Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1339768
10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 14 FEBRUARY 2021 Raphael Vassallo OPINION If we want 'faster justice'… we have to invest in it a little, too 'JUSTICE delayed is justice denied.' As idioms go, this one may be just slightly trite and hackneyed… but let's face it: is also a sentiment with which anyone, who has ever had dealings with the Maltese law-courts, will immediately identify. Take me, for instance. It's been over a year and two months since I filed my first-ever libel case, in over 20 years of writing articles in newspapers. And so far, there has only been one real hearing to speak of: way back in January 2020. Twelve months later, almost to the day, we still haven't proceeded to phase two: i.e., where the defendant gets to testify in court. And OK: to be fair, a large part of that delay can be put down to the long months of court closure – from March to October 2020 – due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But some of it was also because, on at least one occasion, the court registrar took down the wrong date for a hear- ing… which, in practice, meant that: a) I ended up wasting a whole morning go- ing to court for nothing, and; b) the next hearing was set for a whole three months down the line. How many other people have had to en- dure similar experiences over the years? I shudder to even imagine. Let's just say the oldest ongoing trial before the (Gozitan, in this case) courts, was first instituted al- most 48 years ago: on 9 March 1973, to be precise… when I was only two years old. Well, I am now entering my 50th year: and that case is still nowhere near reach- ing a final verdict. Honestly, it makes you wonder whether any of the protagonists will still even be alive, when (or if) it ever does… Meanwhile, a Council of Europe report published last October concluded that (in case we hadn't already worked it out for ourselves): "court cases in Malta take be- tween double and eight times as long to be concluded as the average in the EU". So yes, I think it's fair to say that – on the basis of the above expression – justice does get delayed (and therefore denied) to Maltese people quite a lot. But then again… 'justice delayed' is also about the only thing you can realistically expect, in a country that simply never invests the necessary resources into its judicial sys- tem to begin with. That, at any rate, was the verdict of Magistrate Francesco Depasquale, who this week penned a statement on behalf of the Association for Judges and Magis- trates. Quoting the same European Commis- sion report, Depasquale pointed out that "Malta has half the number of judges re- quired per 100,000 of its population when compared to the rest of the bloc." He also noted that each member of the judiciary should ideally have a sizea- ble complement of personnel 'to handle shortcomings inside the court registry' – something I can attest to myself, from personal experience – and 'to assist the new members of the Bench'. In brief: "A long-term plan is needed for the investment in, and attraction of, trained and competent individuals who assist the judiciary." And yet, even on the rare occasions when government does invest in human resources at the law-courts… it is only ev- er to appoint new judges and magistrates (four of them are in the process of being approved, as we speak); and never to in- crease staff or personnel to assist individ- ual judges in their work. "It's time that the government recog- nises the courts' financial requirements," Depasquale wrote. "It is useless increas- ing the number of judges in the courts, if they do not have the people or tools to operate efficiently…" Not that it makes much of a difference to his core argument; but the association's statement was issued (indirectly) in re- sponse to an interview with Justice Min- ister Edward Zammit Lewis, published in this newspaper earlier this month. On that occasion, the minister "admit- ted that court delays in Malta have to be addressed, and has pledged focus on the administrative reform of the courts in 2021, by tackling compilations of evi- dence, inquiries, the family courts, depe- nalisation, and digitisation." In other words, everything but the glar- ing elephant in the room: i.e., the fact that the law-courts are simply too under- staffed to cope with their current total of at least 800 active cases (not to mention the unquantifiable number of cases pend- ing...) Rather than address that one issue, it seems that the government's entire plan is based on 'reforming' how the process actually works… specifically, by weeding out those parts of a court-case that tend to take longer than others. The compilation of evidence, for in- stance. I'll keep this part brief, because I already brought it up in a previous arti- cle… but yes, there is no doubt that re- moving that element would greatly speed up the duration of any given criminal tri- al. Unfortunately, however, it would also undermine a substantial portion of the judicial process itself… by relieving the courts of the duty to establish: a) that a crime had even been committed at all, and; b), that the evidence – upon which a future conviction might be based, please note – had been collected fairly, appro- priately, and above all, LEGALLY. Much the same could be said for mag- isterial inquiries. Granted, Zammit Lew- is might not be proposing 'ending' such practices, once and for all… but we have already seen, in the Daphne Caruana Gal- izia public inquiry, that his government's approach is to simply set limits on the du- ration of any given inquest. Again, this would no doubt hasten pro- ceedings considerably; but for starters, there's the insignificant matter of the judiciary's independence to take into ac- count; and besides: setting time-limits, without introducing any form of ancillary assistance to individual magistrates, is likely to increase not just the speed of the inquiry itself… but also, the chances of a hasty (and therefore dubious) conclusion. Yet these, nonetheless, are the main pillars in the Justice Minister's strategy to tackle the excessive duration of Mal- ta's justice system. And it is roughly the equivalent of trying to make a car go fast- er… not by investing in a new engine, or a few much-needed spare parts; but by lit- erally stripping the vehicle of any excess weight – the bumpers, side-mirrors, pas- senger seats… heck, even the doors, trunk and bonnet, if it comes to it – so that in the end, you're left with the mere skeleton of (an admittedly much faster) car. Would it pass a VRT test, though? I somehow doubt it… But in any case: for what it's worth, I don't think we should have any trouble figuring out precisely why the govern- ment has been so very reluctant to dig into its pockets – sorry, OUR pockets – and fork out the necessary money to upgrade the judicial system to the 21st century. Part of the answer is right there, in that sentence: MONEY. But another factor is that the judiciary technically forms part of the wider Public Service: and any in- vestment in one sector of that service, is bound to have ripple-effects on all the others. This, by the way, is also why Maltese