When, early in February this year, the government went about setting up what it called grievances units throughout the civil service to consider complaints about injustices which government workers might have suffered over the past seven years, the underlying message of the move, at least as generally understood by many, was unmistakable.

The government was out to undermine the office of the Ombudsman, a claim it would most strongly deny but which is now being confirmed in no uncertain manner by the stand taken by the Home Affairs Ministry over differences as to whether the Ombudsman’s office should or should not investigate grievances by army officers.

It is an unseemly spat that shows the ugly face of State arrogance, seemingly boosted in this case by the overwhelming support the party in government received at the polls twice in a span of 14 months. Yet, if there is something people really dislike it is arrogance of power. The fact that Labour in government has already fallen victim to this trait so early in its first legislature after so many years in Opposition shows how governments of all hue, here and abroad, tend to get so easily intoxicated by power.

The clash between the Ombudsman and the ministry should not have arisen at all in times when every political party attaches so much importance to citizens’ rights. What is the dispute all about? Home Affairs Minister Manuel Mallia has been reported saying that, by law, the Ombudsman has no right to probe grievances by army officers, but the Ombudsman’s Office holds that it has every right to do so, citing an agreement the office had reached with the Armed Forces in November 2011.

The minister quotes Article 160 of the Armed Forces Act, stating that complaints have to go through the army commander, who may refer the case to the President. Apparently, the minister is basing his case on a letter signed by an officer in the Ombudsman’s Office in October 2003 in which he declined to investigate a complaint made by an army officer over a promotion.

The Ombudsman’s argument is that this officer’s decision had been manifestly wrong as it denied the right army officers have under the Ombudsman Act to seek recourse from his office. And in any case, the Ombudsman Act had been enacted 25 years after the Armed Forces Act, meaning that the 2003 decision ignored “the basic and elementary legal principle that a specific law prevails over one of a general nature that preceded it”.

The upshot of all this is that the Ombudsman has now been constrained to file a judicial protest, claiming that the ministry is not cooperating in handing over relevant information that he needed to look into complaints made by officers over promotions. The issue assumes greater importance in the wake of controversies over accelerated promotions both in the army and the police, two services that need to be handled with care by any administration but which always appear to fall under government political spells.

Why would anyone, least of all a ministry, want to cause obstacles, as the Ombudsman is claiming, in the investigation of complaints? Why should a ministry make it difficult for an officer to have his grievance heard by the Ombudsman if he so wishes?

The ministry would appear to be narrowing, rather than broadening, the complaints procedure, as it said it was doing in its reaction to the filing of the judicial protest, if it persists in refusing to cooperate with the Ombudsman.

What is the ministry afraid of?

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