Ah, but Judge Herrera set his daughter a different example to Gavin’s father

I wrote this last February, but it bears repeating now, in view of Jose Herrera’s violent outburst on Super One radio yesterday.

I don’t know how he restrained himself from saying ‘F’gh*xx Daphne u f’gh*xx ll-prim imhallef’, quite frankly, given that he had no qualms about saying it of the prime minister in parliament.

Published: February 27, 2010 at 5:41pm

It wasn’t everybody who had the benefit of a good example. This is Labour MP Gavin Gulia, interviewed in Malta Today (8 September 2002):

“My official political affiliation started quite late in my life, in 1995.

This is because my father Oliver and my uncle Wallace were judges of the austere old school.

Consequently, until they resigned, our lives were somewhat influenced by their very private and withdrawn lifestyle, which they deemed necessary to be able to carry out their duties effectively. Involvement in politics until their withdrawal was a definite no-no. Hence my political hibernation. My father’s lifestyle was so austere that he didn’t have any friends to speak of.”

Yes, and then the rot set in.

The policing system for magistrates and judges, if it can be described as such, is based on the assumption that all those appointed to the bench would be fine, upstanding, honourable and dignified.

It does not allow for the appointment to the bench of those who are not. It lacks the requisite ‘coping mechanisms’ to deal with poorly chosen appointees.

Malta is tiny and its judiciary is far from numerous. Yet in the last few years we have had this track record: one appeals court judge and a chief justice jailed for bribery, one failed attempt to impeach a magistrate (Labour refused to cooperate), one failed attempt to impeach a judge (Labour refused to cooperate), at least two magistrates who appear to have been relieved of most of their duties because of personal problems, one of which is said to involve alcoholism, and now the latest shenanigans involving Magistrate Herrera – though quite frankly, there is nothing ‘now’ about it at all.

That’s very impressive.

It’s quite clear from this mess that the entire system needs a rigorous overhaul. The first thing to go should be the discretionary approach to the appointment of magistrates and judges. Nominations for these positions should be made public and subject to public scrutiny.

If this had been done, Noel Arrigo would never have been made a judge. As it happened, the scrutiny – in parliament – took place after his appointment was announced and when it was too late to do anything about it. News of his heavy debts and unpaid bills emerged only at that stage, though it must be said that there were plenty who knew already about his financial woes and cavalier attitude to meeting his debts.

It is clear, too, that the Commission for the Administration of Justice, for all its good intentions, does not have the wherewithal to be proactive.

If there were a proper policing system for the judiciary, with the power to investigate or to instruct the relevant authorities (tax, the police) to investigate, then it would have been able to do something about Patrick Vella long before he was caught taking that one bribe.

He has no family money or inherited wealth to speak of, is married to a woman with no family money or inherited wealth and who didn’t work, his salary was fixed and published and judges are barred from moonlighting or second jobs, and yet they lived in a large villa with grounds in the most expensive part of San Pawl tat-Targa. I often used to remark on this and wonder how nobody else seemed to notice the very obvious anomaly between the judge’s income and his lifestyle.

And that brings me to the question as to whether that judge’s assets were looked into after he was jailed for bribery. Was his financial situation closely inspected, with questions asked as to where he got the money for this, that and the other?

It’s amusing, isn’t it. Those who are found guilty of drug trafficking have all their assets seized on the assumption that they are ill-gotten gains. But judges jailed for taking bribes are allowed to keep their assets, because the assumption is that they have taken only the one bribe.

There’s not much you can buy with a single bribe, but lots of bribes buy an entire lifestyle – though it’s pointless sounding the alarm if there’s nobody around to answer it.