Former government consultant Martin Scicluna has defended his suggestion of the appointment of a “top foreign professional” as Police Commissioner, saying the police force needs a “total restructuring” if improvements are ever to be made.

Mr Scicluna, who was an advisor to former home affairs ministers Tonio Borg and Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici, wrote in his Times of Malta column last week that the Police Commissioner had lost the confidence of the country and should be replaced by a leading professional “from Britain (or possibly Australia)” to “knock the Police Force into shape”.

Mr Scicluna said the vociferous calls for the resignation of Police Commissioner Lawrence Cutajar were misguided because of a lack of suitable replacements.

“Over the past 50 years, the police force has been used as a subservient instrument of successive governments, not independent of them,” Mr Scicluna said.

“It has lost that crucial part of good policing which is independence to take decisions without fear of consequence from any politicians. Having worked with successive Police Commissioners over the years from 1996 until 2013, I became convinced that without a total restructuring of the police, we would never improve, and the last four years – where we have seen five different commissioners – have shown that.”

The only solution, he said, was to bring in “someone strong from the outside to inculcate a new ethos”, highlighting Britain because of the similarities in language, culture and approach to policing.

While acknowledging that the suggestion was likely to rankle, and that some may perceive it as an indictment of the country’s ability to police itself, Mr Scicluna insisted there was currently nobody in Malta up to the job.

“The police commissioners we’ve had are all well-meaning people, but they just haven’t got the training and leadership skills for something as difficult as policing in Malta. Somehow you have to change the ethos of the whole police force. We have to rebuild the leadership from scratch.”

However, former Police Commissioner John Rizzo was unequivocal when the suggestion was put to him. “It just doesn’t hold water,” he said.

Pointing to a similar attempt in the past to bring in a foreign expert to head the Prison Service, Mr Rizzo insisted ideas and approaches that worked overseas could not automatically be translated to the Maltese context. “Without understanding the culture and traditions, even certain characters, it becomes very challenging, even more so with the Police Force, where you’re in constant contact with the general public,” he said.

Mr Rizzo also highlighted the importance of an intimate understanding of the police rank-and-file, arguing that someone shipped in from abroad would struggle even with getting the most out of the men and women at their disposal. “If a Commissioner has to be chosen, it should be someone of integrity, loyal, honest and politically neutral. They should be loyal to the government of the day, but never at the expense of the oath they took to serve the people,” he said.

“But I can’t understand where anyone would get the idea that there is nobody in Malta who could do that job.”

Mr Scicluna’s proposal was one of several made in his column, including the immediate setting-up of the promised Constitutional convention, independent scrutiny of the gaming and financial services industries, reform of the Attorney General’s office, and a diplomatic and lobbying drive to restore Malta’s international reputation.

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