The motion to impeach Mr Justice Lino Farrugia Sacco has been placed on Parliament’s agenda but the procedure on how to move on will only be discussed in 10 days’ time.
The decision was taken at the end of a two-hour meeting of the House Business Committee, which turned down an Opposition proposal to meet again today to decide on procedure.
However, government MPs, which are in a majority on the committee, accepted a proposal by Nationalist whip David Agius to give the Opposition a draft procedural programme by tomorrow.
Last week the Commission for the Administration of Justice had recommended that a second motion to impeach the judge – submitted by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat after a first filed by the former prime minister was declared ‘dead’ by the Speaker – should take its course in Parliament.
Yesterday, Deputy Prime Minister Louis Grech said Labour’s parliamentary group had decided Parliament should determine the procedure to be employed when debating the motion.
However, Mr Grech resisted Opposition pressure to proceed immediately to establish the way forward, saying this matter should be discussed during the next meeting of the committee.
Disagreeing, PN deputy leader for parliamentary affairs Mario de Marco insisted Parliament should determine its procedure immediately, as stipulated by law, and avoid further postponements.
However, Mr Grech stuck to his guns, maintaining that more time was needed as “one has also to consider whether the judge will now present a constitutional case”.
Asked by Dr de Marco whether this meant the government was already indicating that Parliament should halt the procedure if the judge presented a court case, Mr Grech was non-committal.
“This is not what I am saying but one has to be prudent, as suggested by constitutional experts,” he said.
The Speaker, Anġlu Farrugia, said that following the com-mittee’s decision to accept the commission’s recommendation, the motion would now be put on Parliament’s agenda and the judge would be formally notified.
According to law, an impeachment motion is secret until the commission determines if there are grounds for Parliament to impeach a member of the judiciary.
The commission has in fact decided twice – on both first and second motions – that there was proven evidence Mr Justice Farrugia Sacco breached the judiciary’s code of ethics.
The original motion by former prime minister Lawrence Gonzi was filed at the end of 2012. The judge is due to retire this August upon his 65th birthday and if Parliament does not manage to take a decision before then, impeachment will effectively have no meaning.
Last week, Judge Giovanni Bonello, an expert in constitutional law, opined that Parliament, being autonomous, had the power to proceed with the impeachment case even if this was challenged in the Constitutional Court.
“However, I believe that normally Parliament, in a spirit of prudence rather than on law, will await the Constitutional Court’s judgment before it takes the final decision,” he added.
Kevin Aquilina, dean of the University’s Faculty of Laws, agreed Parliament could move ahead under its own steam but added that in case of an alleged breach of human rights, the court could stop it.