The visa racket

Good to see that the new Police Commissioner doesn’t seem to be taking orders from the politicians in government, unlike his two immediate predecessors.

Can you imagine Ray Zammit or Peter Paul Zammit doing something like this? Well, exactly.

I received a telephone call some weeks ago from a police officer who told me that lots of policemen are leaving the force because they can’t stand the ways things are going. “It’s all because of Cassar,” this police officer said. “He’s making people’s lives hell. He’s so arrogant, it’s incredible. He doesn’t even take orders from the prime minister. The prime minister wanted him to transfer some people and he refused.”

I had to explain that in a Constitutional set-up such as ours, the prime minister may not give orders to the Police Commissioner, and that the perception which has been allowed to develop, that the prime minister or the Police Minister are the bosses of the Police Commissioner, has been deliberate but is nonetheless completely wrong.

It is so wrong that Police Commissioner John Rizzo was removed from his post precisely because he refused to take orders on the matter of John Dalli – highlighting the anomaly in our system by which the Prime Minister and Police Minister cannot give orders to the Police Commissioner but then at the same time are able to remove him if he does not comply with their wishes.

In the Times of Malta, today: