Updated | Labour wants committee to discuss yet more ‘procedure’ on impeachment

Labour MPs want to postpone a committee hearing on Lino Farrugia Sacco's impeachment, because the judge is claiming his right to a fair hearing was breached by the Commission for the Administration of Justice.

The Speaker, Anglu Farrugia, said he would inform Judge Farrugia Sacco that the impeachment motion will be formally introduced in the motion book, and that MPs would then decide on the procedure of impeachment, citing parliamentary practice as established by former Speaker Lawrence Gonzi.

Meanwhile, in a letter addressed to the Prime Minister, the Speaker of the House explained that the House Business Committee had decided that the CAJ's original report "applies to the new motion."

In the letter tabled in Parliament in the evening, Farrugia said that "the motion, together with the Commission's report should be considered by the House as was decided in the said committee meeting."

The letter was copied to Farrugia Sacco. 

During the meeting, Nationalist whip David Agius vehemently insisted that the Speaker should proceed with taking the CAJ's report to the House and decided on a date for MPs to debate the impeachment motion.

Once the impeachment is entered into the motion book, MPs in the House Business Committee must decide on the procedure taken to discuss the impeachment: whether witnesses are to be summoned, and the time-frames for a decision.

Earlier in the session, deputy prime minister Louis Grech said it would be imprudent of MPs to hastily proceed with the impeachment, as reconfirmed in a second decision by the CAJ, when the judge is claiming a breach of his right to a fair hearing, which he could contest in the Constitutional Court.

Grech said a decision confirming this breach, perhaps even confirmed by the European Court of Human Rights, would be detrimental to the procedure of the House.

"Today’s meeting is not meant to decide the actual procedure to adopt for an eventual impeachment process. The aim of today’s meeting is to determine if the House Buisness Commitee should actually proceed with the impeachment process by formally inserting the motion into the so-called motion book. This is an exact repeat of what had happened in the only other case of a Judges’ impeachment in Malta which took place in 2001. In that case, the decision to intiate the process of impeachment and the decision on what procedure to adopt where taken in two separate and subsequent sessions."

Farrugia Sacco claims a second decision by the CAJ, reconfirming its original decision in January without holding a second set of hearings on the new impeachment against the judge filed by the Prime Minister, breaches his constitutional rights. The new motion was filed after the original motion was declared to be invalid in the new legislature when former prime minister Lawrence Gonzi resigned his seat in the House.

Nationalist MP Mario de Marco told the House Business Committee that the Commission's review of the new impeachment motion, and its reconfirmed decision, was applicable to the new motion. Farrugia Sacco's complaint should be dealt with in the CAJ, and not in his letter of protest to the Speaker of the House.

"We certainly have a conclusive decision here from the CAJ, which includes the Chief Justice, and in the light of this decision, the Opposition believes that we now have to start the activation of the impeachment motion that the Prime Minister filed," de Marco said.

Grech earlier proposed a new sitting to decide what new procedure should be taken in the light of Farrugia Sacco's constitutional case. "Let's not create a bad precedent. We have to take full cognisance of the way this situation is developing. Nobody should suffer a breach of their constitutional rights because of a hasty process."

PN whip David Agius said Labour's lack of enthusiasm on the judge's impeachment belied the prime minister's reactivation of the impeachment motion.

"I expected the deputy prime minister to tell us, in writing, what procedure will be used in the impeachment. If we don't want any further delays, the government must declare in writing the way forward," Agius said.

Grech took umbrage at Agius's accusation of dilly-dallying on the motion. "The former government could have taken its own action on the impeachment way back in 2007," he said, referring to a CAJ decision that found Farrugia Sacco in breach of the judiciary's code of ethics for refusing to resign his post of president of the Malta Olympic Committee.

The last impeachment motion was filed in December 2012 by Lawrence Gonzi, six months after Farrugia Sacco was filmed by undercover reporters from the Sunday Times of London, allegedly entertaining their plans to resell Malta tickets for the Sochi winter games in another region.

The motion and the CAJ's decision confirming the judge's misbehaviour in retaining his MOC post, was spiked in a Speaker's ruling that found that the motion was 'dead' following Gonzi's resignation from the House.