The corruption of our institutions: it gets worse

Wenzu Mintoff at a Labour Party event with George Vella and Charles Mangion

You will recall that the Ombudsman has taken the government (specifically, the Ministry for Home Affairs) to court on the matter of who has jurisdiction over complaints of injustices filed by officers and men at the Armed Forces of Malta.

They had taken their complaints to the Ombudsman, naturally, but the Home Affairs Minister – Manuel Mallia at the time – went to war on him, saying that the Home Affairs Ministry is the proper judge of that.

The Ombudsman argued back that members of the Armed Forces of Malta could hardly file their complaints with the perpetrator and expect a fair review.

The Ombudsman, who is the former Chief Justice Joseph Said Pullicino, then took Manuel Mallia to court. The case is ongoing, represented by Mallia’s successor Carmelo Abela who apparently shares Mallia’s view.

And now here’s the clincher – the case has been allocated for hearing to Judge Wenzu Mintoff, who until the point he was appointed to the bench was a die-hard Labour Party activist of the type described as ‘ahdar’, and editor of the Labour Party’s official newspaper KullHadd.