You tell them, Francis
I’m listening to Francis Zammit Dimech speaking in parliament. He’s at his best, really wiping the floor with the Opposition. Clear thinking, logically ordered thoughts and well-structured sentences are such powerful things.
He’s just said that what we’re seeing now, what we’re discussing and have discussed, is “the worst of Old Labour”. And he’s right.
And now he’s said “Dan hu messagg perikoluz kontra s-servizz pubbliku kollu.” Again, he’s right. Parliament is not there to hold civil servants accountable. Parliament deals only with their political superiors, cabinet ministers. Civil servants are accountable to their superiors, not to parliament, and the policing organisation, for want of a better expression, is the Public Service Commission.
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Very true.
flawless
Leo Brincat is hugely out of order. Diskors ghall-gallarija.
Why is it all about money now?
[Daphne – Because as Francis Zammit Dimech said when he finished his speech, it’s personal.]
Of course it’s personal…Brokeback Mountain at its best.
Abolish the P.S.C. and every civil servant who commits a mistake during the course of his duties, summon him in parliament and let the 65 wise men to judge him.
Francis Zammit Dimech should, in my opinion, be Lawrence Gonzi’s right hand man. He’s got an incredibly logical mind, speaks as clearly as Eddie Fenech Adami, and can also be funny and likeable.
As a matter of principle the PM should have never accepted this motion.
The civil servants are accountable to their Ministers and not to Parliament.
It is their Ministers that are accountable to Parliament.So the motion should have been against the PM and not Richard Cachia Caruana. This case has created a dangerous precedent with far reaching consequences.
[Daphne – It is not the prime minister who accepts motions in parliament. The prime minister is not the boss of parliament. He is the boss of the government (separation of powers). The parliament boss is the Speaker. And yes, you are right about the rest.]
“Parliament is not there to hold civil servants accountable.” What an incredible statement! I imagine Malta’s elite always imagine themselves to be unaccountable … even to parliament. What about parliamentary sovereignty? I imagine these are the sort of conclusions one reaches when he or she is parochial.
[Daphne – If your field of specialisation is outing figures in history and telling us that St Paul was gay, Joseph Carmel, stick to that. Where matters are covered by law and procedure, there is no room for quibbling. There are only facts. No, civil servants are not accountable to parliament. The only figures accountable to parliament – who may be removed by parliamentary vote – are cabinet ministers (from their cabinet position, not their parliamentary seat) and members of the judiciary. Oh, and the president, too in particular circumstances. This resignation was not an acknowledgement that parliament had the right to decide who is an ambassador and who is not. It was a response to the political controversy. The bottom line is that the motion should never have been presented, and once it was presented, it should never have been accepted by the House. Once it was accepted, it could have been blocked, but apparently a decision was taking that blocking it would have looked bad, even though there was nothing to hide. What the government did not know, of course, is that the result was a foregone conclusion because one of its own members had cooperated with Labour on it. So nothing done or said would have changed the outcome. In other words – lynching by a kangaroo court, akin to the days when Labour governments used an archaic bit of law to bring journalists who wrote against them before parliament for a lynching. This had happened to Charles Demicoli, editor of Mhux Fl-Interess tal-Poplu, who took his case to the European Court of Human Rights, when we were eventually allowed access to it, and won. Now it is no longer possible for journalists to be ‘tried’ by parliament. You can rest assured that if it had been, the Opposition would have had me there in no time at all.]