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maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 19 DECEMBER 2018 6 NEWS ANALYSIS THE following are some of the salient recommendations made by the Venice Commission for constitutional and legal chang- es to strengthen the system of checks and balances. 1. Judicial appointments and discipline • Judicial vacancies should be published and can- didates from inside and from outside the judici- ary should apply to the Judicial Appointments Committee for a specific vacancy. • The JAC should have a composition of at least half of judges elected by their peers from all levels of the judiciary. • The JAC should rank the candidates, upon merit on pre-existing, clear and transparent criteria for appointment, taking also into account the goal of achieving a gender bal- ance. • The JAC should propose a candidate or candidates directly to the President of Malta for appointment. Its proposals should be binding on the President. • The Chief Justice should also be appointed with the same procedure. • The removal of a judge or magistrate from office should not be imposed by a political body. • There should be an ap- peal to a court against disciplinary decisions directly imposed by the Commission for the Ad- ministration of Justice. 2. Attorney General and prosecutions • An office of an independ- ent Director of Public Prosecutions or Pros- ecutor General or Public Prosecutor should be es- tablished in Malta to hive off this function from the AG. • The office of the inde- pendent DPP would be responsible for all public prosecutions. • The powers of the new DPP should be subject to judicial review, notably as concerns non-prosecu- tion, upon request by the victims. • The AG would remain the legal advisor of the government. Venice Commission recommendations KURT SANSONE HIVING off prosecution pow- ers from the Attorney Gen- eral was one proposal out of more than 400 drawn up by the Bonello Commission five years ago. Set up by the incoming La- bour government to draw up a list of reforms for the judi- cial system, the Justice Reform Commission had, in a matter of months, come up with a vo- luminous report. Led by former human rights judge Giovanni Bonello, the commission included former judge Philip Sciberras, the university's law faculty dean Kevin Aquilina and lawyer Ra- mona Frendo. The final report released in December of 2013 contained 450 clear and detailed propos- als for change. Some were implemented in the years that followed but the proposal to create a pros- ecutor general's office, like many others, remained on the shelf. The Bonello Com- mission had proposed removing prosecution powers from the Attor- ney General's hands to do away with the conflict the office has in being, on the one hand the govern- ment's legal consultant, and on the other a prosecutor. The commission had gone as far as suggesting that the po- lice would take direction on prosecutions from the prose- cutor general, who would also enjoy security of tenure. Five years down the line the office of the AG remains un- touched as it has always been for decades. But now, the Council of Eu- rope's Venice Commission has proposed something simi- lar and the government was quick to express its willing- ness to implement the sug- gested changes. Government's sudden will- ingness to accept the for- eign body's proposals did not go unnoticed by one of the architects of the Bonello Commission. "I cannot but be amazed by the speed with which we ac- cept what is suggested by a foreign commission, and leave almost identical proposals made by the Justice Reform Com- mission in 2013, on the shelf for five years," for- mer judge Philip Sciber- ras wrote on Facebook. It was a tongue-in-cheek comment intended to give some historical perspective as the political class got a sudden rush of enthusiasm over the Venice Commission report. The former judge did cap- ture a widespread sentiment among political observers that there was nothing in the Ven- ice Commission report that had not been flagged in the past and for which proposals were abundantly made but ig- nored by the political class. On a similar but more acer- bic vein, former Nationalist Party MP Franco Debono also took the Venice Commission proposals to task, particularly the suggestion that the Presi- dent should enjoy wider pow- ers. A proposal put forward by the Council of Europe body is to have the President elected by qualified majority in parlia- ment. The President would be responsible for the direct ap- pointment of judges and mag- istrates, effectively removing that power from the hands of the Prime Minister. A Presi- dent with more power would serve as a check on the Prime Minister, the Venice Commis- sion suggested. But in a blogpost, Debono said the proposal to give the President more executive powers was a non-starter be- cause while government was answerable to parliament, the President would be answer- How the Venice Commission Retired judge Philip Sciberras Attorney General Peter Grech