Magisterial Inquiries are key to the Rule of Law

Access to justice is essential for a healthy democracy. When everyone can seek justice, it promotes fairness, accountability, and protects individual rights. Obstacles to access to justice contribute to creating a culture in which brazen, blatant, and unfettered impunity prevails. In the absence of access to justice, people are unable to hold power to account. That is tantamount to the absence of the Rule of Law.

It is not surprising that some of Malta's foremost legal minds had much to say about the proposed reforms to Magisterial Inquiries:

• Chief Justice Emeritus Silvio Camilleri blasted the government bill to reform magisterial inquiries, warning it will “only serve to shield politicians and their persons of trust from investigation”. Former Chief Justice Silvio Camilleri said the government had “captured” the police and the Attorney General's office and “now seeks to tie up all remaining loose ends”. This, he said, was being sought by “practically depriving the citizen of its only remaining instrument, a judicial investigation or in genere, into any suspected criminal conduct by politicians or their acolytes or proxies.

  
  

• Former European Court of Human Rights Judge Giovanni Bonello called the bill a "sordid and desperate keep-me-out-of-jail card." Bonello said the bill is frontally offensive to the rule of law, to good governance, to the administration of justice and can also breach the fundamental human rights of victims of crime.

  
  

• Chief Justice Emeritus Joseph Said Pullicino warned that, if approved, the proposals would constitute an erosion of the right of citizens to keep public administrators accountable for their criminal actions and a threat to the rule of law. He also pointed out that the government had crossed a red line by declaring people suspected of crimes as being innocent. “Such categorical statements by persons in authority on the innocence or guilt of a person accused or suspected of having committed an offence could be held to prejudice his/her right to a fair trial.

  
  

• Professor of Law at the Faculty of Laws at the University of Malta Kevin Aquilina had this to say about the bill: "The undeclared purpose of Bill No. 125 ('the Bill') of 31 January 2025 is to minimise governmental accountability and embed therein the culture of impunity into Maltese Law. It is not dictated by the common good of society or by the public interest but by the selfish interest of a few who have turned the state of Malta into their fiefdom, the Maltese into their vassals, the government coffers into their own private wealth, and public property into their own possession."

  
  

Last but not least, context is important. The Police Commissioner reports to a Minister who in turn reports to the Prime Minister. To function correctly and effectively in this scenario, especially where people in powerful positions within the executive are the perpetrators of wrong-doing, you need a man or a woman of the highest integrity and of great courage. Unfortunately, the present Police Commissioner is no such man. Neither were any of the Police Commissioners appointed from 2013 onwards.

And that is why the bill for the reform of Magisterial Inquiries being pushed through (at the speed of light) by Prime Minister Robert Abela cannot be allowed to go through.