I must apologise to readers in that in my June 28 letter I may have led them to hope that that was my last contribution to this “supremacy” subject. While here I am writing again.

This has been prompted by what Giovanni Bonello has written in the reply of July 4. There he says that “Prof. Mifsud Bonnici appears jubilant at the result, i.e. when an insatiable Parliament meets an anaemic Constitutional Court”. I had, in fact, written that, “much to my disgust”, Parliament did and can abuse its supremacy. How “disgust” is deemed to be “jubilant” is beyond me to fathom. But perhaps I need an appropriate quotation from the Ethics of Discourse. Dr Bonello also writes that I “have my own devoted support of what I write” and that “I am upset because I believe ‘we’ have misunderstood his doctrines”.

This line of insults began way back in 1992 and has continued intermittently over 18 years.

I was Chief Justice then and an ex-Chief Justice after 1995 and, therefore, I could not, concordantly with that position, have recourse to any sort of contestation/confrontation in the media. I had to remain and did remain silent in the face of a torrent of abuse. (The English language lends itself to a precise and faithful description of the phenomenon.)

So now, going by my past experience, I can see what is brewing and, therefore, it is incumbent on me to fall into a necessary and prudent silence even on a matter, which I had thought, was of an academic-factual content. I am still an ex-Chief Justice.

This time readers may rest assured that this is my concluding intervention in this matter.