A magistrate this morning cleared a columnist of defamation over a blog in which she referred to Labour deputy leader Toni Abela and other party officials as "clowns, idiots and incompetents".

In his decision, Magistrate Francesco Depasquale ruled that the comment was not alluding to Dr Abela alone and fell within the parameters of a fair comment and value judgment.

The magistrate was ruling in a libel suit filed by Dr Abela against Daphne Caruana Galizia over an article titled "Ajma x'biza, an earthquake warning, hej" published in August 12, 2008. In the article, the blogger commented on the election of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat as Labour Party leader a few days earlier.

Unfortunately, the court cannot help but notice a concerted effort for such cases to procrastinate- Magistrate

"Joseph Muscat gave another earthquake warning in his usual column in Times of Malta. He's unhappy with the party system that elects clowns, idiots and incompetents to key roles - except where he is concerned, of course. The people who elected Toni Abela, Anglu Farrugia and Jason Micallef also elected him, but he obviously fails to see the connection and that he is part of the joke. In his won way, he is as crassly incompetent as the rest of them."

Magistrate Depasquale ruled that the excerpt and the rest of the article was not an attack on Dr Abela alone but was criticising the entire Labour Party leadership. It was, he said, a value judgment of the blogger and not a statement of fact and the remarks were therefore not libellous.

In its judgment, the court heavily criticised Dr Abela for procrastinating the libel case, pointing put that the case failed to progress for almost four years due to several requests for deferments.

"Unfortunately, the court cannot help but notice a concerted effort for such cases to procrastinate without any valid reasons and are kept in limbo for many years," the magistrate said, adding that such manoeuvres brought into disrepute the entire court administration as well as the judiciary who are not always to blame for such delays.

"It is unacceptable that a libel case takes seven years to be concluded," he said.