Whichever way you look at it, it was a weak start for the fifth police commissioner under the present Labour administration. Laurence Cutajar succeeds Michael Cassar, who left after serving just a year, citing health reasons.
The Nationalist Opposition was not amused by the appointment. It has made repeated calls on the government to seek consensus on the choice of a new police chief, even suggesting a two-thirds vote in Parliament. Such a proposal would have ensured the head of police enjoyed confidence all round, strengthening his autonomy in ways similar to that the Auditor General and the Ombudsman.
The government never warmed up to that idea. Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Abela said the PN proposal raised a number of questions including to whom the police commissioner would be answerable and how he would be removed. There would be confusion between Parliament and the Executive, he argued. The end result is that the Opposition has now described Mr Cutajar as a “bad choice”, whose only qualification for the job was that he was a friend of the Prime Minister.
Joseph Muscat may have been right when he recently said Labour has finally “broken its duck” in terms of the economy and jobless. Economic performance has been good but there is still a long way to go for Labour where homeland security, particularly the police corps, is concerned. Labour’s track record in this area has been abysmal and this administration has nothing to be proud of.
Mr Abela speaks of a strategy for the police, including the appointment of a CEO who would focus on the administrative side of the 2,000-member force. A survey carried out among police officers has flagged issues like inadequate resources, stifling bureaucracy and health and safety concerns. The road ahead will not be easy for both the new Police Commissioner and the CEO.
Most disconcerting has been a report in the PN media that, towards the end of April and early June, a notary working with the government was stripped twice while being interrogated at the police headquarters. The notary was reportedly humiliated, shouted at and not even allowed to phone his family to inform them where he was. This incident, if true, harks back to the 1980s, when police interrogations were associated with violence. One man, Nardu Debono, ended up dead and a former police commissioner landed himself in prison. It would be unimaginable if Labour today went down the same shameful path it took in the 1980s.
The PN has said that the only way for the new Police Commissioner to be taken seriously was if he were to investigate the secret Panama companies of Minister Without Portfolio Konrad Mizzi and the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri.
There has been speculation that the departure of the previous commissioner may have been linked to the Panama investigations. And, last week, the resignation of Manfred Galdes from director of the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit, was also linked to police inaction following the unit’s probe into the Panama papers. The Finance Ministry denied knowledge that the resignation was connected to the Panama probe but the PN has raised pertinent questions for government to answer.
The new Police Commissioner is caught in all of this. The country needs a good and efficient police force, with high morale and enjoying wide public respect. It is a tall order.