Abela questions whether Standards Commissioner should be a former MP
Prime Minister Robert Abela questioned whether the role of the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life should be held by a former MP, saying that a debate on this point would be good to have.
Abela was asked by The Malta Independent about an ongoing debate with regards to the Standards Commissioner’s office, the role of which is to scrutinise the behaviour of MPs and to make sure that they follow a set of parliamentary ethics guidelines.
The debate has come to a head after the current Commissioner – George Hyzler – was criticised by Labour MPs over his handling of a case concerning Minister within the OPM Carmelo Abela, with Labour’s whip Glenn Bedingfield suggesting that Hyzler was acting in a biased manner in his conclusions.
Abela skirted around a question on whether he had faith that Hyzler – who is a former PN MP – was acting in an independent and unbiased manner in his role as Standards Commissioner, choosing instead to speak about how the Standards Commission in itself is an important office when it comes to the scrutiny of public officials.
Asked whether, given the current debates and arguments which are ongoing, the government was evaluating any reforms to the function of this office, Abela noted that at the moment, the law states that the Standards Commissioner cannot be a sitting MP.
“I believe that a discussion should be opened as to whether the Standards Commissioner should be an ex-MP or not,” Abela said.
Hyzler served as an MP on the Nationalist Party benches between 1995 and 2003, serving as the Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry for Economic Services between 1999 and 2003.
On what the potential reforms could consist of, Abela said he disagreed with a suggestion made by Professor Kevin Aquilina, a constitutional law expert and former Dean of the Faculty of Laws at the University of Malta, wherein Aquilina recommended that the Commissioner’s reports would be handled by an external committee made up of Judges or Magistrates. Aquilina had made the argument that the current Standards Committee is not impartial as the two government MPs on it side with the reported government MP and vice-versa in the case of the opposition reported MP, when reports are made.
Abela said, however, that there are a number of amendments which can be made to improve the current system.
“There are a number of things which worked well, but there are others which I expected to have worked better,” he said.
Hyzler’s office is under the spot-light after finding Minister Carmelo Abela in breach of ethics over an advert paid for by state funds which was deemed to be promotional of the Minister’s personal profile rather than of having any value to the public.
Labour MPs alleged that the report had been leaked to the media before it was discussed by the parliamentary committee pertaining to standards in public life, and that this had not been the first occasion that this had happened.
Hyzler’s office denied this, saying that the media house had simply reached an obvious conclusion because the report had not been published. Only reports where there are data protection concerns or where there is a breach of parliamentary ethics are they sent to the Parliamentary Committee for Standards prior to publication.
Both Carmelo Abela and Bedingfield have since criticised Hyzler, with Abela resurrecting a 23-year-old newspaper advert that Hyzler had taken out while he was still a politician as an example of the Commissioner’s apparent double standards, and with Bedingfield alleging that Hyzler had gone against his own standards in appointing certain consultants to his office.