Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/667669
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 17 APRIL 2016 24 Opinion Gods and monsters S o that's how you do it. That's how you get the law courts to finally pull their socks up, and start deciding individual cases within entirely reasonable timeframes… such as, anything less than two centuries minimum. I have often pondered what measures might be taken to expedite the judicial process in this country. And I'm not the only one, it seems. At one point, something called a 'Justice Reform Commission' even published a report the size of The Encyclopaedia Galactica on the subject: following extensive public consultation, and all that. Yet despite claims of modest success, the experience of anyone who's actually facing proceedings in court suggests that nothing has really changed at all. Things still drag on interminably, as they have always done before. Judges and magistrates are still swamped by improbable caseloads; hearings are still endlessly deferred for various inane reasons… and you can still tell you've spent a morning in court by the amount of cobwebs you have to dust off your clothes afterwards. Unless, of course, you happen to be Jason Azzopardi… in which case, a judicial process that might take anywhere up to 15 years to reach closure, will suddenly find itself all neatly wrapped up (in your favour, too) in no less than 15 days. Fifteen days! That's the time it normally takes for the prosecution just to read its opening statement… let alone for an entire case to be whizzed through all its stages: conveniently leaving out all the long, boring ones, of course... like, for instance, the ones in which witnesses actually testify. Who needs witnesses, anyway? Much easier for the magistrate to simply decide that, in his opinion, 'Azzopardi did not intend to insult [Peter Paul] Zammit'…' and that's it. Case dismissed. Damn: if all magistrates worked the same way, that backlog I mentioned earlier would be down to zero in no time at all. Can my case be decided that way, too? Or do you have to be a member of Parliament, for the magistrate to simply wave aside all other opinions in the matter, and decide the case before anyone has even had the chance to testify? But the question on everyone's lips (everyone, that is, whose analogous court case has been dragging on since prehistory) is this: what is the secret of Jason Azzopardi's success? How did the Shadow Justice Minister manage to solve a problem that has so far eluded the country's greatest legal minds? Let's see now. Judging by how that case was actually handled, I'd say that the "Azzopardi method to expedite justice" involves two steps. First, you bring together a loud, unruly mob to protest outside the law courts on the day of your arraignment. You know, just to remind the Court of the sort of 'trouble' it would be inviting, if it were to reach a verdict that was, let's say, 'inconvenient'. At the same time, you drum up as much noise as you can through your private media empire. A brilliant idea, I must concede. Why didn't I think it up for myself? Well, one possible reason is that I would almost certainly be arrested if I tried pulling a similar stunt… as would anyone else who is not Jason Azzopardi, or any of his colleagues on either side of the House. This is, after all, a country where harmless environmentalists get arrested for organising a picnic on a roundabout… despite conducting their protest with far more civility. And there are still laws, dating back to Mintoff 's time, against spontaneous gatherings of more than 10 people without a police permit. Laws like that, however, only apply to ordinary nobodies like you, me and those environmentalists who got interrogated by the police. If you're the man who might be calling all the shots at the law courts in a couple of years' time… it seems that the rules are suddenly quite different. That, by the way, was just step one. The second step is to get your political partners in Europe to kick up a godawful fuss about 'democracy being under threat'. This one is particularly ingenious, because it also indirectly illustrates just how very wide the gulf between 'lesser' and 'greater' mortals really is. On one level, the European People's Party was perfectly right to diagnose Malta's criminal libel and slander laws (yes, there is a difference but it doesn't amount to much) as 'undemocratic'. In both concept and application, these laws are routinely used to gag freedom of expression in Malta. Anyone who works in the media will attest to this: many have themselves been sued for slander and libel, often as not by Azzopardi's own parliamentary colleagues (if not by Azzopardi himself ). Strangely, however, the European People's Party never spoke out about this 'threat' before. It never voiced any concern over any of the other Maltese citizens who have faced similar or identical charges to the ones levelled at Azzopardi over the years. These were all 'European people', too… and Raphael Vassallo Full Colour Version C: M: Y: K: 0 0 0 100 C: M: Y: K: 0 100 100 0 C: M: Y: K: 50 100 100 20 TUNA AQUAMED MFF Ltd. - Hangar, Triq it-Trunciera, Marsaxlokk MXK1522 T: 2247 5000 E: contact@ebcon.com.mt www.mff.com.mt Farmed in Maltese offshore waters and delivered to you with special attention to freshness and to the highest standards. LOOK FOR OUR QUALITY MARK IN YOUR SUPERMARKET, FISHMONGER OR RESTAURANT FOR A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE. EAT FRESH EAT HEALTHY ENJOY OUR SEA BREAM