The government’s new appointees to the chair of the Industrial Tribunal

Brand-new appointments

James Pearsall: ex President of GWU – should he hear cases where GWU is involved?

Katrina Borg Cardona: employed in senior role at Malta Enterprise and married to Aron Mifsud Bonnici, GWU lawyer – can she hear Government cases or GWU cases?

Yana Micallef Stafrace: lawyer for L-Orizzont – can she hear GWU cases?

Charmaine Cristiano Giordano: married to ex-GWU Section Secretary – can she hear GWU cases?

Josann Cutajar: I don’t know anything about her except the fact that she lectures at the university.

Those whose resignations were not accepted (who will therefore feel beholden to the government)

Martin Fenech: appointed by the government to the PBS editorial board – can he hear government cases?

Harold Walls: employed with MIMCOL but as a matter of principle has never accepted to preside over government cases)

Leslie Cuschieri

Edmund Tabone: employed with PBS – can he hear government cases?

Charles Cassar: ex-GWU senior person, can he hear GWU cases?

Franco Masini was the only one to refuse to offer his resignation and who is therefore available to hear government cases, which means any case involving state corporations and government-owned companies, and so on.

The minister in question, Helena Dalli, clearly hasn’t the faintest idea what the Tribunal does, how it acts as a court in everything but name (with the powers of the Civil Court, in essence) and how it needs to be independent.

There is a Constitutional case pending, filed by the GWU, attacking the Industrial Tribunal’s independence in previous years, because unlike magistrates in the civil court, chairmen in the Industrial Tribunal don’t have security of tenure.

That case was left hanging because they realized they would be messing up one of their own members.