MEP candidate retains Adoption Board chairmanship throughout electoral race

The ministry for social policy has refused to answer MaltaToday, over the course of the past three weeks, as to whether MEP candidate Ivan Grech Mintoff should resign the chairmanship of the Adoption Board throughout the European electoral race.

Grech Mintoff is running on an independent ticket in the name of the eurosceptic Alleanza Bidla.

According to the Adoption Administration Act, Article 3(3) states that no person may be appointed to the board who is either an MP or local council member, or a candidate thereto.

However, there is no clear equivalence for the European Parliament elections – suggesting that MEP candidates can retain their positions on government boards.

In other cases, members of the civil service have to take unpaid leave in the months prior to a general election if they have submitted a candidature for a general or local council election.

The measure is a safeguard against undue influence on voters by the person holding a position of authority.

In comments to The Times, Grech Mintoff refused to reply to questions about the Adoption Board’s position on the issue of gay adoption, saying it had been instructed not to comment.

But he claimed that the board's members were not consulted before gay adoptions became part of the Civil Unions Bill. “We were taken totally by surprise to see these adoptions added to civil unions,” he said. “If you ask me, I think it was introduced in the most disgusting way possible. Surreptitiously is not a good-enough term to use.”

The law giving same-sex couples the facility to apply for the adoption of a child was enacted last month when Parliament voted in favour of the Civil Unions Bill that grants rights equivalent to marriage.