Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1174220
18 maltatoday EXECUTIVE EDITOR Matthew Vella MANAGING EDITOR Saviour Balzan Letters to the Editor, MaltaToday, Vjal ir-Rihan, San Gwann SGN 9016 E-mail: dailynews@mediatoday.com.mt Letters must be concise, no pen names accepted, include full name and address maltatoday | SUNDAY • 6 OCTOBER 2019 7 October, 2009 Yes, together spring hunting is possible, Gonzi tells hunters PRIME Minister Lawrence Gonzi has told hunters that a future derogation for spring hunting is now possible in the light of last month's European Court ruling: though he stopped short of committing his government to opening the season next April. Dr Gonzi's interpretation – aired during a meeting with representatives of two hunters' associations in Castille on Monday – sheds further doubts on a contentious court ruling which has been hailed as a "victory" by both the pro- and anti-spring hunting lobbies. For the same reason, the Prime Minister's vague indication of a possible future derogation is likely to ruffle feathers among the many who campaigned last year (including BirdLife Malta, but also key exponents of Malta's tourism indus- try) for the abolition of spring hunting. Writing in The Times last week, BirdLife Malta executive director Tolga Temuge em- phatically denied that the European Court had paved the way to a derogation on spring hunt- ing, and accused the hunting lobby of "raising false hopes among the hunting community to cover the defeat they faced in Brussels." "They are now taking a few sentences from a 14-page verdict on which to base the claim that the ECJ decision allows the government to allow spring hunting in future," Temuge wrote. "The federation is completely ignoring the rest of the document and, most importantly, its conclusion." However, on Monday the Prime Minister gave representatives the Federation of Hunters' and Trappers' Association (FKNK) and the St Hubert Hunters Association a very different impression. St Hubert's secretary Mark Mifsud Bonnici told this newspaper that the meeting was "positive", but that it is still too early to guarantee a deroga- tion for next year's spring hunting season. "There is not very much to report, but the Prime Minister acknowledged that some form of limited hunting may take place in spring after the European Court judgement," he said. During the same meeting, both FKNK and St Hubert Hunters are understood to have sub- mitted their own, separate proposals on how to go about applying this derogation. Mifsud Bonnici was reluctant to go into any detail, though he hinted that the basic elements of the St Hubert proposals include a shorter season and stricter limits on bag counts. However, the paucity of local enforcement of hunting regulations is likely to prove the big- gest bone of contention. Any future derogation (if such derogation is even possible to begin with) would depend heavily on "strict supervi- sion" and law enforcement. But with a mere 28 officers to monitor the activities of 14,000 licensed hunters, the police's Administrative Law Enforcement agency (ALE) is evidently understaffed for the job at hand. MaltaToday 10 years ago Quote of the Week Transparency applies to the law courts, too Editorial "Judging from the people's reaction I should have never set up such a structure in the first place." Hindsight from Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi on the Panama Company IN his annual address on the occasion of the in- auguration of the legal year, Chief Justice Joseph Azzopardi had some harsh words of criticism for the press; specifically, for journalists "who every now and then send some questions to my secretariat and ask for a reply (if you please, by a certain date that they fix themselves)". Azzopardi continued: "I say persons be- cause I exclude from these those true jour- nalists, professionals, who know what they should and should not ask. To these persons who ask questions that should not be asked by 'true' and serious journalists, I say: please therefore understand that we aren't the poli- ticians or chairmen of parastatal bodies that you normally send questions to and expect an answer." The Chief Justice is generally right that a distinction has to be made between the judiciary and other branches of the public service. He also has a point when he observes that: "it is easy to attack members of the ju- diciary because you know they can't answer you." It is true that the rules and regulations preclude judges and magistrates from speak- ing publicly on certain matters, primarily to ensure their impartiality in deciding cases. But it does not follow that the entire judicial system should be above scrutiny. In the same speech, the Chief Justice also indirectly criticised this newspaper's decision to make public the results of a Commission for The Administration of Justice investiga- tion into the behaviour of a magistrate in one specific case. Without making direct reference to Malta- Today, Azzopardi insisted that proceedings concerning members of the judiciary in the Commission must, according to law, be held in chambers and not in public. In the same way as the judiciary could not arbitrarily decide not to follow the law, he argued, neither could the press. "Nobody has the right to decide to ignore the law because he feels it is unjust. If the law is anachronis- tic or outdated, it should change and not be broken." Azzopardi was presumably referring to a MaltaToday report last August that Magis- trate Joe Mifsud had been reprimanded by the Commission for the Administration of Justice over an ethics breach. If so, there is an irony in his overall argu- ment. The reason this newspaper chose to publish that report was because it is clearly in the public interest to know when members of the judiciary are disciplined; but also because the Commission's ruling called into question the impartiality of the magistrate concerned. Magistrate Joe Mifsud was, in fact, found to have breached the code of ethics for mem- bers of the judiciary, when he expressed his opinion in a judgement he passed on a case of illegal trapping. In a complaint filed against the magistrate by BirdLife CEO Mark Sul- tana, the CAJ had to decide whether Mifsud breached the code of ethics when he deliv- ered a decree ahead of a sentence in which a man accused of illegal trapping was cleared of all charges. In the decree, Mifsud listed a number of recommendations related to technical details that seemed to have nothing to do with the case at hand, and which echoed arguments put forward by the hunting lobby. The com- plainant argued that the points raised in the decree had nothing to do with the facts of the case before the courts, and dealt with a political issue on which there were differing views. In its ruling, the Commission said that it had no doubt that the magistrate's intentions were benign. "But this does not mean that the magistrate was right to issue the decree, and for a number of reasons." The first was that in order for justice to appear to be done, it was important for the courts to appear impartial. "The role of the court is to administer justice by deciding on the merits of the proceedings it has before it and to interpret the applicable laws in each case. Members of the judiciary should limit themselves to this and should not enter into, or express themselves, in relation to contro- versies that have nothing to do with the case before the court. There is no doubt that the there is no agreement by the various interest- ed parties regarding the three points raised in the decree." This is the substance of the ruling that MaltaToday chose to publish in defiance of a court ban. And given that the impartiality of the Maltese justice system is of paramount importance, this newspaper feels fully justi- fied in publishing the details of an internal report in which the Courts appear to be con- cerned with their own impartiality: even if just in this one case. But the same ruling suggests that such digressions are by no means limited to just this one case: the committee also dismissed Mifsud's own arguments that he had in the past expressed his views on a number of sub- jects, including roadworks. Ultimately, a balance has to be struck be- tween respecting the Court's decision to operate behind closed doors, and the right of the public to know when the Maltese justice system is itself in the dock. In this case, MaltaToday felt the balance fell firmly in the latter's favour.