Justice Minister Owen Bonnici has defended his judicial reform Bill, which has come under fire, saying it was constitutionally sound but Opposition spokesman Jason Azzopardi warned that there will be no consensus unless it is changed from scratch.
Dr Bonnici reacted quickly to counter the scathing attack on his Bill by a constitutional expert and a former European Court of Human Rights judge, who described the proposal as “fake”, “autocratic” and “unconstitutional”.
“The government’s proposal is constitutionally sound and strengthens the independence of the judiciary.
“This being said, however, the government is always open to ideas and suggestions on how to improve the legislative proposal,” he said in a Talking Point article carried on today’s back page.
He was reacting to a similar opinion piece penned by the Dean of the Faculty of Law at the university, Kevin Aquilina, and comments sought by this newspaper from the very person who headed the Justice Reform Commission, Giovanni Bonello.
Following the Bonello Commission’s recommendations made in 2013, Dr Bonnici presented a Bill last week reforming mechanisms used to appoint and discipline judges and magistrates.
The Bonello Commission proposed a disciplinary authority that would include a judge and magistrate elected by the judiciary in order to guarantee independence.
Instead, the Bill proposes a three-member committee drawn from the Commission for the Administration of Justice, relegating the independence of the judiciary to the “legal history books”, according to Professor Aquilina, who branded the Bill’s proposed system of discipline as “flawed”, “unconstitutional” and befitting of an inquisition.
The government’s proposal is constitutionally sound and strengthens the independence of the judiciary
Defending his decisions, Dr Bonnici explained how he saw nothing wrong with having judges and magistrates judged by their own peers.
But in his reaction to the proposed Bill, the Opposition spokes-man on justice, Jason Azzopardi, said that what was being proposed was actually worse than the present situation.
He said the Opposition, which is due to discuss the Bill internally this week, could never agree with a proposal which some of the leaders in the field had shot down.
“As Professor Aquilina put it in your paper today [yesterday], the Bill reduces the judiciary to civil servants at the beck and call of the government. Is this what we want? I always thought that these changes were to have politicians at arm’s length from the judiciary.
“I am livid because it is worse than what we have today,” Dr Azzopardi told the Times of Malta.
Dr Azzopardi, a lawyer by profession, also criticised the proposal of giving the Prime Minister the final word on the choice of judges and magistrates.
“So the Prime Minister could choose someone who the judicial committee rejects or he may choose someone who was not even considered by the committee and everything remains under wraps because the committee members are bound to secrecy. This just doesn’t make sense. It is institutionalising deceit because it is using the selection committee as a smokescreen,” he said.
Dr Azzopardi also criticised the fact the 10 selection criteria suggested by the Chamber of Advocates and adopted in the Opposition’s Private Member’s Bill were completely rejected by the government. The government also rejected the recommendation to increase the minimum experience needed as a practising lawyer to make it to the bench to 15 years with it being left at seven years for magistrates and 12 years for judges.
“How can I ever agree with something which received at least seven indictments?
“The minister’s position is untenable because he is not only showing crass incompetence but also gross arrogance in trying to run roughshod on such a delicate matter,” he stressed.