Justice Commission replies: judges will be consulted in due course…

Former European Court of Human Rights judge Giovanni Bonello gave an indirect response to criticism leveled at the justice reform commission (which he chairs), during the first of a series of public consultation meetings about the proposed reform, held in the committee chamber of the House of Representatives yesterday.

Opening the meeting with an explanation of the procedures to be adopted, Bonello appeared to counter criticism by the Chief Justice Dr Silvio Camilleri: who took the opportunity of a swearing-in ceremony for three new adjudicants last Thursday to lash out at the commission's failure to consult members of the judiciary before unveiling 136 proposals for judicial reform.

In his introductory address Dr Bonello explained that the report produced by the Commission did not - as elsewhere suggested - represent actual proposals for amendments to the system; on the contrary, it was intended merely to kick-start as discussion on a future reform whose details were as yet undecided.

Addressing a poorly-attended public consultation session yesterday evening, Bonello - who was flanked by retired judge Philip Sciberras, Constitutional expert Prof. Kevin Aquilina and family lawyer Ramona Frendo - pointed out that the judiciary will be consulted in due course.

"We are democrats, so our first commitment is to consult the general public," he said, supported by vigorous nods from his colleagues. "But this is the first of a series of consultation meetings, and we will also be having another meeting specifically to discuss the proposed reform with the judiciary."

This, he added, had been the plan from the very outset.

"It is wrong to suggest that our report contains finished proposals; nothing has been concluded or decided yet," he said.

In the course of the same meeting the commission fielded questions and observations from the floor: most of which, with few exceptions, tended to focus on individual complaints regarding specific cases... nearly concerning the unacceptable duration cases take to reach closure in the Maltese courts.

Among the exceptions was a direct question regarding a situation that is well known to voluntary workers in the drug and alcohol dependency sector, but which strangely seemed to be unfamiliar territory to members of the commission.

The issue concerns people who would have successfully completed rehabilitation programmes, but still find themselves sentenced to prison on drug-related charges that sometimes date back several years earlier.

Such cases tend to be counter-productive, the commission was told, as all the effort and hard work put into overcoming one's drug addiction will very quickly be undone, owing to the widely publicised incidence of drug use in the Corradino correctional facility.

On behalf of the commission, Dr Bonello gave assurances that this would one of the areas covered by the proposed reform.