Rosianne Cutajar ignored by justice minister on court experts

Labour MP Rosianne Cutajar is being given the cold shoulder by Robert Abela’s government despite her comeback to the PL’s parliamentary group a few weeks ago.

Considered part of the faction of disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat within Labour, the former Qormi mayor has been attempting to extract information about court experts appointed to work on the damning Vitals magisterial inquiry through parliamentary questions.

The inquiry led to criminal charges against members of the Muscat administration, including the former disgraced prime minister, who, if found guilty, risks years behind bars.

Prying on the narrative diffused by Muscat’s legal defence team that the inquiry was some ‘sham’ with unqualified experts milking the Maltese coffers through exorbitant fees, Cutajar launched a volley of parliamentary questions, asking for lists of expert inquiries, payments and invoices paid by the government to these so-called ‘fake’ experts or their companies.

The government is refusing to entertain Cutajar’s questions. Finance Minister Clyde Caruana distanced himself from these payments, asking Cutajar to ask the justice minister instead.

Minister Jonathan Attard, part of the Robert Abela faction, is limiting the amount of information released to Cutajar. In most of his replies, the Justice minister dodged Cutajar’s questions or gave minimal details.

Attard repeatedly told Cutajar that he could not divulge the information she was seeking because doing so would not be in the interest of the administration of justice.

He insisted that publishing the invoices sent by court experts would jeopardise the judicial inquiries.

A self-inflicted problem

The issue of court experts has been left pending for years by the Labour administration despite public promises of thorough reform.

In 2013, a Justice Reform Commission, led by Judge Giovanni Bonello, proposed introducing a new system for appointing experts by judiciary members based on transparency and accountability.

However, one Labour Justice Minister after the other ignored the problem and failed to introduce any changes. At the same time, annual expert payments ballooned to several millions.

The problem has now come back to bite Labour – to defend Joseph Muscat from the damning conclusions of the inquiry, members of the administration are now trying to criticise the same court experts system, which they kept in place and never changed.

Currently, judiciary members are at liberty to appoint experts they choose as they please. The government is obliged to foot the bill without question.