The appointment of Judge (Retd.) Vanni Bonello to the Commission charged with reforming justice is a pretty accurate definition of meritocracy in its classic, and correct, application.

Also sitting on the Commission will be the Dean of the Faculty of Law, Prof. Kevin Aquilina, Judge (Retd.) Philip Sciberras, who had served as a Labour MP between 1979 and 1987, and Dr Ramona Frendo, a lawyer and partner in a law firm, who featured on the Labour Party’s billboards during the electoral campaign, affirming her belief in meritocracy.

You might, if you wished to be facetious, call her one of Labour's poster-girls.

The information in the paragraph immediately preceding is taken directly from the Times' report on the appointments, with the exception of the facetious bit.

The three appointments also provide us with definitions of "meritocracy", perhaps in a couple of cases less classic in their contexts.I'll let you work that out for yourselves.

Only incidentally, I think it might be worth noting that Prof. Aquilina has let it be known that he is waiving his honorarium.

I wish the Bonello Commission the very best of luck: I am on record as having made appeals in the past for the justice sector to be taken out of the political arena, for the good of the country, and it is only to be hoped that this will happen.

These are not the only appointments in the legal sphere that have hit the news, however.The Government apparently thought it would be a good idea to appoint former PN MP Dr Franco Debono as Commissioner of Laws and Coordinator for Constitutional Reform. The peg on which the Government has hung its hat, at least partly, in the context of this direct appointment, is Debono's tenure as Chairman of the House's Select Committee on consolidation and re-codification in the previous legislature.

Oh, really? Let's examine the evidence surrounding this exercise of meritocratic selection, shall we?Debono is a lawyer who specialises in Criminal Law and who was appointed to the Chair of the Select Committee in circumstances that many surmised were not unconnected with his continued sniping at the then-PM and the populist perception that he was going to bring down the Government.

The tactic, if such it was, didn't work, and Debono did eventually bring down Gonzi's Government, to the delight of many.You might say, if you wanted to be facetious again, that he is also one of Labour's poster-boys.

You could also say, consequentially, that the quid has been delivered for the quo, but perhaps that would be too cynical a reading of the situation. Almost as cynical, you might say but I certainly couldn't comment, that this would be almost as cynically opportunistic as Labour's manipulative use of Debono when he was on the benches opposite theirs.

Insofar as his credentials to be a glorified proof-reader and minutiae-checker (that's a large portion of what his appointment involves) I wouldn't care to cast judgement, except to say that it is not a job that couldn't be done by many others, hence my somewhat sceptical reaction.

Debono's credentials as a Constitutional guru, on the other hand, are hardly the stuff of which legends are made. There are many others, on all sides of the spectrum, who would be way more suited to seeking some sort of consensus on the way forward (not that I think there's much needed to be done, but that's another story)

By appointing this person, however, the Government has made it clear that it is uninterested in, and insensitive to, the way many, many thousands of people view him, his integrity and his manner of conducting himself.

Not to put too fine a point on it, he is seen by many as an arrogant, narcissistic renegade who parlayed the incidental power a one-seat majority gave him into a notoriety that he transformed in his own mind into intrinsic worth, egged on by some whose agenda was conveniently aligned to his.

I wonder how important Constitutional reform really is to the Government: appointing Debono gives me the impression that it isn't, given that consensus with him in place is as likely to be achieved as me playing in goal for England.