Updated - Adds comments by Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi - Home Affairs Minister Manuel Mallia said today that arrangements were being made for a meeting to be held between him and the Ombudsman to discuss their disagreement over whether the office of the Ombudsman enjoyed the jurisdiction to consider complaints by AFM officers.
The issue was raised in parliament this evening when a debate on the situation was held at the request of the opposition.
Dr Mallia stood his ground, insisting that the law was clear that AFM officers had other channels how to present their complaints and before taking their case to the President, they had to apply to the President.
Dr Mallia said he personally and professionally respected the Ombudsman, Joseph Said Pullicino, but that this not mean that could not disagree on the interpretation of the law.
The matter would be discussed civilly, as it should have been from the beginning, once a date for their meeting was agreed, Dr Mallia said.
He confirmed that the government was not giving information to the Ombudsman on cases involving AFM officers because it was precluded by law.
The government, however, had nothing to hide, and once the law was changed, it would proceed accordingly, he said. That, Dr Mallia said, had also been the view taken by former Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi.
The Ombudsman yesterday had expressed a readiness to meet the minister, while insisting that he was correctly interpreting the law.
'OLD HABITS DIE HARD'
The shadow minister for home affairs, Jason Azzopardi, said the way how the government was treating the Ombudsman was a case of 'old habits die hard'.
Like the Labour government of the 1980s, this government was hindering the rights of a section of the people to seek redress before an independent body. In the past, the same was done when the Labour government suspended the Constitutional court.
Dr Azzopardi insisted that the Ombudsman was legally right to argue that officers could opt to file their complaints to his Office.
He denied claims by Dr Mallia that the present government's position was no different from that of the last government. The former government never interfered in the work of the Ombudsman and actually gave him all the information he needed when investigations were carried out.
Dr Azzopardi said the minister lacked credibility in this case because he was not consistent. The Ombudsman had investigated and found in favour of two AFM officers in a case which started under the old government and was concluded under the present government. He recommended financial compensation to the two officers, and that compensation was promptly paid out by the present government last August. So did the Ombudsman have jurisdiction then, but not now? Or was this a case of discrimination?