pressure on the ordinary courts, giving these more time and space to deal with more serious matters.

When the competence of the Small Claims Tribunal was increased from Lm500 to Lm1,500 the then Minister of Justice, Austin Gatt, took the liberty to emphasise the point that the procedure before these tribunals was extremely cheap and expeditious. In truth, when one examines the new tariffs introduced by this present administration one will find that while court costs are truly exorbitant the costs before these tribunals are truly insignificant. Though these tribunals fall outside the ambit of the judicial organ of state at least the judiciary is still empowered to review the decisions given and this before an appellate jurisdiction.

In examining all this it will therefore appear that the reforms being proposed will be even more illogical. On the one hand the government boasts of how cheap and effective the Small Claims Tribunal is and in the same instance it is now creating other ad hoc tribunals, the scope of which will be to usurp the work of the tribunals in question. It must be pointed out that a large percentage of the cases being dealt with by the Small Claims Tribunal are in fact collision cases.

The government has a fixation with regard to the term devolution. More so, this particular word seems to have become a cliché to the government. We have seen the government speaking about devolution of authority to the local councils, we have seen this being used again with regard to government authorities and agencies and now, strangely, the government is using this term again with regard to the courts. The government seems to believe that the only way forward in order to increase efficiency in the country is to devolve as much as possible the authority and competence of the state organs to other agencies, this when experience is showing us otherwise.

So now the government has embarked on a process of creating ad hoc tribunals to take over the work of other ad hoc tribunals. My guess is that soon the government will be introducing another centre of arbitration so in its stead this too will take over from our present centre of arbitration. If this is not farcical then nothing is.

Dr Herrera is a Labour MP.