[WATCH] PN slams government for 'undermining Ombudsman's office'

'Government undermining Ombudsman and democracy' - PN (video: Chris Mangion)

The government is persistently and intentionally undermining the office of the Ombudsman, shadow home affairs minister Jason Azzopardi said. 
"In a report last week, the Ombudsman declared that a campaign was ongoing to undermine his office," Azzopardi said. "Over a year has passed since he first requested access to government files to investigate complaints of unfair promotions in the army and he is still being denied access to them. This is not action that is worthy of a democratic country."

In his annual report presented in Parliament last week, Ombudsman Joseph Said Pullicino said that the institutional conflict between his office and the government over whether he should be allowed to investigate into army promotions “should never have started in the first place”. He also condemned unspecified media allegations of “political bias” as only serving to undermine the public’s trust in his office which guarantees the people’s right to “good governance”.

Despite Home Affairs Minister Manuel Mallia claiming that the Ombudsman has no jurisdiction to investigate complaints raised by members of the Armed Forces of Malta, Azzopardi said that Mallia himself had acted on the Ombudsman's advice regarding the salary of a lieutenant colonel. 

Referring to the Ombudsman’s report, shadow planning minister Ryan Callus said that the Ombudsman has also received complaints about the behaviour of internal inquiry boards set up by the government to seek justice. 

"The Ombudsman said that these internal boards are not autonomous and independent like his office is," Callus said, while promising that a Nationalist government will not undermine the Ombudsman's office.

“The Ombudmsn’s report also says that there are a number of permanent secretaries and CEOs of government departments that refuse to collaborate with him, and that the amount of rejected requests for information from his office has risen.”

Equal opportunities shadow minister Claudette Buttigieg spoke of the importance of independent institutions in a democratic country, citing her own recent complaint with the National Commission for the Promotion of Equality (NCPE) against Education Minister Evarist Bartolo.

In a political speech last week, Bartolo compared the Nationalist Party to a woman seeking hymen reconstruction surgery, albeit being careful not to use those words.

“Bartolo’s vulgar words were an insult to women,” Buttigieg said. “I haven’t received a response from the NCPE yet but I hope they take this case justly.”