Professor claims breach of right to fair hearing

A professor yesterday filed a constitutional application claiming that, among other things, his right to a fair hearing had been breached in a ruling given by the Permanent Commission Against Corruption.

Anthony Jaccarini filed the application against the Prime Minister, the Attorney General, the Justice and Home Affairs Minister, the University Rector and the chairman and members of the commission.

In a detailed, 32-page application, Prof. Jaccarini explained that the case dated back to 1978. In July of that year, a time of political turmoil, he resigned from his post at the University of Malta's Department of Pharmacy and was appointed Chairman of Pharmacology at King Faisal University in Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, Anthony Serracino Inglott, a lecturer of inferior rank, applied for the vacant post in the Department of Pharmacy in Malta without success.

In July 1987 the Medical Association of Malta (MAM) informed Prof. Jaccarini that, according to an agreement reached with the government in May of that year, he would be listed to be reintegrated into the University of Malta.

So he left the Saudi university and, as laid down in directives issued by MAM, he and other professors applied for the reinstatement.

But while the other professors were reinstated in the same posts of professors and heads of departments they had previously occupied, he was not.

In October 1987, University Rector Peter Serracino Inglott informed him that he would be reinstated as from January 1988 and his role would be to set up a Department of Pharmacology in the Faculty of Medicine.

But in December 1987, without his knownledge, the Prime Minister appointed Prof. Jaccarini as a Professor of Biochemistry.

On January 2, 1988 the rector informed Prof. Jaccarini that he would not be reinstated in the Department of Pharmacy and that the invitation to set up the Pharmacology Department was no longer valid. Instead, he was to be assigned to the Department of Biochemistry.

Consequently, Prof. Jaccarini was never reinstated into pharmacy as was his right.

He took his request to be reinstated in the post occupied between 1971 and 1978 to the University Council which was also dealing with a request by the rector to appoint the rector's brother, Dr Serracino Inglott, as acting head of pharmacy.

The council eventually decided to appoint Dr Serracino Inglott. Prof. Jaccarini was therefore deprived of the privileges that retired university professors, in the post he deserved, benefit from.

In a judgment handed down on June 28, 1993, the Commission for the Investigation of Injustices declared that an injustice against Prof. Jaccarini had been committed.

In its decision the commission said that "although Prof. Peter Serracino Inglott denied that the manoeuvre was influenced by considerations involving a relative, the commission was not morally convinced that this was the case".

In light of this, Prof. Jaccarini took his case to the Permanent Commission Against Corruption (KPK) in December 1993.

In a ruling handed down 10 years later the commission declared that it was not satisfied that corruption had been committed.

But the KPK's decision was handed down after the board members had changed, when Prof. Jaccarini's testimony was discarded and without allowing him to produce all his evidence or examine witnesses. Moreover, he was not aware of the evidence heard by the KPK and was not given the opportunity to make his submissions.

To add insult to injury, when Prof. Jaccarini asked to see the documents of the case he was not allowed to and neither were his lawyers.

Prof. Jaccarini claimed that the ways in which the authorities concerned had acted in his regard were in breach of the Constitution and the European Convention of Human Rights.

He explained that his right to a fair hearing, his right to an effective remedy, his right to protection from inhuman and degrading treatment and his right to peacefully benefit from his possessions had all been breached.

He called on the court to restore his rights arguing that if this were not to be done it would result in a paradoxical case of "an unfair hearing within proceedings alleging an unfair hearing".

Dr Vincent Falzon, Dr Stefan Frendo and Dr Chris Soler signed the application.