Updated | New members of the judiciary will be women

Updated on Monday 3 March at 7:45pm with government statement

Two women will be appointed judge and magistrate respectively, MaltaToday revealed on Sunday. The appointments are set to take place "imminently".

Sources close to the government confirmed that Parliamentary Secretary for Justice Owen Bonnici has nominated Magistrate Edwina Grima to become judge and that of lawyer Joanne Vella Cuschieri to join the judiciary as a magistrate.

In a statement issued in the evening, the government confirmed the appointment of the two women.

Grima, 44, was appointed magistrate in 2007. Sources said government looked at Grima as "a model member of the judiciary". Grima faced some tough criminal cases as magistrate outshining many of her colleagues for her objective, calm but clinical decisions.

Vella Cuschieri, 36 and a mother of two, is a partner in law firm MBVC Advocates and forms part of the General Workers Union legal team. Vella Cuschieri contested the 2013 general elections on a Labour ticket.

It is understood that both Grima and Vella Cuschieri have accepted the appointments.

Sources said the appointment of the two women was "in line" with the Prime Minister's aspiration to lead "the most feminist government the country has ever seen".

In the 2013 electoral campaign, Muscat reiterated that he wanted to push forward the female role in society. While only one in four government board members are women, the appointment of more women to the judiciary is a step in fulfilling this goal.

The prime minister has effectively appointed more women to the judiciary than men – Magistrate Charmaine Galea was appointed in June 2013 when Antonio Mizzi was promoted to Judge, and Aaron Bugeja became magistrate.

The same sources said “the appointments had to be brought forward since Judge Lino Farrugia Sacco has effectively been disbarred from presiding over cases following the rulings of the Commission for the Administration of Justice”.

Up until early January, Farrugia Sacco was still hearing court cases. The government has now decided to put on hold the impeachment motion against Farrugia Sacco.

During a House Business Committee meeting on Friday, deputy prime minister Louis Grech argued that the Parliamentary motion should be shelved until the Constitutional court decides over the judicial protest filed by Farrugia Sacco against the prime minister, the attorney general and the commission for the administration of justice.

Despite the Nationalist Party’s opposition, the House Business Committee decided that Parliament should endorse the government’s proposal, effectively postponing the vote on the motion by a few more weeks.
Opposition deputy leader Mario de Marco insisted that the case should not be frozen as it could set a dangerous precedent.

Farrugia Sacco, who retires in August, filed a judicial protest, claiming that he was not being given a fair trial following government’s decision to move a new impeachment motion without a fresh investigation by the commission for the administration of justice.

The judge 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.

Judge emeritus Giovanni Bonello and the Dean of the Faculty of Law Kevin Aquilina (see opinion column on page 25) publicly declared that Parliament should only go ahead with the motion once the Constitutional court decides on the case, which government said should “be concluded reasonably shortly, as determined by the country’s laws”.