Repubblika tells EU Court Zammit Lewis unsuited for role of judge over Fenech texts

Civil society group Repubblika has called on the European Court of Justice to turn down the nomination of former justice minister Edward Zammit Lewis to the post of judge, citing the slew of WhatsApp messages he had exchanged with Caruana Galizia assassination mastermind Yorgen Fenech.

Repubblika president Vicki Cremona told the Article 255 panel that Zammit Lewis’s election as candidate to the European Court of Justice would tarnish the Court’s reputation and compromise its responsibility to be perceived as a bulwark to the rule of law.

She said the former Labour minister was unsuited to the post after it was revealed that he had been in contact with Yorgen Fenech, even when it emerged in press investigations in November 2018 that Fenech was the owner of a Dubai company identified as the source of unlawful payments to the secret Panama companies of Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri.

“The candidate maintained an intimate correspondence with Fenech. At the time when it had become clear that Fenech had both the motivation and the resources to have ordered the killing of Daphne Caruana-Galizia, the candidate texted, over an extended period of time, dozens of messages to Fenech.”

Repubblika said Zammit Lewis had already publicly defended Mizzi and Schembri when they were exposed by the Panama Papers for having set up illegal offshore accounts.

Cremona added that the former minister had accepted Fenech’s hospitality when travelling by private jet together with then prime minister Joseph Muscat and staying at an Evians-les-bains hotel owned by Fenech. “Despite at first denying this fact, records in Fenech’s phone, captured by the police, contradicted the candidate’s version of events.”

“It is our view that during his career, the candidate has demonstrated an appalling lack of judgement, an unwillingness to act with conscience and preserve the rule of law while in public office, and a willingness to retain inappropriate and secret relationships despite the manifest conflict between those relationships and his ethical and constitutional duties as a holder of public office,” Cremona told the Article 255 panel.

“The election of the candidate to the European Court of Justice would, in our view, tarnish the Court’s reputation and compromise its responsibility to be perceived as a bulwark to the rule of law.”

Cremona said Zammit-Lewis had been handpicked by the prime minister as “a form of compensation” for the prime minister’s earlier decision to leave him out of his cabinet of ministers.

“It has become a regular occurrence in Malta for the prime minister to hand out offices of state as gifts and sinecures to secure the support of political allies or potential political enemies.

“Following the case brought by Repubblika at the European Court of Justice, and the government’s decision to change the constitution before the ruling of the Court, posts on the Maltese judiciary are no longer in the gift of the prime minister. We find it unacceptable that the prime minister now uses posts on the bench in Luxembourg as gifts they might give for political purposes.”