Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/310131
17 maltatoday, SUNDAY, 11 MAY 2014 March, yet showed no inclination to arrest Engerer until mid-July… when the previously dormant police force suddenly sprang into action and promptly made up for all the time it had previously wasted. In case there was any doubt as to the inquiry's conclusions, Judge Manche' even took the trouble to spell them out for us: "Inevitably, one has to conclude that the police dragged their feet before July 15, 2011 and hurried in their proceedings against Cyrus Engerer afterwards, and that Cyrus Engerer's resignation was the reason why the police hurried in their filing of the charges after so much delay." I need hardly add that this constitutes a grave indictment of the police force: this time coming from a magistrate heading an official inquiry. Yet I am unaware that it had any repercussions at the time. No heads rolled, no resignations were demanded. It is as though we have all become subconsciously inured to a state of affairs whereby the police interpret and apply the law depending on the purely political allegiance of any given suspect. Indeed, we would have been surprised had the inquiry concluded otherwise. Meanwhile, if this is beginning to sound familiar it's because we've all been here before. On the eve of the 2008 election, AD chairman Harry Vassallo similarly found himself served with an arrest warrant over an unpaid VAT bill dating back to the 1990s. The warrant could have been served at any point over the preceding decade. But no: the police chose to wait until three days before an election before placing a candidate and party leader under arrest. Even at the time, defenders of the status quo – i.e., the Gonzi administration – conceded that Vassallo's arrest had been politically motivated. They ascribed it to a rogue element in the police force which had an interest in undermining the government's democratic credentials… by projecting the image of a police state in which government's opponents were routinely arrested. If this were the case, it would perhaps put the government of the day in the clear of any direct involvement. But it does nothing to absolve the police of maladministration, or bolster public confidence in law enforcement. On the contrary, this theory merely confirms what many of us have long suspected: that the police seem to have a habit of involving themselves in political matters for all the wrong reasons. Whether the political parties themselves are in any way involved is really quite irrelevant. If the police abuse their powers for political purposes, the damage to the force's reputation (not to mention the disservice to justice) will have been done, regardless of the complicity or otherwise of other branches of the state. But back to the arrest of Chris Engerer. In this case, the political motive was so utterly blatant that the former Police Commissioner John Rizzo felt compelled to address a rare press conference to defend his force from criticism. He felt 'hurt', he told us, by allegations that the police had acted out of anything but conscientious duty and respect for the laws of the country. As far as I know, Rizzo stopped short of explaining exactly why any of us should remotely give a toss about their own personal feelings, when what we actually wanted to hear was a convincing assurance that the police had not acted out of political vindictiveness and spite. Yet Rizzo's press conference did not exculpate the police force of playing party politics. He did not address the widespread suspicion that the police had previously ignored Chris Engerer's transgressions… but only for as long as his son served as a deputy mayor on the Nationalist ticket. In both cases, there was a clear and sudden change in attitude on the police's part… every bit as clear and sudden as Cyrus Engerer's simultaneous change of political allegiance. I would almost demand an explanation, were the explanation not already so blatantly staring us all in the face. These facts strongly suggest that there are elements within the police force which do perceive their job as an extension of their preferred political party's strategy group, and enact their remit accordingly. And apart from making an open mockery of the separation of powers, with serious consequences for democracy – how can a police force be trusted, if it is not independent of party politics? – there are repercussions on the administration of justice as a whole. Faced with the conclusions of the Manche' inquiry, one has to also wonder whether Cyrus Engerer would have been arrested at all, had he not actually jumped political ship when he did (and in a sense cut himself off from the 'protection' of the PN). Would the matter even have come to trial? Or would a serious crime have been ignored (as it was studiously ignored before July 15 2011) because it involved a political personality of one party but not the other? Same goes for Chris Engerer's drug bust. Would the police have continued turning a blind eye to that particular situation indefinitely, had his son not taken an unrelated political decision that set political alarm bells ringing in the Floriana depot? We will probably never know, but what we do know about these and other cases is more than enough to warrant a proper, thorough independent investigation of the police and its apparent links with political parties. After all, common citizens find themselves under investigation for far less. Saviour Balzan is away. He will be back next week Opinion Time to investigate links between police and politics The remarkable thing in all this is not so much that Cyrus Engerer resigned, but that he even contested the election in the first place 'Soldier of steel? More like soldier of rusty corrugated iron'